 This architectural style, which was born in the context of the so-called neo-styles within the historicism then fashionable in Europe, revives the memory of the architecture of the Mamluk period, which saw Egypt as the greatest power in the Middle East and North Africa, with Cairo as her capital, a resplendent metropolis which had no equal in the known world.This style, which conjured up the memory of the country's glorious past, quickly became popular in Egypt, where it acquired the status of a national architectural style within the theoretical framework of a burgeoning nationalism.Herz was regarded as the foremost authority on this style, although he had not invented it.