Shubrā al-Khaymah

Shubrā al-Khaymah, northern suburb of Cairo, in Al-Qalyūbiyyah muḥāfaẓah (governorate), on the east bank of the Nile River, Lower Egypt. It was formerly a market town supplying Cairo with agricultural produce from the rich alluvial delta area. In the first decade of the 1800s, Muḥammad ʿAlī, the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt, built a palace for himself there, which he linked to Cairo proper with a boulevard; he also built water wheels and stables for horse breeding. After World War I it began to develop rapidly as an industrial centre; in the 1940s and ’50s industrial estates and factories were established there, attracting migrants in search of employment opportunities. Industries now include cotton ginning and the production of textiles, industrial specialty glass, and ceramics. Shubrā al-Khaymah is the site of the Cairo Polytechnic Institute (1961), and ʿAyn Shams University’s Faculty of Agriculture now occupies the garden of the old viceroy’s palace. The town is on the Cairo-Alexandria superhighway and lies just west of the southern terminus of the Al-Ismāʿīliyyah Canal, which links the Suez Canal with the Nile River. Pop. (2006) 1,025,569.