Fustat Finds: Beads, Coins, Medical Instruments, Textiles, and Other Artifacts from the Awad Collection

Corroded pieces of metal, stamped lumps of copper, broken bits of glass with partial inscriptions, fragments of textiles, tiny beads-these were the raw material found at al-Fustat, the site of the first Muslim settlement in Egypt in the seventh century and the heart of Cairo for many centuries following. From the 1950s Dr. Henri Amin Awad accepted from the poor in this area objects that had no obvious market value in return for medical services rendered. Over the years he built up an extrao...