Cairo

For other uses, see Cairo (disambiguation).

"Cairo, city of the living!"

―Sallah^[src]

Cairo is the capital city of Egypt, located on the Nile River in the northern part of the country. Located just outside the city is the Great Pyramid.

In the 1930s, it was the home of Sallah Mohammed Faisel el-Kahir and his family.

Adventures in Cairo[]

In 1908, a young Indiana Jones found himself in Cairo while accompanying his father who had been scheduled to do a series of lectures at Cairo University.^[1]

In 1936, Nazi agents had entered Egypt and began recruiting diggers in Cairo for their excavation of Tanis.^[2]

After picking up Marion Ravenwood and her Headpiece to the Staff of Ra in Nepal, Indiana Jones flew to Cairo. At Sallah's house, Jones and Ravenwood were welcomed by his old friend, and Fayah and Sallah's children, and picked up a Capuchin monkey. Venturing out into the marketplace, Jones and Ravenwood lost their new pet, who slipped back to its true owner, the Monkey Man, who reported Jones' whereabouts to a German Agent and his partner. These agents sent a gang of thugs to ambush Jones and Ravenwood in the marketplace. After a fight in the bazaar and a chase through the alleys, Ravenwood was captured while hiding in a basket, and Jones attempted to find her. Coming under fire, Jones fired back on a German truck carrying ammunition, and it exploded and crashed.^[2]

Believing Ravenwood dead, Jones drowned his sorrows at the Marhala Bar, where some agents took him to see René Emile Belloq, his rival and dig leader for the Nazi operation at Tanis. Sallah's children managed to rescue Jones from a potential bar gunfight with the Nazi-allied Arabs after he reached for his gun.^[2]

Sallah took Jones to see Imam, who deciphered the inscription on the headpiece. The Monkey Man tried to assassinate Jones, but failed when Sallah stopped Jones from eating the poisoned dates after seeing the monkey, dead from sampling the fruit. With a proper translation, Sallah and Jones took off for Tanis to beat the Nazis in finding the Ark of the Covenant.^[2]

After rescuing the Ark from a Nazi convoy on the road back to Cairo, Jones drove the stolen truck to Omar's Garage, where Sallah and Omar were waiting for him, and disguised the hiding place as a fruit stall. That night, Sallah arranged transport at the docks for Jones, Ravenwood, and the Ark aboard the Bantu Wind, a steamer captained by Simon Katanga.^[2]

Locations in Cairo[]

Docks
Marhala Bar
Sallah's house
Imam's house
Omar's Garage
Marketplace
Abdullah's Antiques

Inhabitants[]

Behind the scenes[]

The Holy City of Kairouan in Tunisia was the Raiders of the Lost Ark filming location for Cairo. Appropriately, the town's name means "little Cairo". For filming the scenes on Sallah's terrace, 350 television antennas had to be removed from local buildings to present a 1930s skyline. The first TV broadcasts in Egypt began in 1960.