Azbakeya (; also spelled Al Uzbakeya or Auzbekiya) is one of the central districts of Cairo, Egypt. It contains many historically important establishments. One of these is the Saint Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, which was inaugurated by Pope Mark VIII in 1800 and served as the seat of the Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria from 1800 to 1971. Azbakeya was the place where the first Cairo Opera House was established, in 1869. History The district of Azbakeya was built upon a place of an old Coptic village, Tiandonias () or Umm Dunayn () which was also called al-Maks ( "customs") in latter sources and Ottoman documents. By the time of Barquq, the first Burji Mamluk sultan (1382-1399), a lot of reconstruction needed to be done within the walls of the city in order to repair the damages incurred as a result of the Black Death. In 1384, when Barquq started his madrasa in Bayn al-Qasrayn, markets were rebuilt, and Khan al-Khalili, the most famous touristic market in Cairo, was established. Al-Maqrizi showed that the northern cemetery, founded by al-Nasir Muhammad, contained no building at all before his third reign. When al-Nasir Muhammad in 1320 abandoned the area between Bab al-Nasr cemetery and the Muqattam, a small number of buildings started to be built in the northern cemetery. Under the Burji Mamluks, northern cemetery became the new area targeted for the any new city expansion, since no ideological oppositions were found preventing the construction of dwelling within cemeteries. The lack of opposition allowed for the construction of striking religious buildings of monumental scale in the northern cemetery. Examples include the Khanqah of Faraj ibn Barquq, Madrasa of Al-Nasir Muhammad, the Emir Qurqumas Complex, the Mosque-Madrasa of Sultan al-Ashraf Barsbay and the Complex of Sultan al-Ashraf Qaytbay. During the latter half of the 15th century, two final major transformations took place in Cairo: the port of Boulaq, and a district called Azbakeya in the northwest section of the city. The parameters of the city had been unchanged for the past 300 years according to the map done by the French expedition in 1798. With Baibars's conquest of Cyprus in 1428, Bulaq became the major port of Cairo. By the end of the 15th century, Bulaq was even able to take over the role as the major commercial port from Old Cairo. The Azbakeya district was developed when Amir Azbak