Queer Things About Egypt | Page 8

the Armourers, starting by
Sultan Hassan's mosque, the most majestic in Cairo; the Sharia
Serougiya, a little to the left of this, and the Sharia-el-Magar, leading
down from the shoulder of the Citadel hill. All of them abound in
mediæval beauties. The Sharia Serougiya takes you past a succession
of little mosques with domes which are dreams of slender grace, and a
few old mansions, into the busy Bazar of the Tentmakers, who
embroider the awnings which render Mohammedan festivals so gay. At
its end is the Bab-es-Suweyla. The Sûk of the Armourers conducts
you through a magnificent old street lined on both sides with ancient
Arab mansions, and containing the lovely mediæval baths of Sultan
Beshtak, still in use, to the back of the El-Merdani mosque, five
centuries old, the most gracious in all Cairo, with its wide gateways
revealing its sunny court and the antique glories of its sanctuary.
In the Haret-es-Merdani is the old mansion whose court-yard artists

love to paint. For one side of it is rich with all the architectural graces
of the Arabs—its Mak'ad or open hall, has three great arches rising to
the roof, a recessed doorway, almost as lofty, at the head of the steps
which lead up from the court, and a balcony graced with two pavilions
of meshrebiya for the harem ladies: its windows are screened with old
woodwork, and its walls are arabesqued. At El-Merdani this joins the
Sharia-el-Tabbana, the continuation of the Sharia-el-Magar, the finest
of the three approaches. For that starts on the ridge, between the
procession of old mosques which leads up from Sultan Hassan's
mosque to the gate of the Citadel, and the lordly mediæval cemetery
called the Tombs of the Caliphs, whose shrines, stretching into the
desert, form the most beautiful and romantic vision in the kingdom of
Arabian art.
From this point the road leads swiftly down past mosque after mosque,
mansion after mansion—fantastic creations, mostly like Ibrahim
Agha's (called the Blue Mosque from the old Persian tiles which line its
spacious sanctuary), mellowed by the hands of time and decay into
lines of exquisite softness.
The Kitchmas mosque, perfect, and of the fifteenth century, is built
across the street. As you round it you come on a vision hardly less
lovely than the Tombs of the Caliphs. For there, below you, capped by
the fantastic minarets of the old El-Muayyad mosque, profiled against
the blue Egyptian sky, is the Bab-es-Suweyla gate—the heart of
ancient Cairo.
Here you can put off Europe and modernity as the worshipper, entering
the mosque beside the gate, puts off his shoes. For in the Sukkariya, the
broad road spanned by the gate—though it is vulgarised by European
haberdashery, you are never out of sight of one of its noble mosques
and sebils. The street, in Arab fashion, changes its name twice or thrice
before you reach the Sudanese bazar, with its painted chests and
leopard skins, and turn up to the vast and ancient precincts of El-Azhar,
the thousand-year-old university of all Islam.
Step across the Muski, and for a while the spell is broken, for, though
the Khordaguiya is guarded at its entrance by an ancient mosque, and

has on its left the narrow-laned bazar, crowded with veiled women,
where the goldsmiths are forging their delicate filigree over charcoal
flames, this street, and the brass market at its end, have intrusions of
foreigners and foreign wares flowing out of the Khan-il-Khalil,1 the
great bazar on the right, where the sellers of carpets, embroideries,
precious stones, laces, and antiquities arrange their wares in foreign
ways for the foreigners to buy.
1 A fascinating place, where I have bargained for whole days.
You are soon through this nightmare and back in your pleasant dream
of the Middle Ages in the Mosque land of El-Nahassin, the most
romantic highway of antiquity in all Cairo. The Muristan and mosque
of Sultan Kalaûn, the mosque and tomb of Sultan En-Nasr, the
mosque of Sultan Barkûk, and the old sheikh's house
beyond—where else is such a thicket of the flowers of old Arab
architecture to be found? This majestic cluster of mosques has a Gothic
richness and a Gothic gateway, a captive from Acre; the exquisite
minarets present a diapering of hoary stone, like the handiwork of the
lacemaker or the chaser of precious metals. And, within, there is every
antique grace, from the ruins in the hospital of Kalaûn and the tomb
of En-Nasr to the resurrection of mediæval art, from its ashes in
Kalaûn's mosque, and the imperishable splendour of the fifteenth
century.
There are the ruins of a Caliph's palace opposite and other old mosques
beyond—El-Hakim itself, indeed, and the mighty wall and gates of the
age of Saladin; but we must turn up to the Beit-el-Kadi, with the only
five-arched