was named El-Kāhira, that is, “the Victorious,” a name corrupted into Cairo. The new city, like that founded by Amr, was originally the camp of the conqueror. This town occupied about a fourth part, the north-eastern, of the present metropolis. By degrees it became greater than El-Fostāt, and took from it the name of Misr, or Masr, which is applied to it by the modern Egyptians. With its rise Fostāt, which had been little affected by the establishment of Askar and Katai, declined. It continually increased so as to include the site of El-Katai to the south. In A.D. 1176 Cairo was unsuccessfully attacked by the Crusaders; shortly afterwards Saladin built the citadel on the lowest point of the mountains to the east, which immediately overlooked El-Katai, and he partly walled round the towns and large gardens within the space now called Cairo. Under the prosperous rule of the Mameluke sultans this great tract was filled with habitations; a large suburb to the north, the Hoseynia, was added; and the town of Bulak was founded. After the Turkish conquest (A.D. 1517) the metropolis decayed, but its limits were the same. In 1798 the city was captured by the French, who were driven out in 1801 by the Turkish and English forces, the city being handed over to the Turks. Mehemet Ali, originally the Turkish viceroy, by his massacre of the Mamelukes in 1811, in a narrow street leading to the citadel, made himself master of the country, and Cairo again became the capital of a virtually independent kingdom. Under Mehemet and his successors all the western part of the city has grown up. The khedive Ismail, in making the straight road from the citadel to the Ezbekia gardens, destroyed many of the finest houses of the old town. In 1882 Cairo was occupied by the British, and British troops continue to garrison the citadel.
Bibliography.—S. L. Poole, The Story of Cairo (London, 1902), a historical and architectural survey of the Moslem city; E. Reynolds-Ball, Cairo: the City of the Caliphs (Boston, U.S.A., 1897); Prisse d’Avennes, L’Art arabe d’après les monuments du Caire (Paris, 1847); P. Ravaisse, L’Histoire et la topographie du Caire d’après Makrizi (Paris, 1887); E. W. Lane, Cairo Fifty Years Ago (London, 1896), presents a picture of the city as it was before the era of European “improvements,” and gives extracts from the Khitat of Maqrizi, written in 1417, the chief original authority on the antiquities of Cairo; Murray’s and Baedeker’s Guides, and A. and C. Black’s Cairo of To-day (1905), contain much useful and accurate information about Cairo. For the fortress of Babylon and its churches consult A. J. Butler, Ancient Coptic Churches in Egypt (Oxford, 1884).
CAIRO, a city and the county-seat of Alexander county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the S. part of the state, at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, 365 m. S. of Chicago. Pop. (1890) 10,324; (1900) 12,566, of whom 5000 were negroes; (1910 census) 14,548. Cairo is served by the Illinois Central, the Mobile & Ohio, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the St Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern, and the St Louis South-Western railways, and by river steamboat lines. The city, said to be the “Eden” of Charles Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit, is built on a tongue of land between the rivers, and has suffered many times from inundations, notably in 1858. It is now protected by great levees. A fine railway bridge (1888) spans the Ohio. The city has a large government building, a U.S. marine hospital (1884), and the A. B. Safford memorial library (1882), and is the seat of St Joseph’s Loretto Academy (Roman Catholic, 1864). In one of the squares there is a bronze statue, “The Hewer,” by G. G. Barnard. In the N. part of the city is St Mary’s park (30 acres). At Mound City (pop. in 1910, 2837), 5 m. N. of Cairo, there is a national cemetery. Lumber and flour are Cairo’s principal manufactured products, and the city is an important hardwood and cotton-wood market; the Singer Manufacturing Co. has veneer mills here, and there are large box factories. In 1905 the value of the city’s factory products was $4,381,465, an increase of 40.6% since 1900. Cairo is a shipping-point for the surrounding agricultural country. The city owes its origin to a series of commercial experiments. In 1818 a charter was secured from the legislature of the territory of Illinois incorporating the city and bank of Cairo. The charter was soon forfeited, and the land secured by it reverted to the government. In 1835 a new charter was granted to a second company, and in 1837 the Cairo City & Canal Co. was formed. By 1842, however, the place was practically abandoned. A successful settlement was made in 1851–1854 under the auspices of the New York Trust Co.; the Illinois Central railway was opened in 1856; and Cairo was chartered as a city in 1857. During the Civil War Cairo was an important strategic point, and was a military centre and depot of supplies of considerable importance for the Federal armies in the west. In 1862 Admiral Andrew H. Foote established at Mound City a naval depot, which was the basis of his operations on the Mississippi.
CAIROLI, BENEDETTO (1825–1889), Italian statesman, was born at Pavia on the 28th of January 1825. From 1848 until the completion of Italian unity in 1870, his whole activity was devoted to the Risorgimento, as Garibaldian officer, political refugee, anti-Austrian conspirator and deputy to parliament. He commanded a volunteer company under Garibaldi in 1859 and 1860, being wounded slightly at Calatafimi and severely at Palermo in the latter year. In 1866, with the rank of colonel, he assisted Garibaldi in Tirol, in 1867 fought at Mentana, and in 1870 conducted the negotiations with Bismarck, during which the German chancellor is alleged to have promised Italy possession of Rome and of her natural frontiers if the Democratic party could prevent an alliance between Victor Emmanuel and Napoleon. The prestige personally acquired by Benedetto Cairoli was augmented by that of his four brothers, who fell during the wars of Risorgimento, and by the heroic conduct of their mother. His refusal of all compensation or distinction further endeared him to the Italian people. When in 1876 the Left came into power, Cairoli, then a deputy of sixteen years’ standing, became parliamentary leader of his party, and, after the fall of Depretis, Nicotera and Crispi, formed his first cabinet in March 1878 with a Francophil and Irredentist policy. After his marriage with the countess Elena Sizzo of Trent, he permitted the Irredentist agitation to carry the country to the verge of a war with Austria. General irritation was caused by his and Count Corti’s policy of “clean hands” at the Berlin Congress, where Italy obtained nothing, while Austria-Hungary secured a European mandate to occupy Bosnia and the Herzegovina. A few months later the attempt of Passanante to assassinate King Humbert at Naples (12th of December 1878) caused his downfall, in spite of the courage displayed and the severe wound received by him in protecting the king’s person on that occasion. On the 3rd of July 1879 Cairoli returned to power, and in the following November formed with Depretis a coalition ministry, in which he retained the premiership and the foreign office. Confidence in French assurances, and belief that Great Britain would never permit the extension of French influence in North Africa, prevented him from foreseeing the French occupation of Tunis (11th of May 1881). In view of popular indignation he resigned in order to avoid making inopportune declarations to the chamber. Thenceforward he practically disappeared from political life. In 1887 he received the knighthood of the Annunziata, the highest Italian decoration, and on the 8th of August 1889 died while a guest of King Humbert in the royal palace of Capodimonte near Naples. Cairoli was one of the most conspicuous representatives of that type of Italian public men who, having conspired and fought for a generation in the cause of national unity, were despite their valour little fitted for the responsible parliamentary and official positions they subsequently attained; and who by their ignorance of foreign affairs and of internal administration unwittingly impeded the political development of their country.
CAISSON (from the Fr. caisse, the variant form “cassoon” being adapted from the Ital. casone), a chest or case. When employed as a military term, it denotes an ammunition wagon or chest; in architecture it is the term used for a sunk panel or coffer in a ceiling, or in the soffit of an arch or a vault.
In civil engineering, however, the word has attained a far wider signification, and has been adopted in connexion with a considerable variety of hydraulic works. A caisson in this sense implies a case or enclosure of wood or iron, generally employed for keeping out water during the execution of foundations and other works in water-bearing strata, at the side of or under rivers, and also
