Queer Things About Egypt | Page 5

No matter whether you are on your house-top courting
the breeze at sunset, or floating on the waters of the Nile, or seated on
the Great Pyramid, the landscape is always crowned by the vast dome
and obelisk minarets of the mosque erected to the memory of the
founder of the dynasty of the Khedives. But its arcaded courtyard is
only tolerable, and its interior not better than that of the Brighton
Pavilion.
The Bab-el-Azab, inside, shows less of the cloven foot of modern
cheapness. And this historic gateway admits the wayfarer to a true bit

of the Middle Ages—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 Mamelukes—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 cortège 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
mediæval city with antique mosques and palaces and baths and
fountains and churches, may be divided into three parts— 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