Mokattam and the Moqattam Hills, , also Muqattam and Moqattam Mountain, is the name of a hill

Hill

A hill is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain. Hills often have a distinct summit, although in areas with scarp/dip topography a hill may refer to a particular section of flat terrain without a massive summit A hill is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain. Hills...

 range and a suburb

Suburb

The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...

 in them, located in southeastern Cairo

Cairo

Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

, Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

.

Landform

The Arabic name Mokattam, which means "cut up" in English, refers to how the low mountain range

Mountain range

A mountain range is a single, large mass consisting of a succession of mountains or narrowly spaced mountain ridges, with or without peaks, closely related in position, direction, formation, and age; a component part of a mountain system or of a mountain chain...

 of hill

Hill

A hill is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain. Hills often have a distinct summit, although in areas with scarp/dip topography a hill may refer to a particular section of flat terrain without a massive summit A hill is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain. Hills...

s is divided into three sections. The highest segment is a low mountain landform called Moqattam Mountain.
In the past the low mountain range was an important ancient Egyptian quarry

Quarry

A quarry is a type of open-pit mine from which rock or minerals are extracted. Quarries are generally used for extracting building materials, such as dimension stone, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, and gravel. They are often collocated with concrete and asphalt plants due to the requirement...

 site for limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

, used in construction of the temples and pyramids.

Settlement

The hills are in the region of ancient Fustat, the new capital founded by 'Amr ibn al-'As

'Amr ibn al-'As

`Amr ibn al-`As was an Arab military commander who is most noted for leading the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 640. A contemporary of Muhammad, and one of the Sahaba , who rose quickly through the Muslim hierarchy following his conversion to Islam in the year 8 AH...

 after the Arab conquest of Egypt

Muslim conquest of Egypt

At the commencement of the Muslims conquest of Egypt, Egypt was part of the Byzantine Empire with its capital in Constantinople. However, it had been occupied just a decade before by the Persian Empire under Khosrau II...

 in 642 CE.
A section of the Mokattam Hills contains Muqattam, an affluent suburb of Cairo. Other sections have slum

Slum

A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...

s.
The Zabbaleen

Zabbaleen

The Zabbaleen are a minority religious community of Coptic Christians who have served as Cairo's informal garbage collectors for approximately the past 70 to 80 years. Zabbaleen means "Garbage people" in Egyptian Arabic...

 people, who are an integral part of collecting and processing Cairo's municipal solid waste, live in Manshiyat Nasser, Garbage City, at the foot of the Mokattam Hills.

Media

Moqattam is the name of a documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 about the garbage collecting Manshiyat naser village and its Zabbaleen people, directed by Jehane Noujaim

Jehane Noujaim

Jehane Noujaim is an Egyptian American documentary film director best known for her films Control Room, Startup.com and Pangea Day.- Career :Jehane Noujaim is a filmmaker, born in Washington DC and raised in Kuwait and Cairo....

.

See also

in Moqattam Hills foothills

• City of the Dead (Cairo)
  City of the Dead (Cairo)
  The City of the Dead, or Cairo Necropolis , is an Arabic necropolis and cemetery below the Mokattam Hills in southeastern Cairo, Egypt. The people of Cairo, the Cairenes, and most Egyptians, call it el'arafa...
  
   - Cairo Necropolis
• City of the Dead (slum)
  City of the Dead (slum)
  City of the Dead is a slum at the base of Mokattam Hill on the eastern outskirts of Cairo, the capital of Egypt. The slum possibly has a population of more than half a million people. It is in the East of the city...
  
  
• Manshiyat Nasser
  Manshiyat naser
  Manshiyat naser, also known as Garbage City, is a slum settlement at the base of Mokattam Hill on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. Its economy revolves around the collection and recycling of the city's garbage...
  
   - Garbage City
• List of types of limestone - ancient Egyptians quarried limestone in the hills