Suhaymi Archive is not a content brand or a tour reseller. It is a working office on Sharia Al-Manial on the Manial island, with three full-time resident editors, two outside contributors on rotating two-year terms, an accountant in central Cairo, and a small printer in Heliopolis who runs the Field-tier quarterly notebooks. This page sets out who does what, how the money works, and why the desk opened in October 2014.
In January 2014 a vehicle bomb exploded outside the Cairo Security Directorate, immediately opposite the Museum of Islamic Art on Bab El-Khalq Square. The blast caused severe damage to the museum's facade, its display cases, and a substantial part of its collection on the first floor. The museum closed indefinitely. Over the following months, with the building under emergency restoration, the lack of any maintained English-language source on the project — what was being restored, what was lost, when the museum might reopen, what could be visited in the wider Islamic Cairo precinct in the meantime — became a recurring topic of complaint among the academic community in Cairo and abroad.
The founding meeting of the desk took place in a café on Sharia El-Manial in early October 2014. Dr. Khalil Abdelhamid, a former assistant curator at the Museum of Islamic Art who had been part of the post-bombing damage assessment, proposed a small editorial reference site that would maintain accurate, dated, English-language information on the seven principal museums and historic houses of Islamic and Coptic Cairo. Ines Lebret, a French-Egyptian translator who had edited the bilingual Bayt Al-Suhaymi restoration catalogue published in 2000, agreed to handle Arabic and French translation. Wael Boutros, an architectural historian working with the American Research Center in Egypt's Sabil Restoration project, joined as the third editor in early 2015.
The first edition went online under the working name Suhaymi Notes in late October 2014, with three files: Bayt Al-Suhaymi, Gayer-Anderson House, and Manial Palace (the three institutions that remained open while the Museum of Islamic Art was under restoration). Coverage expanded to the Coptic Museum in 2015, the Al-Mu'izz Street circuit in 2016, and finally the Museum of Islamic Art file went live in early 2017 to coincide with the museum's phased reopening.
The three editors below cover the institutions between them by specialism. Each is responsible for the field verification cycle of their assigned files and for the bilingual translation of any Arabic-language curatorial bulletin in their patch.
Former assistant curator, Museum of Islamic Art (2007–2014). PhD in Islamic art history, American University in Cairo, 2009. Edits the Museum of Islamic Art and Al-Mu'izz Street files and is the standing academic correspondent for the desk.
French-Egyptian translator with two decades of work between Paris and Cairo. Edited the bilingual Bayt Al-Suhaymi restoration catalogue (Italian-Egyptian conservation programme, 2000). Edits the Coptic Museum, Manial Palace and Bayt Al-Suhaymi files.
Architectural historian, formerly with the ARCE Sabil Restoration project (2010–2014). Edits the Gayer-Anderson House and Sennari House files, and provides architectural-context inserts on every other file. The desk's principal correspondent with the SCA Cairo inspectorate.
The bench rotates every two years. Each contributor is paid a fixed stipend from subscription revenue and writes between two and four signed pieces during their term.
Institut für Christliche Archäologie, Universität Tübingen. Two-year term through 2027. Contributes the supplementary academic context to the Coptic Museum file, with particular focus on the Nag Hammadi codices and the Coptic textile gallery.
Faculty of Fine Arts, Helwan University. Two-year term through 2027. Contributes the architectural-history sections of the Al-Mu'izz Street file and provides the technical conservation notes for the Bayt Al-Suhaymi annual update.
| Year | What changed |
|---|---|
| 2014 | Project launched after the Museum of Islamic Art bombing closed the building. Three files at start: Bayt Al-Suhaymi, Gayer-Anderson, Manial Palace. |
| 2015 | Coptic Museum file added. Ines Lebret joins as second resident editor. First subscription tier opened. |
| 2016 | Al-Mu'izz Street pedestrian-circuit file added. Wael Boutros joins as third editor. L.L.C. formally registered in Cairo. |
| 2017 | Museum of Islamic Art reopens in stages; our file goes live tracking the reopening schedule. |
| 2019 | Bilingual edition launched — every public file now carries an Arabic-language précis alongside the English text. |
| 2021 | Sennari House file added in the footer after the rehabilitation completed. Field-tier printed Curator's Notebook launched. |
| 2024 | The site moves to its current domain at museums-egypt.xyz. Public change log becomes visible on every file. |
| 2026 | Two-year contributor bench formalised with Prof. Burkhardt and Dr. Hamza. |
The funding mix is the single most important reason the desk can write what it does. If we earned a commission on bookings made through listed guides, we would have an incentive to keep guides on the file past their point of failure. We have chosen a structure that removes that incentive entirely.
"Verified" is overused on travel-content sites and almost meaningless on most of them. On the Suhaymi Archive files the word has a defined meaning, set out in our internal style guide since 2016 and worth restating here for any reader making a decision about whether the subscription is worth their money.
A claim is verified when an editor has personally observed it on the ground in the previous 90 days, has dated and signed the field note in the bound notebook held at the El-Manial office, and has reconciled it against any standing curatorial statement issued by the relevant directorate. For the Museum of Islamic Art and the Coptic Museum, the relevant authority is the curatorial office of that institution. For the Manial Palace and Bayt Al-Suhaymi, the SCA Historic Cairo inspectorate. For the Gayer-Anderson House and the Sennari House, both the SCA and the relevant institutional custodian (the Beit el-Kritliyya and the Sennari Charitable Endowment respectively). A claim with one source is published as provisional with the source named openly. A claim sourced only to commercial third-party guidebooks is not published at all.
If we cannot defend it in writing on a Tuesday afternoon at the desk, it does not go on the page.
The change log at the foot of every file records every published revision with the date, the editor signature, and a one-sentence note describing what changed. The log is append-only. Corrections appear as new dated entries; the previous entries remain visible. This is the single most important structural difference between this desk and a content-marketing site that updates pages silently and hopes nobody notices.
Subscribers at the Library and Field tiers can request the underlying dated photograph for any single published claim on any file, answered inside two working days. We have honoured every such request since the policy was introduced in 2018; the cumulative count to date is 184.
The Museum of Islamic Art file and the Bayt Al-Suhaymi file are the two longest. Either is a fair test of whether the editorial standard is what we say it is.