Each file below is a maintained working reference with a dated last-verified line, current opening hours, the practical visit logistics, the Arabic signage at the entrance for travellers without local Arabic, and a public change log. The structure is uniform on purpose — it makes the differences between files visible.
The principal Islamic-art museum in Cairo, holding approximately 4,400 objects on display from a collection of roughly 100,000. Reopened in stages between 2017 and 2022 after the 2014 bombing damage. The standard visit anchor for any Islamic-Cairo trip.
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The world's largest collection of Coptic and early-Christian Egyptian material, displayed in two purpose-built buildings adjacent to the Hanging Church. Standing-out holdings: the Nag Hammadi library codices, the textile gallery, and the Fayyum portraits.
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Two combined Ottoman-era houses (the Beit el-Kritliyya, 1631, and the Beit Amna bint Salim, 1540) next to the Ibn Tulun Mosque, with furnishings as left by the British major-general R.G. Gayer-Anderson who lived here from 1935 to 1942.
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The early-20th-century palace complex of Prince Mohamed Ali Tewfik, on the Roda island. Five separate pavilions (Throne, Reception, Residence, Hunting, Private Museum) in mixed Andalusian-Ottoman-Persian style. Our nearest neighbour, a few hundred metres from the desk.
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A 17th-century Ottoman merchant's house on the side street off Al-Mu'izz, beautifully restored 1996–2000 by the Italian-Egyptian conservation programme. The clearest worked example of pre-modern Cairene domestic architecture open to the public. Our namesake.
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The medieval main street of the Fatimid city, pedestrianised since 2007 from Bab Al-Futuh to Bab Zuwayla. Approximately 1.2 kilometres of standing monuments — Qalawun, Barquq, Al-Nasr Muhammad, Al-Ghuri — and our recommended single-day Islamic Cairo orientation walk.
Open the fileMost published English-language material on Islamic Cairo is recycled from the 1990s travel-guide standards, which were themselves recycled from the 1960s academic literature. We do field work, in person, with the SCA inspectorates and the curatorial offices, every quarter. The cycle below is what we have used since the desk was founded in October 2014.
An editor visits every covered institution at least once every 90 days. The visit is paid for at the published ticket price; we do not accept curatorial complimentary admission.
After each on-site visit we follow up with the curatorial office about any closed gallery, conservation work, or rotation of items. The conversations are documented with dated minutes in the desk record.
Arabic-language SCA bulletins on opening hours, ticket changes and gallery rotations are translated into English on the public file the same day they are issued. Earlier translations remain in the change log.
Every claim on every page carries the date it was verified and the editor's signature. The change log at the foot of each file is append-only; corrections appear as new entries.
The Suhaymi Archive was founded in October 2014 by a former assistant curator at the Museum of Islamic Art, joined in 2015 and 2016 by an architectural historian from the American Research Center in Egypt and a French-Egyptian translator who had previously edited the Bayt Al-Suhaymi restoration catalogue. The three of us live within walking distance of each other on the Roda and Manial islands, and our principal subjects of editorial concern are within twenty minutes' drive or thirty minutes' walk in every direction.
The three notes below come from active subscribers quoted with permission. They give a fair picture of who the archive serves and who it does not.
When the Museum of Islamic Art rehung its main gallery in 2024, the desk had a translated explanation of which cases were moved and which had been removed for conservation up within 72 hours. No other English-language source had it.
I plan small architectural-history trips for retired academics. The Gayer-Anderson and Bayt Al-Suhaymi files are the only working English references I trust on access procedure and the recent restoration work.
For Coptic-museum specialists the desk's bilingual translation of the conservation bulletin from the Mar Girgis curatorial office is uniquely valuable. We use it as a teaching resource at the graduate seminar.
The Museum of Islamic Art file and the Bayt Al-Suhaymi file are the two longest. Either is a fair test of whether the rest of the archive is worth the monthly fee.