Egypt Cairo Getting Around City Sources of egypt cairo getting around city resources from the Web

The completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1971 and the resultant Lake Nasser have altered the time-honored place of the Nile River in the agriculture and ecology of Egypt. A rapidly growing population (the largest in the Arab world), limited arable land, and dependence on the Nile all continue to overtax resources and stress society.

Belly dance, or Raqs Sharqi in Arabic, may have originated in Egypt, and today the country is considered the international center of the art.

"Egypt," wrote the Greek historian Herodotus 25 centuries ago, "is the gift of the Nile." The land's seemingly inexhaustible resources of water and soil carried by this mighty river created in the Nile Valley and Delta the world's most extensive oasis. Without the Nile, Egypt would be little more than a desert wasteland.

In Egypt, religious music is frowned upon, but still common in Muslim celebrations called mulids. Mulids are held to celebrate the saint of a particular mosque, and is related to the Sufi zikr ritual. A type of flute called the ney is commonly played at mulids.

The President names the Prime Minister and may preside over the cabinet. President Mubarak holds a monthly meeting with the cabinet on which he presides. In addition, the President is the Supreme Commander of the Egyptian Armed Forces. The President concludes treaties and may submit questions to national referenda. The President also possesses the constitutional power to dissolve the People’s Assembly, however, no President has ever done so. In certain emergencies, the President may assume special, comprehensive powers.

The social origins of Islamists changed after the 1952 Revolution. In the 1940s and early 1950s, the Muslim Brotherhood had appealed primarily to urban civil servants and white and blue-collar workers. After the early 1970s, the Islamic revival attracted followers from a broad spectrum of social classes. Most activists were university students or recent graduates; they included rural-urban migrants and urban middle-class youth whose fathers were middle-level government employees or professionals. Their fields of study--medicine, engineering, military science, and pharmacy--were among the most highly competitive and prestigious disciplines in the university system. The rank-and- file members of Islamist groups have come from the middle class, the lower-middle class, and the urban working class.

The Constitution provides for freedom of belief and the practice of religion; however, the Government places restrictions on this right. According to the Constitution, Islam is the official state religion, and Shari'a is the primary source of legislation; religious practices that conflict with the official interpretation of Shari'a are prohibited. However, since the Government does not consider the practice of Christianity or Judaism to conflict with Shari'a, for the most part members of the non-Muslim minority worship without legal harassment and may maintain links with coreligionists in other countries. Members of other religions that are not recognized by the Government, such as the Baha'i Faith, may experience personal and collective hardship.

Approximately one-third of Egyptian labor is engaged directly in farming, and many others work in the processing or trading of agricultural products. Practically all Egyptian agriculture takes place in some 25,000 km² (6 million acres) of fertile soil in the Nile Valley and Delta. Some desert lands are being developed for agriculture, including the ambitious Toshka project in Upper Egypt, but some other fertile lands in the Nile Valley and Delta are being lost to urbanization and erosion.

Various Islamist groups espoused different means for achieving their political agenda. All Islamists, however, were concerned with Islam's role in the complex and changing society of Egypt in the late twentieth century. A common focus of their political efforts has been to incorporate the Shari'a into the country's legal code. In deference to their increasing influence, the Ministry of Justice in 1977 published a draft law making apostasy by a Muslim a capital offense and proposing traditional Islamic punishments for crimes, such as stoning for adultery and amputation of a hand for theft. In 1980 Egypt supported a referendum that proposed a constitutional amendment to make the Shari'a "the sole source of law." The influence of the Islamists temporarily waned in the aftermath of Sadat's assassination in 1981, but the election of nine members of the Muslim Brotherhood to the People's Assembly in 1984 revived Islamists' prospects. In 1985 the People's Assembly voted to initiate a procedure for the gradual application of the Shari'a, beginning with an indefinite education period to prepare the population for the legal changes; the next step would be to amend all existing laws to exclude any provisions that conflict with the Shari'a. Moves to reform the legal code received support from many Muslims who wanted to purify society and reject Western legal codes forced on Egypt in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Crude oil production has been in decline for several years, from 45,200,000 t in 93/94 to 37,000,000 t in 99/00. Oil production in late 2001 was about 118,000 m³ (740,000 barrels) per day. To minimize the growing domestic demand of petroleum products (approximately 23 mmt) Egypt is encouraging the production of natural gas. Natural gas output continues to increase and reached 18 mmt of oil equivalents in 2001.

Geography, population, history, military strength, and diplomatic expertise give Egypt extensive political influence in the Middle East. Cairo has been a crossroads of Arab commerce and culture for millennia, and its intellectual and Islamic institutions are at the center of the region's social and cultural development.

In the late 1970s Egypt had several cohabitation governments which proved to be unstable, due to the struggle arising between the President and the Prime Minister. However, since 1981, the National Democratic Party has maintained a majority in the People’s Assembly and supplied the Egyptian President.

Egypt's economy depends mainly on agriculture, media, petroleum exports, and tourism; there are also more than 5 million Egyptians working abroad, mainly in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf area, and Europe.

The literacy rate is about 55% of the adult population. Education is free through university and compulsory from ages six through 15. Rates for primary and secondary education have strengthened in recent years. Ninety-three percent of children enter primary school and about one-quarter drop out after the sixth year; in 1994-95, 87% entered primary school and about half dropped out after the sixth year. There are 20,000 primary and secondary schools with some 10 million students, 13 major universities with more than 500,000 students, and 67 teacher colleges. Major universities include Cairo University (100,000 students), Alexandria University, and the 1,000-year-old Al-Azhar University, one of the world's major centers of Islamic learning.