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Egypt - GENERAL INFORMATION
 
Population - Local time - Languages - Religion - Political system - Climate - Tourism - Food



Population



Main Cities Population
Cairo   9,900,000  
Alexandria   3,700,000  
Shubra El-Kemia   1,300,000  
Port(bearing) Said   526,000  
Suez   458,000  



Total population (millions): 68.7
Source: World Bank 2004

Urban population: 42%
Source: World Bank 2004

Average annual population growth: 1.7%
Source: World Bank 2004

Surface area (km²) : 1,001,450


Population origin

Origin of the population% Of the population
Egyptian 99.7
Other 0.3




Local time


It is %T:%M %A in Cairo


GMT+2 in winter, GMT+3 in summer


Languages


Official language: Arabic. To a certain extend, English and French are used in governmental and business environments.
Business languages: literary Arabic, English.

Free translation tools in Egypt :
Arjeeb
Free English-Arabic-English translation of texts and web pages

Ectaco
Free Arabic-English-Arabic dictionary



Religion


Religious practises : Muslims 93.8%
Others 6.2%

About 90% of Egyptians are muslims. The prayer represents an essential part of the daily life of the faithful, that the muezzin calls for 5 times a day, from the hight of minarets. The supreme religious authority is the sheik Al Azhar, whose role is to define the official line of Islam. The Coptes compose the main religious minority. Before Islam, Christianism was the predominant religion in the region, one of the first to embrace this faith.


Political system


Egypt is an Arabic republic. The president is appointed with a two-thirds majority by the People's Assembly and elected by referendum every six years. Legislative power is the prerogative of the People's Assembly (Maljis al-Shaab), which is composed of 444 members elected every five years by direct vote, and 10 persons appointed by the President. The Democratic National Party is in power since its creation in 1978. The main parties of the opposition are the Nationalist Party, the National Progressive Party of the Union, the Liberal Party and the Labour Party.

Capital: Cairo
Head of State: President: General Muhammad Hosni Moubarak, since the 14 of October 1981
Prime minister: Atef Ebeid, since the 5 of October 1999.


Climate

 

Warm and dry climate. Apart from January, February and March, sometimes rather cold in the North, the average temperatures are close to 20?C on the Mediterranean coast (maximal 31?C) and 28?C in Assouan (maximal 50?C!). In the desert, extreme climatic conditions are rather obvious - incandescent the day, icy at night. Alexandria is the Egyptian city which most receives precipitation - about 19 cm a year-, whereas Assouan has only about 10 mm every five years. In March - April, the khamsin - a dry, warm and very dusty wind - blows from the desert of Libya at the speed of 150 km/h: the sky then takes a dark orange tint and air is full of dust, turning any outing into an ordeal.


Tourism

Number of visitors in Egypt 2002 2003 2004 World rank
Number of visitors (1000) 4906   5746   ..   n.a.
Source : World Tourisme Organization, data available in November 2005

 

Tourist sites


Cairo: capital and city of more than 15 million inhabitants, city of the " thousand minarets", Cairo is also an open sky museum, in the middle of the West and Africa.
Louxor has a magnificent monumental -and amazingly preserved- architecture: you will be able to admire it from a felucca by letting you slide along the Nile.
Alexandria: long ago the city sheltered a gigantic library of 500,000 volumes; at its apogee, it used to be a big centre of scientific, philosophic and intellectual erudition. Few things remain of this glorious past, but Midan Ramla's district keeps signs of Alexandria's cosmopolitan history of the beginning of XXth century: Cecil Hotel, the Swiss Pharmacy, Athenios tearoom...
Assouan: modern city which extends over the magnificent eastern bank of the Nile: you will be able to contemplate it from the Ledge, a magnificent avenue on the river shore.
The Sinai is a region of incredible beauty. Under the Pharaohs, quarries contained large quantities of turquoise, gold and copper.

For more information about tourism in Egypt , check out the following web site(s) :
Ministry of Tourism of Egypt


Food


Traditional dishes


The Egyptian food is excellent. Egyptian recipes are very similar to dishes you can find in the Middle East.
Main specialties are:
The fuul: broad beans usually served in a piece of shami (bread similar to the pita).
Ta'amiya: known in the other eastern countries under the name of falafel, sandwich made of a chick peas puree, spices, salad and tahina, sesame cream based dough.
The kushari: noodles dish, rice, black lentils, fried onions and tomato sauce
Kebabs: beef, lamb grills, marinaded for several hours in a hot sauce.
Humus: chick peas puree with garlic and olive oil.

Food-related taboos


Pork is prohibited in Egypt. For the strictest Muslims, alcohol is haram (forbidden), but it is tolerated (and drunk) by the majority of Egyptians. Therefore you can find beer, wine and local alcohols (often expensive, and of very poor quality for foreigners).

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Last modified in October 2005
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