adaptation of Islam, which is an essentially Semitic creed. In the tenth
century they had established a caliph among the Berbers at Kayrawan
(908). They had thence invaded Egypt with temporary success in 914 and
919. When the death of Kafur in 968 left the country a prey to rival
military factions, the fourth of the caliphs of Kayrawan--called the
Fatimid caliphs, because they claimed a very doubtful descent from
Fatima--sent his army into Egypt. The people, who had too long been the
sport of Turkish mercenaries, received the invaders as deliverers, just
as the Copts had welcomed the Arabs three centuries before. Gauhar, the
Fatimid general, entered Fustat (or Misr, as it was usually called, a
name still applied both to Egypt and to its capital) amid acclamations
in 969, and immediately laid the foundations of the fortified palace
which he named, astrologically, after the planet Mars (Kahir),
El-Kahira, "the Martial," or "the Victorious," which gradually expanded
to the city of Cairo. He also founded the great historic university
mosque of the Azhar, which, begun by the heretical Shia, became the
bulwark of rigid scholasticism and the theological centre of orthodox
Islam.
The theological change was abrupt. It was as though Presbyterian
Scotland had suddenly been put under the rule of the Jesuits. But, like
the Society of Jesus, the Shia were pre-eminently intellectual and
recognised the necessity of adapting their teaching to the capacities of
their hearers, and the conditions of the time. They did not force
extreme Shia doctrine upon the Egyptians. Their esoteric system, with
its graduated stages of initiation, permitted a large latitude, and they
were content to add their distinctive formulas to the ordinary
Mohammedan ritual, and to set them conspicuously on their coinage,
without entering upon a propaganda. The bulk of the Egyptian Moslems
apparently preserved their orthodoxy and suffered an heretical caliphate
for two centuries with traditional composure. The Christian Copts found
the new _régime_ a marked improvement. Mysticism finds kindred elements
in many faiths, and the Fatimid caliphs soon struck up relations with
the local heads of the Christian religion.
The second Egyptian caliph, Aziz (975-996), was greatly influenced by a
Christian wife, who encouraged his natural clemency. Bishop Severus
attended his court, and Coptic churches were rebuilt. Throughout the
Fatimid period we constantly find Christians and Jews, and especially
Armenians, advanced to the highest offices of state. This was partly
due, of course, to their special qualifications as scribes and
accountants, for Arabs and Turks were no hands at "sums." The land had
rest under this wise and tolerant caliph. If he set a dangerous example
in his luxury and love of display, he unquestionably maintained law,
enforced equity, punished corruption, and valiantly defended his
kingdom. He fitted out a fleet of 600 sail at Maks (then the port of
Cairo, on the Nile), which kept the Emperor Basil at a distance and
assured the caliph's ascendancy from end to end of the Mediterranean
Sea.
After these two great rulers the Fatimid caliphate subsisted for nearly
two centuries by no virtue or energy of its own. The caliphs lived
secluded, like veiled prophets, in their huge palace at Cairo, given
over to sensual delights (Saladin found 12,000 women in the Great Palace
when he entered it in 1171), and wholly regardless of their kingdom,
which they left to the care of vezirs, who were chiefly bent on making
their own fortunes, though there were many able, and a few honest men
amongst them. The real power rested with the army, and the only check
upon the tyranny and debauchery of the army lay in its own jealous
divisions. The fanatical Berber regiments imported from Tunis, the
bloody blacks recruited in the Sudan, and the mutinous Turkish troops
long established in the country, were always at daggers drawn, and their
rivalry was the vezirs' opportunity. In such anarchy the country fell
from bad to worse.
The reign of Hakim, the frantic son of Aziz and his Christian wife, was
a personal despotism of the most eccentric kind, marked by apparently
unreasonable regulations, such as keeping the shops open by night
instead of by day, and confining all women to the house for seven years,
as well as by intermittent persecution of Christians and Jews; and also
by enlightened acts, such as the founding of the Hall of Science and the
building of mosques, for all the Fatimides were friends to the arts; and
ending in the proclamation of Hakim as the incarnation of the Divine
Reason, in which capacity he is still adored by the Druses of the
Lebanon. This assumption led to popular tumults and an orgy of carnage,
in the midst of which Hakim mysteriously disappeared (1021).
His successors, Zahir (1021-1036), and Mustansir (1036-1096) did nothing
to retrieve the anarchic situation, of which the soldiers were the
unruly masters. Palace cliques, disastrous famines (one of which lasted
seven years, 1066-1072, and even led to the public selling of human
joints as butcher's meat), slave, or rather freedmen's, revolts,
military tumults, and the occasional temporary ascendancy of a talented
vezir, sum up the history of Egypt during most of the eleventh century.
The wisdom and firmness of two great Armenian vezirs, Bedr-el-Gemali
(1073-1094) and his son Afdal (1094-1121), brought a large degree of
order, but the last years of the Fatimid caliphate were blotted by
savage murders both of caliphs and vezirs, and by the loss of their
Syrian dominions to Seljuks and Crusaders.
_IV.--The House of Saladin_
It was a question whether Egypt would fall to the Christian king of
Jerusalem or the Moslem king of Damascus; but, after several invasions
by both, Nur-ed-din settled the problem by sending his Syrian army to
Cairo in 1169, when the Crusaders withdrew without offering battle, and
the Fatimid caliphate came to an end in 1171.
On the Syrian general's death, two months after the conquest, his
nephew, Salah-ed-din ibn-Ayyub (Saladin), succeeded to the vezirate, and
after Nur-ed-din's death, in 1174, he made himself independent sultan,
not only of Egypt but of Syria and Mesopotamia. Saladin was a Kurd from
the Tigris districts; but his training and his following were purely
Turkish, moulded on the Seljuk model, and recruited largely from the
Seljuk lands. His fame was won outside Egypt, and only eight of the
twenty-four years of his reign were spent in Cairo; the rest was passed
in waging wars in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, culminating in the
catastrophic defeat of the Crusaders near Tiberias in 1187, and the
conquest of Jerusalem and all of the Holy Land.
The famous crusade of Richard I., though it resulted only in recovering
a strip of coast from Acre to Jaffa, and did not rescue Jerusalem, wore
out Saladin's strength, and in 1193 the chivalrous and magnanimous
"Soldan" died. In Egypt his chief work, after repressing revolts of
black troops and Shia conspiracies, and repelling successive naval
attacks on Damietta and Alexandria by the Eastern emperor and the kings
of Jerusalem and Sicily, was the building of the Citadel of Cairo after
the model of Norman fortresses in Syria, and the encouragement of Sunni
orthodoxy by the founding and endowment of medresas, or theological
colleges. The people, who had never been really converted to the Fatimid
creed, accepted the latest reformation with their habitual nonchalance.
This was really the greatest achievement of Saladin and his house. Cairo
succeeded to Baghdad and Cordova as the true metropolis of Islam, and
Egypt has remained true to the most narrow school of orthodoxy ever
since.
Saladin's kinsmen, known as the Ayyubid dynasty, ruled Egypt for over
half a century after the death of their great leader. First his politic
brother, Adil Seyf-ed-din ("Saphadin") carried on his fine tradition for
a quarter of a century, and then from 1218 to 1238 Seyf-ed-din's able
son Kamil, who had long been the ruler of Egypt during his father's
frequent absences, followed in his steps. The futile efforts of the
discredited Crusaders disturbed their peace. John of Brienne's seizure
of Damietta was a serious menace, and it took all Kamil's energy to
defeat the "Franks" at Mansura (1219) and drive them out of the country.
On the other hand, he cultivated very friendly relations with the
Emperor Frederic II., who concluded a singular defensive alliance with
him in 1229, to the indignation of the Pope. He was tolerant to
Christians, and listened to the preaching of St. Francis of Assisi; he
granted trading concessions to the Venetians and Pisans, who established
a consulate at Alexandria. At the same time he notably encouraged Moslem
learning, built colleges, and developed the resources of the kingdom in
every way. What had happened to the dynasties of Tulun, Ikhshid, and the
Fatimides, was repeated on the death of Kamil. Two sons kept the throne
successively till 1249, and then, in the midst of Louis IX's crusade,
the salvation of Egypt devolved on the famous Mamluks, or white slaves,
who had formed the _corps d'élite_ of Saladin's army.
_V.--The Mamluks_
Political women have played a great rôle in Egypt from Hatshepsut and
Cleopatra to the Christian wife of Aziz, the princess royal who
engineered the downfall of Hakim, and the black mother who dominated
Mustansir; and it was a woman who was the first queen of the Mamluks.
Sheger-ed-durr ("Tree of Pearls"), widow of Salih, the last reigning
Ayyubid of Egypt, was the brain of the army which broke the chivalry of
France.
At the second battle of Mansura in 1249, she took Louis prisoner. Then
she married a leading Mamluk emir, to conciliate Moslem prejudice
against a woman's rule, and thenceforth for more than two centuries and
a half one Mamluk after another seized the throne, held it as long as he
could, and sometimes transmitted it to his son. When it is noted that
forty-eight sultans (twenty-five Bahri Mamluks, or "white slaves of the
river," so called from the barracks on an island in the Nile, and
twenty-three Burgis, named after the burg, or citadel, where their
quarters originally were), succeeded one another from 1250 to 1517, it
will be seen that their average reign was but three and a half years.
The throne, in fact, belonged to the man with the longest sword.
The bravest and richest generals and court officials surrounded
themselves with bands of warrior slaves, and reached a power almost
equal to the reigning sultan, who was, in fact, only _primus inter
pares_, and on his death--usually by assassination--they fought for his
title. All were alike slaves by origin, but this term implied no
degradation. Any slave with courage and address had the chance of
becoming a freedman, rising to influence, and climbing into his master's
seat. Every man was every other man's equal--if he could prove it; but
the process of proving it often turned Cairo into a shambles.
The Mamluks were physically superb, a race of born soldiers, dashing
horsemen, skilled leaders, brilliant alike in battle and in all manly
sports. They were at the same time the most luxurious of men, heavy
drinkers, debauched sensualists, magnificent in their profusion, in
their splendid prodigality in works of art and luxury, and in the
munificence with which they filled their capital with noble monuments of
the most exquisite Saracenic architecture. Most of the beautiful mosques
of Cairo were built by these truculent soldiers, all foreigners, chiefly
Turks, a caste apart, with no thought for the native Egyptians whose
lands they received as fiefs from the sultan; with no mercy when
ambition called for secret assassination or wholesale massacre; yet
fastidious in dress, equipment, and manners, given to superb pageants,
laborious in business, and fond of music and poetry. Their orthodoxy is
attested not only by their innumerable religious foundations and
endowments, but by their importing into Cairo a line of Abbasid
caliphs--_fainéants_ indeed, but in a manner representative of the great
caliphs of Baghdad, extinguished by the Mongols in 1258--and in
maintaining them till the Ottoman sultan usurped their very nominal
authority as Commanders of the Faithful.
The greatest of all the Mamluks was Beybars (1260-1277). He it was who
had charged St. Louis's knights at Mansura in 1249, and afterwards
helped to rout the Mongol hordes at the critical battle of Goliath's
Spring in 1260; and he was the real founder of the Mamluk empire, and
organised and consolidated his wide dominions so skilfully and firmly
that all the follies and jealousies and crimes of his successors could
not destroy the fabric. He made his army perfect in discipline, built a
navy, made canals, roads, and bridges, annexed Nubia, organised a
regular postal service, built fortifications, mosques, colleges, halls
of justice, and managed everything, from the fourth cataract of the Nile
and the Holy Cities of Arabia to the Pyramus and the Euphrates, by his
immense capacity for work and amazing rapidity of movements.
Egypt prospered exceedingly under his just, firm, and capable rule; he
was severe to immorality and strictly prohibited wine, beer, and
hashish. He entered into diplomatic relations with European powers to
the great advantage of his country's trade; and his bravery,
munificence, and justice have made him a popular hero in Arabic romances
down to the present day.
None of his successors approached his high example Khalil indeed
recovered Acre and all that remained of the Crusader's possessions in
Palestine, and the Mamluks, who never lost their soldierly qualities
whoever happened to be their nominal ruler, handsomely defeated the
Mongols again in 1299 and 1303, and for ever saved Egypt from the
unspeakable curse of a Mongol conquest Nasir, whose reign covers most of
the first half of the fourteenth century, was a great builder, and so
were many of the nobles of his court. It was the golden age of Saracenic
architecture, and Cairo is still full of the monuments of Nasir's emirs.
He encouraged agriculture, stockbreeding, farming, falconry, as well as
literature and art, everything, in short, except vice, wine, and
Christians.
The Burgi, or Circassian Mamluks (1382-1517), were little more than
chief among the emirs. Widespread corruption, the open sale of high
offices and of "justice," and general debauchery characterised their
rule. Yet they built many of the loveliest mosques in Cairo, and the
conquest of Cyprus, long a nest of Mediterranean piracy, by Bars Bey in
1426 may be added to their credit. Kait Bey (1468-1496) was a great
builder, and in every way a wise, brave, and energetic, public-spirited
sovereign, and was an exception to the general baseness.
Egypt was rich in his day. The European trade had swelled enormously,
and the duties brought in a prodigious revenue. The Italian Republics
had their consulates or their marts in Alexandria, and Marseilles,
Narbonne, and Catalonia sent their representatives. The Indian trade was
also very considerable; we read of £36,000 paid at one time in customs
dues at Gidda, then an Egyptian port on the Red Sea. The Mamluk sultan
took toll on every bale of goods that passed between Europe and India in
the palmy days that preceded Vasco de Gama's discovery of the Cape route
in 1497. It was an immense monopoly, extortionately used, and it was not
resigned without a struggle. The Mamluk fleet engaged the Portuguese off
Chaul in the Bay of Bengal in 1508 and defeated them; but Almeida
avenged the honour of his country by a victory over the Mamluk admiral
Hoseyn off Diu in the following year, and the prolific transit trade of
Egypt was to a great extent lost.
This final effort was made by the last great sultan of the Circassian
dynasty, Kansuh Ghuri (1501-1516), who also exerted himself manfully in
defending his country from the impending disaster of Ottoman invasion.
But the Othmanli Turks, greatly heartened by the conquest of
Constantinople in 1453, had been steadily encroaching in Asia, and,
after defeating the shah of Persia, their advance upon Syria and Egypt
was only a matter of time. The victory was made easier by jealousies and
treachery among the Mamluks. Kansuh fell at the head of his gallant
troops in a battle near Aleppo in August 1516; a last desperate stand of
the Mamluks under the Mukattam Hill at Cairo in January 1517, was
overcome, and Sultan Selim made Egypt a province of the Turkish empire.
Such it remains, formally, to this day.
* * * * *
RAPHAEL HOLINSHED
Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland
Raphael Holinshed, who was born about 1520, is one of the most
celebrated of English chroniclers. The "Chronicles of England,
Scotland, and Ireland," known by his name, cover a long period
of English history, beginning with a "Description" of Britain
from the earliest times, and carried on until the reign of
Elizabeth, in the course of which, between 1580 and 1584,
Holinshed died. The work did good service to Shakespeare, who
drew from it much of the material for his historical plays.
The first edition, published in 1577, was succeeded in 1587 by
another, in which the "Chronicles" were continued by John
Hooker and others. An edition appeared in 1807, in the
foreword to which the "Chronicles" are described as containing
"the most curious and authentic account of the manners and
customs of our island in the reign of Henry VIII. and
Elizabeth "; and being the work of a contemporary observer
this is not too much to claim for it. Owing to the great scope
of this work, it is impossible to convey an impression of the
whole, which is best represented by means of selected examples
of the chronicler's method. Being the work of so many
different authors, the literary quality of the "Chronicles"
naturally varies; but the learning and research they show make
them an invaluable aid to the study of the manners and customs
of early England.
_I.--Master Holinshed to his Good Lord and Master, Sir William Brooke,
Knight_
Being earnestlie required, Right Honorable, of divers my freends, to set
down some breefe discourse of some of those things which I had observed
in the reading of manifold antiquities, I was at first verie loth to
yeeld to their desires. But, they pressing their irksome sute, I
condescended to it, and went in hand with the work, with hopes of good,
although no gaie success. In the process of this Booke, if your Honor
regard the substance of that which is here declared, I must needs
confess that it is none of mine owne; but if your lordship have
consideration of the barbarous composition shewed herein, that I may
boldlie claim and challenge for mine owne. Certes, I protest before God
and your Honor, that I never made any choise of stile, or words, neither
regarded to handle this Treatise in such precise order and method as
manie other would have done, thinking it sufficient, truelie and
plainelie to set forth such things as I minded to intreat of, rather
than with vain affectation of eloquence to paint out a rotten sepulchre,
a thing neither commendable in a writer, nor profitable to the reader.
But howsoever it be done, I have had an especial eye unto the truth of
things, and for the rest, I hope that this foule frizeled Treatise of
mine will prove a spur to others better learned to handle the self-same
argument, if in my life-time I doo not peruse it again.
_II.--Some Account of the Historie of Britaine_
As few or no nations can justlie boast themselves to have continued
sithence their countrie was first replenished, without anie mixture,
more or lesse, of forreine inhabitant mixture, more or lesse, of
forreine inhabitants; no more can this our Iland, whose manifold
commodities have oft allured sundrie princes and famous capteines of the
world to conquer and subdue the same unto their owne subjection. Manie
sorts of people therefore have come in hither and settled themselves
here in this Ile, and first of all other, a parcell of the lineage and
posteritie of Japhet, brought in by Samothes, in the 1910 after the
creation of Adam. Howbeit in process of time, and after they had
indifferentlie replenished and furnished this Iland with people, Albion,
the giant, repaired hither with a companie of his owne race proceeding
from Cham, and not onelie annexed the same to his owne dominion, but
brought all such as he found here of the line of Japhet, into miserable
servitude and most extreame thraldome. After him also, and within lesse
than six hundred and two yeares, came Brute, the son of Sylvius, with a
great train of the posteritie of the dispersed Trojans in 324 ships; who
rendering the like courtesie unto Chemminits as they had done before
unto the seed of Japhet, brought them also wholie under his rule and
governance, and dispossessing them he divided the countrie among such
princes and capteines as he had led out of Grecia with him.
Then after some further space of time the Roman Emperours subdued the
land to their dominion; and after the coming of the Romans, it is hard
to say with how manie sorts of people we were dailie pestered. For their
armies did commonlie consist of manie sorts of people, and were (as I
may call them) a confused mixture of all other countries and nations
then living in the world. Howbeit I thinke it best, because they did all
beare the title of Romans, to retaine onelie that name for them all,
albeit they were wofull guests to this our Iland: sith that with them
came all kinds of vice, all riot and excess of behaviour into our
countrie, which their legions brought with them from each corner of
their dominions.
Then did follow the Saxons, and the Danes, and at last the Normans, of
whom it is worthilie doubted whether they were more hard and cruell to
our countrymen than the Danes, or more heavie and intollerable to our
Iland than the Saxons or the Romans. For they were so cruellie bent to
our utter subversion and overthrow, that in the beginning it was lesse
reproach to be accounted a slave than an Englishman, or a drudge in anie
filthie businesse than a Britaine: insomuch that everie French page was
superiour to the greatest Peere; and the losse of an Englishman's life
but a pastime to such of them as contended in their braverie who should
give the greatest strokes or wounds unto their bodies when their toiling
and drudgerie could not please them or satisfie their greedie humours.
Yet such was our lot in those daies by the divine appointed order, that
we must needs obey such as the Lord did set pyer us, and this all
because we refused grace offered in time, and would not heare when God
by his preachers did call us so favourablie unto him.
By all this then we perceive, how from time to time this Hand hath not
onelie been a prey, but as it were a common receptacle for strangers,
the naturall homelings or Britons being still cut shorter and shorter,
till in the end they came not onelie to be driven into a corner of this
region, but in time also verie like utterlie to have been extinguished.
Thus we see how England hath been manie times subject to the reproach of
conquest. And whereas the Scots seeme to challenge manie famous
victories also over us, it shall suffice for answer, that they deale in
this as in the most part of their historie, which is to seeke great
honour by lying, and great renown by prating and craking. Indeed they
have done great mischief in this Hand, and with extreime crueltie; but
as for anie conquest the first is yet to heare of.
But beside those conquests aforementioned, Huntingdon, the old
historiographer, speaketh of another, likelie (as he saith) to come one
daie out of the North, which is a wind that bloweth no man to good, sith
nothing is to be had in those parts, but hunger and much cold.
_III.--Of King Richard, the First, and his Journie to the Holie Land_
Richard the First of that name, and second sonne of Henrie the Second,
began his reign over England the sixt day of Julie, in the yere of our
Lord 1189. He received the crowne with all due and accustomed
sollemnitie, at the hands of Baldwin, the archbishop of Canterburie, the
third daie of September.