Zabbaleen
In the 1930s and 40s, there was a second wave of migration. This new group, mostly landless peasants, is known as the Zabbaleen. The descendants of subsistence farmers, the Zabbaleen originate from the El Badari district in Asyut, a rural region in Upper Egypt, which is the southern part of Egypt. As farming ceased to be a viable way of life, the Zabbaleen faced economic hardships which prompted them to migrate to Cairo in search of work. Henceforth, the Wahiya collaborated with the Zabbaleen, who purchased waste from the Wahiya for use as fodder for pig farming. Initially, the Zabbaleen settled in the Imbaba district of the Giza governorate, but were given a four-day eviction notice from the governor of Giza in 1970. Thereafter, the Zabbaleen settled mainly in an abandoned quarry at the foot of the Mokattam hills, east of Cairo, which is under the jurisdiction of the Cairo Governorate. Although the governor of Cairo granted the Zabbaleen administrative permission to settle in the area, he did not issue a lease or legal tenure. Thus, because of their precarious situation, the Zabbaleen initially lived in makeshift settlements of tin huts, made mostly of barrels that the Zabbaleen found amongst the waste that they collected. This Zabbaleen community later emerged as the informal garbage collectors and recyclers of Cairo. The literal meaning of the word Zabbaleen is garbage-men (singular: Zabbal). The Zabbaleen are also known as Zarraba (singular: Zarrab), which means pig pen operators, because they raise pigs that eat the organic components of the waste that they collect.
Islamic–Jewish relations
In a response, Maimonides discusses the relationship between Judaism and Islam:
The Ishmaelites are not at all idolaters; [idolatry] has long been severed from their mouths and hearts; and they attribute to God a proper unity, a unity concerning which there is no doubt. And because they lie about us, and falsely attribute to us the statement that God has a son, is no reason for us to lie about them and say that they are idolaters ... And should anyone say that the house that they honor [the Kaaba] is a house of idolatry and an idol is hidden within it, which their ancestors used to worship, then what of it? The hearts of those who bow down toward it today are [directed] only toward Heaven ... [Regarding] the Ishmaelites today—idolatry has been severed from the mouths of all of them [including] women and children. Their error and foolishness is in other things which cannot be put into writing because of the renegades and wicked among Israel [i.e., apostates]. But as regards the unity of God they have no error at all.
Saadia Gaon's commentary on the Bible bears the stamp of the Mutazilites; and its author, while not admitting any positive attributes of God, except these of essence, endeavors to interpret Biblical passages in such a way as to rid them of anthropomorphism. The Jewish commentator, Abraham ibn Ezra, explains the Biblical account of Creation and other Scriptural passages in a philosophical sense. Nahmanides (Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman), too, and other commentators, show the influence of the philosophical ideas current in their respective epochs. This salutary inspiration, which lasted for five consecutive centuries, yielded to that other influence alone that came from the neglected depths of Jewish and of Neoplatonic mysticism, and which took the name of "Kabbalah".