Queer Things About Egypt | Page 5

And this historic gateway admits the wayfarer to a true bit of the Middle Agesa���a narrow, winding, climbing lane, commanded by the wall of the Citadel on one side, and on the other by its rocks scarped until they are almost steeper than the wall. This was the scene of the famous massacre of the Mamelukesa���the turbulent barons in armour, each with his commando of armed retainers, who were no doubt only waiting for an opportunity to throw off the rule of Mehemet Ali. Even if Mehemet Ali, who had wrested the virtual independence of Egypt from the Turks, and his son, the warlike Ibrahim, who as a general outshone himself, could have controlled the Mamelukes, their weak descendants like Ismail would have fallen an easy prey, and Egypt would have been plunged back into the civil wars of the Middle Ages. Mehemet Ali determined to remove them at a single blow. He asked them all to a state reception, and gave them a splendid escort of his choicest troops to take them home. When the whole cort?��ge was between the middle gate of the Citadel and the Bab-el-Azab, he caused both gates to be closed, and this was the signal for the escort to fall on them. They were so dazed that few offered any resistance, and these were shot down by marksmen on the rocks and walls. But one survived, and he did not take the famous Mameluke leap from the Citadel walls, though he may have galloped off to Syria when he found himself shut outside, while his kinsmen were being massacred within.
It was Saladin who scarped the Citadel's rocks and gave it its noble ring of walls, though En-Nasir strengthened and extended his fortifications so much that the work of Saladin cannot be distinguished. Within the walls he built a superb palace, which lasted till the present dynasty replaced it with their mosque, and a palace even worse in taste than the interior of the mosque. Its massive vaults and foundations may yet be seen. The most beautiful buildings in the Citadel are the roofless halls of the royal mosque founded by En-Nasir and the marble Mosque of Sultan Selim, the gem of sixteenth-century Cairo. The most interesting feature is the well, going back to the times of the Pharaohs, though it may have been called Joseph's well after Saladin himself, whose name was Youssuf. This is 300 ft. deep, and may still be descended to half its depth by the path which winds round it, like that which used to ascend the fallen campanile of Venice. It was the well which made Saladin choose this site, for there is a higher rock behind, which even the poor artillery of Mehemet Ali could render untenable. The anomaly of the city being built before its citadel is only apparent, for the founder of El-Kahira already possessed two citadels, the Babylon of Old Cairo on the Nile and the Citadel of the Air, the palace founded by the great Sultan Ibn Tulun, beside his mosque, which still survives. These were quite strong enough to give the powerful Sultans of Egypt time to recover from any blow an enemy could deal them till suddenly they were confronted by the better armed and more warlike chivalry of the Crusades. It was then that Saladin projected his Citadel, which was impregnable till the invention of artillery. The Cairo which is still a medi?|val city with antique mosques and palaces and baths and fountains and churches, may be divided into three partsa��� Babylon, El-Katai, and El-Kahira; in other words, the Roman citadel behind Old Cairo , the quarter of which the Tulun Mosque is the centre, divided from the first by the mounds of El-Fustat, and the quarter which stretches from the Citadel to the Muski. It is the last which foreigners know best, though they seldom know more than a few picturesque spots in it, such as the bazars and the Blue Mosque.
I will begin with Babylon, which is now exclusively Christian. It and the well in the Citadel are the only things in Cairo anterior to the Saracen invasion. Its name, Bab-el-On, is thought to imply that it was an outwork of On or Heliopolis, one of the early capitals of Egypt, which is six miles away on the other side of Cairo. In the 'mounds' which cover the ruins of Fustat just outside its gates, little dumps of ancient Egyptian antiquities are found. I myself picked up a tiny image of Knum, the Ram-headed god, there, when I was howking for remains of Arab pottery. The Egyptian Babylon still has its Roman walls and one great Roman gate, as fine as those of Rome.
Inside it is a beehive of Copts. The Coptic Babylon is almost an underground city. The