By Yasmine Nazmy, progrss Although Talaat Harb is often credited with introducing entrepreneurship to Cairo with his founding of Banque Misr, Egyptian entrepreneurship has much deeper roots. In fact, since its founding in 973, Cairo was designed first and foremost as a commercial and manufacturing hub, with artisans and craftsmen clustering their businesses in various parts of the city. Today, those business clusters still exist, from the car-repair workshops of El Hirafiyyeen and the tile and marble manufacturers of Shaq El Tho’ban, to electronic equipment providers in Downtown’s El Bustan and the hustle of mobile and electronic accessories’ traders on Abdel-Aziz Street. One of Cairo’s first known entrepreneurs, sixteenth century Egyptian merchant Ismail Abu Taqiyya “…anticipat[ed] Starbucks by several centuries” by importing coffee to Egypt from Mocha in Yemen. Far from risk-averse, his choice to finance coffeehouses came at a time when coffee and coffeehouses were highly politicized, and when puritanical scholars perceived the drink as sinful. Abu Taqiyya also invested heavily in the sugar industry, and although he had a conglomerate that stretched from India to Nigeria during his lifetime, it fell apart after he died, leaving little of…
