Okelle

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Okelle is a French name for a commercial and accommodation building in the Orient , especially in Alexandria , which, for example, served the function of a caravanserai .

The use of the name Okelle is documented as early as 1647, but unlike words such as bungalow or veranda , which were created in a similar way, the name did not spread in common usage, but remained more or less limited to Alexandria. The Okelles were mainly built on Maydan al-Tahrir towards the end of the 19th century; until 1868 the structures Okelle Anglaise, Okelle Française, Okelle Nuevo, Okelle Anastasi and Okelle Abro were built. They contained facilities such as cafes, theaters, post offices, shops etc. on the ground floor, while hotels or apartments were housed on the upper floors. As a rule, they were divided into four parts by two intersecting public passages, which were lit and ventilated. The ocelle represented a fusion between native and colonial designs.

This development had initiated the pro-European policy under Muhammad Said and his successor, which resulted in the establishment of the British Protectorate in Egypt in 1882 . The development of Cairo in 1870 cost Alexandria the hitherto assumed supremacy. Ismail Pascha and Ali Pascha Mubarak had contacted Georges Haussmann on the occasion of their visit to the world exhibition in 1867 and began to redesign Cairo according to the European model. However, the European architects who were recruited to modernize Alexandria - even in the absence of local workers - refrained from transferring unchanged European building models to Alexandria, but instead planned buildings that corresponded to the European understanding of oriental construction.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Olivia Remie Constable: Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World. Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press 2003, ISBN 978-0521819183 , p. 359, limited preview in Google Book Search and EJ Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam 1913-1936 , Vol. IV, p. 660, limited preview in Google Book search.
  2. ↑ See also Cristina Pallini, Italian Architects and Modern Egypt (PDF; 396 kB), p. 3 ff.
  3. ↑ Mark Crinson: Empire Building: Orientalism and Victorian Architecture. Routledge Chapman & Hall 1996, ISBN 978-0415139403 , pp. 169–179, limited preview in Google Book Search.