_The Faubourgs_
BY the Arab conquest in 640 Egypt became a province of the caliphate,
and was ruled, like the other provinces, by governors appointed by the
caliphs. The first four successors of Mohammad retained Medina, the
Arabian city of his adoption, as their seat of government; but after the
murder of ‘Aly, the fourth caliph, the dynasty of the Omayyads
transferred the centre of power to Damascus. From Damascus therefore
came most of the thirty governors who held rule over the land of Egypt
during the ninety years of the Omayyad caliphate. Some of them were sons
or brothers of the reigning caliphs, and most were naturally court
favourites, inexperienced in the art of government, and ignorant of
everything save their religion and their language. The object of the
sovereign pontiff at Damascus was to get as much revenue as he could out
of the subject provinces, and Egypt especially was regarded in the light
of a valuable milch-cow. ‘Amr, the conqueror, was the first governor,
and from his new capital of Fustát he sent out his officers and
collected about £6,000,000 from a population estimated at from six to
eight millions. When the old warrior died at the age of ninety and was
buried in the Mukattam hills he is said to have left seventy sacks of
_dinárs_[11] or something like ten tons of gold, which his conscientious
sons declined to inherit.
However this may be, it is certain that the governors looked chiefly to
the revenue, and did little for the country but draw the not very
burdensome land and capitation taxes, and accumulate such pickings as
might be safely diverted to their own use. A governor whose average
tenure of office was three and a half years, and whose future livelihood
often depended wholly on his savings, was under serious temptation to
make the most of his brief opportunities. There were good _wális_ and
bad, but the shortness of their tenure and their absolute dependence
upon the caliph at Damascus restricted their powers and energies, and
they generally contented themselves with keeping order and rendering
tribute to their pontifical Cæsar. The position was not easy. There were
some thousands of Arab soldiers at Fustát and Alexandria and some other
towns, constantly increased, however, by the troops brought into the
country by successive governors; but all the rest of the population was
Christian and resolved to remain so. Indeed, any wholesale conversion
was much to be deprecated, since it implied the loss of the poll-tax of
a guinea a head which was levied only from non-Muslims. Still, it was
dangerous to be in so marked a minority, and we find that about ninety
years after the conquest, a governor, despairing of any considerable
accession of native Egyptians to the Muslim ranks, was driven to import
5000 Arabs into the Delta. It was only by very slow degrees and after
much intermarriage and many partial immigrations that Egypt became
Muslim, and for a long time the Arabs were practically confined to the
large towns.
Fustát itself must soon have attracted a numerous Coptic population from
the decaying Egyptian towns in the neighbourhood, not only in wives for
the conquerors, but in officials. All the details of government were
naturally in the hands of the subject people. The desert Arabs knew
nothing beyond the patriarchal rule of the clan, and they adopted
everywhere the system they found prevailing in a conquered territory.
Roman offices were translated into Arabic equivalents, and the Copts, a
race of born clerks and accountants, managed all the departments. For
half a century the government books and public documents were written in
Coptic. Usefulness does not necessarily compel toleration, and the
Christians did not always escape persecution in spite of their official
services. They were better treated, however, than is sometimes imagined.
Grateful for their assistance in the stress of the invasion ‘Amr granted
privileges to the Jacobites and recalled their exiled patriarch. Another
governor allowed the Copts to build a church at Fustát beside the bridge
that connected the capital with the island of Roda, and a third, ‘Abd-
el-‘Azíz, son of the caliph Marwán, bought the monastery at Tamweyh from
the monks for over £10,000 when he wanted a country house. He went there
in order to be cured of elephantiasis in the sulphur springs of Helwán,
between Cairo and Memphis, and it is curious to consider how nearly this
modern health-resort (now moved further towards the desert) became the
capital of Egypt. ‘Abd-el-‘Azíz was so charmed with the climate of
Helwán that he built mosques there (695), a palace, known as the “Golden
House” from its gilt dome, and a glass winter-garden, planted trees,
made a lake and aqueduct, and constructed a Nilometer. Hitherto the
lower Nile had been measured at Memphis, but in 716 a new Nilometer was
set up on the island of Roda, where a second was afterwards built at the
upper end of the island in 861. Subsequent governors, however, did not
share the ideas of ‘Abd-el-‘Azíz either in regard to the charms of
Helwán or in relation to the Copts, and we read of a vexatious system of
passports, badges for monks, fines and tortures, and destruction of
sacred pictures, which excited such indignation that the people rose in
rebellion in the east of the Delta, and the Christian king of Nubia
marched into Egypt to demand the release of an imprisoned patriarch.
These Muslim persecutions were not a whit more cruel than the
contemporary Christian persecutions of the Jews, but this does not make
them the more defensible. The monks seem to have especially excited the
fanaticism of the early Muslims, whose puritanism found no place for
monastic rules. In later times the Shí‘a caliphs of Cairo took very
kindly to the Coptic monks, but it was not so in the cruder and fiercer
age of the Arab conquests. Monasticism was a potent force in Egypt from
very early days. The followers of St Mark in the third century had
settled in scattered communities all over the Delta, and had already
begun to formulate what is known as “the Egyptian rule.” We do not yet
know how much we owe to these remote hermits. Some have held that Irish
Christianity, the great civilizing agent of the early Middle Ages among
the northern nations, was the child of the Egyptian Church. Seven
Egyptian monks are buried at Disert Ulidh, and there is much in the
ceremonies and architecture of early Ireland that reminds one of still
earlier Christian remains in Egypt. Everyone knows that the handicraft
of the Irish monks in the ninth and tenth centuries far excelled
anything that could be found elsewhere in Europe; and if the Byzantine-
looking decoration of their splendid gold and silver work and their
superb illuminations can be traced to the teaching of Egyptian
missionaries, we have more to thank the Copts for than has been
imagined. That Arab architecture owes to them much of its decorative
charm is among the commonplaces of the history of art.
Such considerations naturally could not influence a people so wholly
dead to artistic ideas as the Arabs. To them the Coptic monks were
merely candidates for clerkships and owners of secret hoards to be
squeezed for the benefit of the faithful. Any thought of fellowship or
amity was out of the question, and the fact that persecution was not
more general and consistent must be ascribed to the indolence or good
nature of individual governors, and to the prudent maxim that deprecates
the slaughter of the goose that lays golden eggs. Now and again we read
of cruel massacres and tortures, and destruction of churches, and next
we hear of permission granted for the building or restoration of a
church. We find the Copts quietly meeting in the fortress of Babylon,
which they always occupied, to elect a patriarch; and almost at the same
moment appear notices of humiliating sumptuary rules, a distinguishing
garb of some ridiculous colour, and wooden effigies of the devil hung
over Coptic doors. Every now and then some rising, or a mere street
quarrel, would be made the pretext for a wholesale massacre, when many
churches were razed to the ground.
In spite of persecution, in spite of the apostasy of the weaker
brethren, the Church still preserved a painful existence. There is
something truly heroic in the constancy of these ignorant people—for the
Coptic priesthood was never famous for learning—to the faith of their
forefathers. They still persevered in the celebration of the rites of
their religion, though the loop-holed walls, massive doors, and secret
passages of their surviving churches testify to the perils that attended
such solemnities. From time to time many of them waxed rich, as the
gorgeous adornments of these churches show; for their masters could not
do without their skill in reckoning and scriveners’ work. Aided by this
monopoly, and supported by a dogged adherence to their ancient faith,
the Copts present to this day the curious spectacle of a people who have
stood still for ages, and, through many centuries of varying
persecution, have preserved their individuality and their traditions.
They are still a people apart, less mixed with alien blood than any
other inhabitants of the Nile valley; their features recall those of the
ancient Egyptians, as we see them on the monuments, much more than do
the faces of the Muslim population. And not only in person but in
language the Copts are a remnant of ancient Egypt. Their tongue,
preserved in their liturgy and recited to-day in their churches, is the
lineal descendant of the language of the hieroglyphics and of the
Rosetta stone. For ordinary purposes of course they use the Arabic of
their neighbours, but the sacred speech of their religion is still
partly understood by the priests, and retains its place of honour before
the Arabic translation in the services of the church. By another curious
freak of conservatism they preserve this ancient language, not in the
script that belonged to it—the cursive development of the picture
writing of the monuments—but in the bold uncial character of early Greek
manuscripts. A people of the race of the Pharaohs, speaking the words of
Ramses, writing them with the letters of Cadmus, and embalming in the
sentences thus written a creed and liturgy which twelve centuries of
persecution have not been able to wrest from them or alter a jot, are
indeed a curiosity of history.
The Omáyyad caliphs were superseded by the ‘Abbásids in 750, and Fustát
was the scene of the final struggle. Marwán, the last caliph of the
fallen dynasty, fled to Egypt, and setting fire to Fustát and the bridge
that joined it to the island of Roda, escaped to the west bank. His
precautions were vain. The ‘Abbásid general and the men of Khurasán soon
found the means of crossing, and Marwán’s head was sent round the towns
in evidence of the change of power. Usurpers have an invincible
repugnance to dwelling in the houses of the usurped. The ‘Abbásid
caliphs left Damascus and built themselves a famous new capital at
Baghdád; and their governors in Egypt, abandoning the House of the
Emírate at Fustát, established a new official suburb, a Versailles of
the Egyptian Paris, on the place where the pursuing army had encamped,
and named it el-‘Askar or “the Cantonments.” The site was a little to
the north-east of Fustát, on a part of the Further Hamra, which had been
occupied by three tribes at the time of the Arab conquest, but had since
been abandoned and become desert. Here a faubourg grew up, which
extended from Fustát to the hill of Yeshkur, on which the mosque of Ibn-
Tulún now stands. A mosque was soon built, and a palace for the governor
as well as barracks for his troops. Streets and quarters and large
mansions clustered round the new fashionable centre, where the sixty-
five _wális_ who represented the ‘Abbásid caliphs for 118 years had
their seat of government. One of them, Hátim, in 810 built himself a
summer palace called the “Dome of the Air” (Kubbat-el-Hawa) on a spur of
the Mukattam, where the Citadel of Cairo is now built, and thither the
emírs of Egypt often resorted to enjoy the cool breeze. The new faubourg
was merely the quarter of the officials and court circles, and did not
diminish the importance of Fustát as the metropolis of Egypt.
Not a trace is left of this suburb, and the record of the governors who
lived there is almost equally fleeting.[12] They had a more difficult
task than their predecessors under the Omayyads, and had to suppress
insurrections of Mohammedan schismatics as well as risings among the
Arab tribes and the Copts. Fustát bore unpleasant witness to the revolts
in the thousands of rebels’ heads that were exhibited, and the courage
of hesitating heretics was damped by the sight of their leader’s skull
hung up in the mosque of ‘Amr. The history of the century from 750 to
860 is one long chronicle of “sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion,
false doctrine, heresy and schism,” but the disturbances hardly affected
the prosperous capital. The vagaries of some of the governors were much
more vexatious to the quiet citizens. Abu-Sálih ibn Memdúd, in 779, was
a middlesome martinet, who showed great energy in putting down
brigandage in the country, and was so satisfied with his measures that
he convinced himself of the impossibility of theft in the towns.
Confiding in this belief he ordered the people of Fustát to leave their
doors and shops open all night, with no more protection than a net to
keep the dogs out; he abolished the office of the watchman who used to
guard the bathers’ clothes at the public baths, and proclaimed that if
anything were lost he would replace it himself. It is said that when a
man went to the bath he would call out “O Abu-Sálih, take care of my
clothes!” and no one would dare to touch them. Such security argued
great vigilance on the governor’s part, but his absurd laws of dress and
general interference irritated the people, and his severity was worse
than the evils it put down.
A story is told of the famous caliph Harún-er-Rashíd, which would
scarcely invite respect for his nominees. One governor of his time, Musa
the ‘Abbásid, “was a man of great official experience, and well-disposed
towards the Copts, whom he allowed to rebuild their ruined churches.
When it was reported that he was harbouring designs against the caliph
[whom, as one of the family, he might possibly succeed], Harún
exclaimed, with his usual levity, ‘By Allah, I will depose him, and in
his place I will set the meanest creature of my court.’ Just then ‘Omar,
the secretary of the caliph’s mother, came riding on his mule. ‘Will you
be governor of Egypt?’ asked Ga‘far the Barmecide. ‘Oh, yes,’ said
‘Omar. No sooner said than done, ‘Omar rode his mule to Fustát, followed
by a single slave carrying his baggage. Entering the governor’s house
(at ‘Askar), he took his seat in the back row of the assembled court.
Musa, not knowing him, asked his business, whereat ‘Omar presented him
with the caliph’s dispatch. On reading it, Musa exclaimed in Koranic
phrase, ‘God curse Pharaoh, who said, Am I not King of Egypt?’ and
forthwith delivered up the government to ‘the meanest creature.’”
On the other hand a really capable ruler was sometimes sent from
Baghdad. Such was ‘Abdallah the son of Táhir, governor of Khurasán in
northern Persia (where he afterwards founded a dynasty), whose task in
Egypt was to drive out a troublesome multitude of refugees from Spain,
who had seized Alexandria, and, joined by a hot-headed Arab tribe, set
the government at defiance. ‘Abdallah, in the course of his mission, was
compelled to attack the preceding governor, who refused to be
superseded, and Fustát was blockaded (826). A curious incident of the
leaguer was the arrival one night in the invader’s camp of a thousand
slaves and a thousand slave girls, each of whom brought a thousand
dinárs in a purse. ‘Abdallah refused the bribe, and starved the garrison
out. Unfortunately, when his work was done he returned to Persia, and
Egypt lost a rare example of “a just and humane governor, a man of
learning, and a staunch friend to poets.” A reminiscence of his rule may
still be tasted at any Cairo hotel in the ‘Abdalláwi melons which he
first introduced. A greater than he visited ‘Askar when the caliph
Mamún, son of Harún-er-Rashíd, and himself a noted patron of learning
and philosophy, came in person in 832 to put down a determined revolt of
the Copts in the Delta, and did the work so thoroughly and so
relentlessly that there never again was a national movement amongst
them; and partly by their conversion to Islam, partly by the settlement
of Arabs on the land and in the villages, instead of only in the large
cities, Egypt began at last to become preponderantly a Mohammedan
country. It was the first time that an ‘Abbásid caliph had visited the
Nile, the praises of which poets had constantly been dinning in his
ears; and when el-Mamún surveyed the view from the “Dome of the Air,” he
was frankly disappointed. Using the same phrase from the Korán as the
superseded governor, he exclaimed, “God curse Pharaoh for saying Am I
not king of Egypt? If only he had seen Chaldæa and its meadows!” “Say
not so,” rejoined a divine, “for it is also written, ‘we have brought to
nought what Pharaoh and his folk reared and built so skilfully,’ and
what must have been those things which God destroyed, if these be but
their remnants!”[13]
The caliph’s visit, if it put an end to Coptic insurrection, brought
other troubles in its train. His interest in metaphysical and
theological speculation, which encouraged the study of Greek philosophy
at Baghdád, led him among other things to adopt the doctrine of the
createdness of the Korán, which was flat against all orthodox Muslim
theory. The hated doctrine was made a test question for the kádis or
theological judges, and the consequences to those who indulged
conscientious scruples were distressing. A non-conforming chief kády of
Fustát was shorn of his beard—the worst indignity he could suffer—and
whipped through the city on an ass. The orthodox professors of the
Hánafy and Sháfi‘y schools were driven out of the mosque of ‘Amr in
disgrace. The contumely was the less deserved inasmuch as in those days
the judges were the one healthy feature of the Egyptian government.
Upright and incorruptible, as a rule, and independent of the governor,
the chief kády, who may be called the lord chancellor and primate of
Egypt in one, was a firm if narrow interpreter and administrator of the
sacred law, and would resign his office sooner than submit to his
judgments being overruled. He was not, however, disposed to check his
people’s fanaticism, and the suppression of the Christian revolt was
followed by worse persecution than ever. An orthodox reaction began
after Mamún’s death, and a new caliph issued a number of petty
regulations for the humiliation of the Copts (850). They were ordered
“to wear honey-coloured clothes with distinguishing patches, use wooden
stirrups, and set up wooden images of the devil or an ape or dog over
their doors; the girdle, the symbol of femininity, was forbidden to
women, and ordered to be worn by men: crosses must not be shown, nor
processional lights carried in the streets,” and so forth. The object of
course was to furnish opportunities for fines and extortion.
There is no need to dwell further upon the period of Arab rule at Fustát
and ‘Askar. The Arab governors left little trace, and though it is to be
regretted that not a single specimen of their buildings has come down to
us, as links in the history of Saracenic art, it is not probable that
these edifices were remarkable. The Arabs have never done anything in
art by themselves. What is called “Arab art” in Spain was due to a
mixture of other and more gifted races, and in Egypt we find no
Mohammedan art until the caliphs began to appoint Turks as Governors.
One hears a great deal about the misgovernment of the Turk in the
present day; but be it good or bad, it is never denied that he can
govern. In the Middle Ages it would almost appear that the Turks were
the only people who possessed the art of governing. The greatest ruler
of Western Asia in the eleventh century—the Seljúk emperor, Melik
Shah—was a Turk. The so-called Moghuls of India, Babar and Akbar, were
Turks. When Europe was split up by jealous and ignoble rivalries, the
great Turkish sultans of Constantinople wielded power from the Danube to
the Indian Ocean, and from the Caucasus to the Atlas. Most curious it is
that wherever there was Turkish rule in the Middle Ages, art and letters
flourished. Indeed, in many parts art can hardly be said to have
reawakened till the Turk came to inspire it. It was not that he could do
anything notable himself in art or letters, for at least among the
Turkish rulers of Egypt—and with an interval of less than two hundred
years its rulers have been almost all Turks for the past eleven
centuries—it would be hard to point to many who were distinguished for
cultivation; it was rather that their strong hand preserved the order
that is essential to the work of culture, and their unscrupulous levies
produced the money, that was needed for the beautiful and grandiose
buildings in which they loved to see their power and wealth reflected.
Many of them probably had a genuine love of art, most of them were fond
of luxury and display, and delighted to surround themselves with the
costly products of exquisite workmanship; and a good many, no doubt,
believed that the endowment of sanctuaries might expiate the sins of a
life, remembering the words of the Prophet, “Whosoever builds for God a
place of worship, be it only as the nest of a grouse, God buildeth for
him a house in Paradise.” Whatever the cause, the fact remains that the
influence of the Turk is found in the artistic energy of every part of
the East from the Bosporus to the Ganges. It was to the Turks of Delhi
and Agra that we owe the Kutb Minár, the Taj, the intricate graces of
Fathpur Sikri; Turks built the Atala Mesjid at Jaunpur, the mosques of
Ahmadabad, of Gaur, of Bijapur; Seljúk Turks were the founders of the
noble buildings of Kóniya, Kaysaríya, Sivás, and other cities of Asia
Minor; Othmanly Turks built the shrines of Brusa and the imperial
mosques, second indeed, but only second, to St Sophia at Constantinople.
In Egypt we find the same thing: the first example of distinctively
Saracenic art appears only when the Turk assumed the sceptre. Up to 856
every governor of Egypt was an Arab, and, with the doubtful exception of
the mosque of ‘Amr, not a single monument attests their public spirit.
From 856 the governors were Turks, and twenty years later rose the
mosque of Ibn-Tulún, the first and most remarkable monument of Arab art
in the country.
It would take us far from Cairo to explain how the Turks came to be
rulers of Egypt. The movement was part of that overflow of the peoples
of Central Asia which has been going on from the beginning of history;
but it was assisted by the policy of the caliphs. Alarmed at the growing
power of provincial dynasts in Persia, and threatened by turbulent Arab
tribes in Mesopotamia, the ‘Abbásids imported a guard of mercenaries
recruited from the slave markets of the Oxus, and for a while rejoiced
in the protection of these stalwart young Turks. The old question, _Quis
custodiet?_ soon arose, and the luxurious and effeminate caliphs of
Baghdád realized too late that in purchasing these valiant slaves they
had virtually condemned themselves to slavery. The Turkish captain of
the bodyguard became the _maire du palais_ of the Baghdád _roi
fainéant_, the offices of State were seized by the Turks, and the
government of the western provinces was confided to their friends. At
first they contented themselves with the profits without the cares of
office, and a series of Turkish emírs, living at Baghdád or elsewhere in
Mesopotamia, held the fief and drew the surplus revenue of Egypt through
Arab deputy-governors. But in 856 the deputy as well as the fieffee was
a Turk, and in 868 the Turkish fieffee Bakbak sent his stepson, Ahmad
ibn Tulún, to govern Egypt as his representative.
Ahmad, the son of Tulún, was thirty-three years of age when he arrived
at Fustát, and combined in a remarkable degree the military and
administrative ability of his race with the culture of his adopted
civilization. He had studied under the learned professors of Baghdád,
and even journeyed to Tarsus for the benefit of special lectures. In
matters of Arabic philology and Koranic doctrine he was critically
expert. But beyond this he was a man of boundless energy, an unerring
judge of character, who knew how to choose and use his subordinates. His
justice, if stern, was incorruptible, and his generosity was superb.
“Give to every one who holds out the hand” was his motto, and every
month he devoted a thousand dinárs to charity. He came to Egypt
penniless, save for a loan from a friend; but when he died he left ten
million dinárs in the treasury, an immense establishment of slaves and
horses, and a hundred ships of war. Yet he accomplished his economies
without increasing the taxes. Indeed he abolished various imposts, and
his revenues were due chiefly to the pains he took to encourage
cultivation and to give the fellahín better security in their land. For
the first time since the Arab conquest Egypt became a powerful and
sovereign State. Ahmad soon threw over all save a nominal dependence on
the caliphate, and after overcoming intrigues and subduing three
rebellions in Egypt, he marched into Syria, and occupied the whole
country as far as Tarsus and the Euphrates, fought the armies both of
the caliphate and of the Romans of the Cilician frontier, and united
under his sole authority the broad stretch of territory from Barka in
Libya to the borders of the Byzantine empire in Asia Minor, and from the
Euphrates to the first cataract of the Nile.
[Illustration: TOWER OF THE MOSQUE OF IBN-TULUN]
Side by side with this imperial policy Ahmad expended infinite labour
and wealth upon the embellishment of his capital. “The government house
at el-‘Askar, the official suburb of Fustát, was too small to house his
numerous retinue and army. He was not content, either, with a mere
governor’s palace. In 870 he chose a site on the hill of Yeshkur [at the
north-east extremity of ‘Askar, next to the House of the Emirate],
levelled the graves of the Christian cemetery there, and founded the
royal suburb of el-Katái‘, or ‘the Wards,’ so called because each class
or nationality (as household servants, Greeks, Sudánis) had a distinct
quarter assigned to it. The new town stretched from the present Rumeyla
beside the Citadel to the shrine of Zeyn-el-‘Abidin, and covered a
square mile. The new palace was built below the old ‘Dome of the Air,’
and had a great garden and a spacious enclosed horse-course or Meydán
adjoining it, with mews and a menagerie; the government house was on the
south of the great mosque, which still stands, and there was a private
passage which led from the residence to the oratory of the emír. A
separate palace held the harím, and there were magnificent baths,
markets, and all apparatus of luxury.”[14]
The generals and officers built their houses round about, and great
mansions soon covered the new site. The bazars were even better than at
Fustát, well built and filled with choice wares. The Meydán, where Ahmad
and his captains played mall or polo, became the favourite resort of the
town, and if one asked anybody where he was going the answer was sure to
be “To the Meydán.” It was entered by a number of gates, restricted to
special classes, such as the Gate of the Nobles, the Gate of the Harím,
or named after some peculiarity, as the Gate of Lions, which was
surmounted by two lions in plaster, the Sag Gate, made of teak, the Gate
of ed-Darmún, so called because a huge black chamberlain of that name
mounted guard there. Only Ahmad himself could ride through the central
arch of the great triple gate: his 30,000 troops passed through the side
arches. On review days he stationed himself on a daïs and watched the
crowd come in by the Polo Gate (Bab es-Sawáliga) and pass out by the
Gate of Lions, above which he had a balcony, whence on the night of the
great festival he could survey the whole faubourg and see what the
people were about. The view from this belvedere reached to the gate of
Fustát and to the Nile, and it was a favourite resort of the emír.
The palace was supplied with water from a spring in the southern desert
by means of an aqueduct, the traces of which may still be seen—not that
of many arches running from the Citadel to the Nile, which belongs to a
much later date. The people, in Eastern fashion, naturally found fault
with the quality of the pure water to which their own muddy wells and
turgid Nile had not accustomed them. Rumours of this reached Ibn-Tulún,
and he sent for the learned doctor Mohammad Ibn ‘Abd-el-Hakam to resolve
these suspicions. “I was one night in my house,” he related, “when a
slave of Ibn-Tulún’s came and said, ‘The emir wants thee.’ I mounted my
horse in a panic of terror, and the slave led me off the high road.
‘Where are you taking me?’ I asked. ‘To the desert,’ was the reply; ‘the
emir is there.’ Convinced that my last hour was come, I said, ‘God help
me! I am an aged and feeble man: do you know what he wants with me?’ The
slave took pity on my fears and said, ‘Beware of speaking
disrespectfully of the aqueduct.’ We went on till suddenly I saw torch-
bearers in the desert, and Ibn-Tulún on horseback at the door of the
aqueduct, with great wax candles burning before him. I forthwith
dismounted and salaamed, but he did not greet me in return. Then I said,
‘O emir, thy messenger hath grievously fatigued me, and I thirst; let
me, I beg, take a drink.’ The pages offered me water, but I said, ‘No, I
will draw for myself.’ I drew water while he looked on, and drank till I
thought I should have burst. At last I said, ‘O emir, God quench thy
thirst at the rivers of Paradise! for I have drunk my fill, and know not
which to praise most, the excellence of this cool, sweet, clear water,
or the delicious smell of the aqueduct.’ ‘Let him retire,’ said Ibn-
Tulún, and the slave whispered, ‘Thou hast hit the mark.’”
The monument which has immortalized Ibn-Tulún, however, is his mosque,
the only building of all his sumptuous little city that has survived the
buffets of civil war and the slow detrition of neglect. It is the most
interesting monument of Mohammedan Egypt, and forms a landmark in the
history of architecture. Two features specially distinguish it: it was
built entirely of new materials, instead of the spoils of old churches
and temples, and it is the earliest instance of the use of the pointed
arch throughout a building, earlier by at least two centuries than any
in England. They are true pointed arches, with a very slight return at
the spring, but not enough to suggest the horse-shoe form. The
Topographer relates how Ahmad lighted upon a treasure in the Mukattam
hills, at a place called “Pharaoh’s Oven,” and resolved to build with it
a mosque large enough to hold the vast congregations that then
overcrowded the mosque of el-‘Askar. He chose for the site the flat-
topped rocky hill of Yeshkur, a sure place for prayers to be answered,
since it was believed to be the spot where Moses held converse with
Jehovah. Here the foundations were laid in 876 (263 A.H.), and two years
later the work was finished and public prayers were held in the presence
of the emír. Ibn-Tulún was at first in a difficulty how to procure the
three hundred columns needed to support the arcades, but his architect,
who was a Christian and doubtless a Copt,[15] and was at the time in
prison for some offence, wrote to him that he would undertake to build
him a mosque of the size he required without columns. He was brought
before the emír who said, “Woe to thee! what is this that thou sayest
respecting the building of the mosque?” “I will draw the plan for the
prince,” answered the Christian, “that he may see it with his eyes, with
no columns save the two beside the _kibla_.” They brought him skins and
he drew the plan. Such a design was evidently quite new in mosque
building, but Ahmad saw its merits at once, arrayed the designer in a
robe of honour, and gave him 100,000 dinárs to carry out his plan. When
it was done he gave him 10,000 more, and the total cost is stated to
have amounted to 120,000 dinárs or about £63,000. The use of brick
arches and piers, instead of marble columns, was due partly to the
emír’s reluctance to deprive the Christian churches of so many pillars,
but even more to his anxiety to make his mosque safe from fire. He was
told that if he built it of “mortar and cinders and red brick well
burnt” it would resist fire better than if constructed of marble, and
the fact remains that the mosque has withstood the conflagrations that
devastated the rest of the faubourg. The adoption of the new plan of
brick piers, instead of columns, led to the employment of the pointed
arch, and the exclusion of marble suggested the plaster or stucco
decoration which still preserves its original admirable designs.
Five rows of arches form the cloister at the Mekka or south-east side,
and two rows on the other sides; arches and piers are alike coated with
gypsum, and the ornaments on the arches and round the stone grilles or
windows are all worked by hand in the plaster. The difference between
the soft flexuousness of this work, done with a tool in the moist
plaster, and the hard mechanical effect of the designs impressed with a
mould in the Alhambra is striking: it is the difference between the
artist and the artisan. On the simple rounded capitals of the engaged
columns built at the corner of each arch there is a rudimentary bud and
flower pattern, and on either side of the windows between the arches
facing the court, which also are pointed and have small engaged columns,
is a rosette, and a band of rosettes runs round the court beneath the
crenellated parapet. The inner arches are differently treated. “Round
the arches and windows runs a knop and flower pattern, which also runs
across from spring to spring of arch beneath the windows, and a band of
the same ornament runs all along above the arches, in place of the
rosettes, which only occur in the face fronting the court; over this
band and likewise running along the whole length of all the inner
arcades is a Kufic inscription carved in wood, and above this is the
usual crenellated parapet. The arcades are roofed over with sycamore
planks resting on heavy beams. In the rearmost arcade the back wall is
pierced with pointed windows, which are filled, not with coloured glass,
but with grilles of stone forming geometrical designs with central
rosettes or stars.”[16]
The general form of the mosque is similar to that of ‘Amr as restored,
the form of every mosque in Cairo from the ninth to the thirteenth
century. The great square court, covering three acres of ground, gave
room for the largest assembly, whilst the covered arcades offered
shelter from the sun to the ordinary congregation and to the groups of
students, ascetics, and beggars who have always made their home in
mosques. The south-east arcade or _liwán_, with its deeper aisles, was
the special sanctuary,[17] where the _mihráb_ or niche in the wall
showed the direction (_kibla_) of Mekka, towards which the prayers of
the faithful must turn, and the pulpit (_minbar_) and platform (_dikka_)
gave the preacher and the precentors vantage to make their voices heard
throughout the crowd of worshippers. So far there is nothing original
about the mosque. The form may have been adopted by the Arabs from
ancient Semitic temples, or the great court may represent the atrium of
the Byzantine basilica and the liwán the basilica itself, only supported
on pillars instead of vaulted roofs, with a relic of the apse in the
concave _mihráb_; but it was too obviously suited to the requirements of
the climate to need any curious derivation.
[Illustration: WITHIN THE MOSQUE OF IBN-TULUN]
The dome and minaret, so characteristic of later Cairo mosques, are here
wanting. The odd-looking corkscrew tower with external winding
staircase, like the Assyrian ziggurat, has a fellow in the tower of
Samarra on the Tigris, from which it was doubtless copied, but the upper
part has probably been restored; though the tower of Ibn-Tulún was
certainly in existence in 1047, when it is mentioned by Násir-i-Khusrau.
But it is hardly a minaret in the common sense of the term.[18] There is
no dome, because the dome has nothing to do with prayer, and therefore
nothing with a mosque.[19] “It is simply the roof of a tomb, and only
exists where there is a tomb to be covered, or at least where it was
intended that a tomb should be. Only when there is a chapel attached to
a mosque, containing the tomb of the founder or his family, is there a
dome, and it is no more closely connected with the mosque itself than is
the grave it covers: neither is necessary to a place of prayer. It
happens, however, that a large number of the mosques of Cairo are
mausoleums, containing a chamber with the tomb of the founder, and the
profusion of domes to be seen, when one looks down upon the city from
the battlements of the Citadel, has brought about the not unnatural
mistake of thinking that every mosque must have a dome. Most mosques
with tombs have domes, but no mosque that was not intended to contain a
tomb ever had one in the true sense. The origin of the dome may be
traced to the cupolas which surmount the graves of Babylonia, many of
which must have been familiar to the Arabs [and still more to the
Turks], who preserved the essentially sepulchral character of the form
and never used it, as did the Copts and Byzantines, to say nothing of
Western architects, to roof a church or its apse.”
[Illustration: DETAIL OF ORNAMENT IN MOSQUE OF IBN-TULUN]
But if there is little originality in the shape of the mosque, its
pointed arches and its decoration are worth studying. Pointed arches
occur also in the second Nilometer on the island of Roda, as rebuilt in
861, some fifteen years earlier than the mosque of Ibn-Tulún, and the
architect of this building is stated to have been a native of Ferghána
on the Iaxartes. There is nothing to prove that this arch was derived
from the Coptic style. On the other hand the bold and free plaster
decoration, designed by the Coptic architect, was undoubtedly borrowed
from the ornament of his countrymen. The Arabs have never been artists
or even skilled craftsmen. They imported Persians and Greeks to build
for them and decorate their houses and mosques, but above all they
employed the Copts, who have been the deft workmen of Egypt through
thousands of years of her history. A comparison of the plaster work of
Ibn-Tulún with the Coptic carvings preserved in the Cairo Museum of
Antiquities and those from the tombs of ‘Ayn-es-Síra in the Arab Museum
shows clearly the source of the floral decoration, which belongs to the
Byzantine school of Syria and Egypt. The Kufic inscriptions carved in
the solid wood are a purely Arab addition, and one that afterwards
developed into a leading decorative feature in Saracenic art.[20] The
geometrical ornament of the open grilles is also Byzantine, as M.
Bourgouin has established in his exhaustive treatise on the _entrelacs_,
but it is not certain that they belong to the original building, and the
star polygons suggest that the grilles may have been part of the later
restoration.[21]
Home interests did not interfere with Ibn-Tulún’s imperial ambitions. He
played a conspicuous part in Mesopotamian politics, and almost succeeded
in getting the caliph into his hands. The oppressed head of Islam would
have gladly escaped from his tyrannous brother el-Muwaffak, but the
scheme failed, and Egypt lost the opportunity of becoming the seat of
the caliphate. The result was that the ambitious emir was publicly
cursed in every mosque of Mesopotamia. He also failed to capture the
sacred city of Mekka, but his reign ended in some glorious campaigns
against the Roman emperor, in which the Egyptian forces defeated the
enemy near Tarsus, killed (it is said) 60,000 Christians, and captured
immense spoils of gold and silver crucifixes, jewels, and sacred
vessels. The success turned the general’s head, and Ahmad himself had to
march north to bring his viceroy to obedience. “It was a severe winter,
and his opponent dammed the river, flooded the country, and nearly
drowned the besieging army at Adhana. Ibn-Tulún was forced to retire to
Antioch, where a copious indulgence in buffalo milk, following upon the
exposure and privations of the campaign, brought on a dysentery. He was
carried in a litter to Fustát, where he grew worse. In sickness the
fierce emir was a terror to his doctors. He refused to follow their
orders, flouted their prescribed diet, and when he found himself still
sinking, he had their heads chopped off, or flogged them till they died.
In vain Muslims, Jews, and Christians offered up public prayers for his
recovery. Korán and Tora and Gospel could not save him; and he died in
May, 884, before he had reached the age of fifty.”
His sumptuous capital received many notable additions from his successor
Khumáraweyh, who fully shared his father’s passion for splendid building
as well as his imperial policy. He enlarged the palace, and turned the
Meydán into a garden, which he planted with rare trees and exquisite
roses. The stems of the trees were thought unsightly, and he coated them
with sheets of copper gilt, between which and the trunk leaden pipes
supplied water not only to the trees but to the canals and fountains
that irrigated the garden by means of water wheels. There were beds of
basil carefully cut to formal patterns, red, blue, and yellow water-
lilies and gilliflowers, exotic plants from all countries, apricots
grafted upon almond trees, and various horticultural experiments. A
pigeon-tower in the midst was stocked with turtle-doves, wood-pigeons,
and all sorts of birds of rich plumage or sweet song, who made a
cheerful concert as they perched on the ladders set against the walls or
skimmed over the pools and rivulets. In the palace he adorned the walls
of his “Golden House” with gold and ultra-marine, and there set up his
statue and those of his wives in heroic size, admirably carved in wood,
and painted and dressed to the life with gold crowns and jewelled ears
and turbans. In front of the palace he laid out a lake of quicksilver,
by the advice of his physician, who recommended it as a cure for his
lord’s insomnia. It was fifty cubits each way, and cost immense sums.
Here the prince lay on an air-bed, linked by silk cords to silver
columns on the margin, and as he rocked and courted sleep his blue-eyed
lion Zureyk faithfully guarded his master. Long after the palace had
disappeared people use to come and dig for the costly mercury that had
formed the emir’s cradle.
There was also a pavilion as large as the “Dome of the Air,” with a new
device in curtains, and splendid carpets, and a view over gardens, town,
and Nile. In another kiosk, built by his father, men chanted the Korán,
proclaimed the hours of prayer, and recited verses sacred and profane,
pious and amorous, _tristes et gais, tour à tour_, whilst the prince sat
at table with his ladies, surrounded by musicians. As the solemn call to
prayer echoed through the merry din, he would lay aside his cup and bow
his head to the earth in prostration, for he was an orthodox though very
irregular Muslim. The Topographer[22] expatiates for pages on the
wonders of Khumáraweyh’s menagerie of lions and lionesses, leopards,
elephants and giraffes; his vast stables, for which whole districts were
set apart to grow the necessary fodder; the lavish luxury of his
kitchen, which cost £12,000 a month; and the splendour of his household
troops, recruited from the predatory Arabs of the Delta. So brave, so
terrible, and so gallant a figure was this superb prince that his
subjects dared not speak, much less sneeze, as he passed by. It is
melancholy to think that of all this glory nothing remained after a few
years but the traces of the quicksilver.
“Neither the lion nor his bodyguard of vigorous young Arabs could save
the voluptuous prince from the jealousies of his harím. Early in 896
some domestic intrigue ended in his being murdered at Damascus. His
murderers were crucified, and amid loud lamentations his body was buried
beside his father’s, not far from his stately palace, under Mount
Mukattam. Seven Korán readers were engaged in reciting the sacred book
at the tomb of Ibn-Tulún, and when the bearers brought the body of
Khumáraweyh and began to lower it into the tomb, they happened to be
chanting the verse, ‘Seize him and hurl him into the fire of Hell.’”
His dynasty did not long survive him. Two young sons were ill able to
withstand the efforts of the caliph to recover the rich provinces of
Syria and Egypt which Ahmad and his son had held in sovereign power for
thirty years. In 905 the ‘Abbásid general, Mohammad ibn Suleymán,
entered Katái‘, massacred the black troops of the Tulúnids, and
demolished the beautiful faubourg. ‘Askar became once more the seat of
government, as it had been under earlier ‘Abbásid emirs, but Katái‘,
what was left of it after the invading army had plundered it for four
months, gradually decayed; its hundred thousand houses (if we are to
believe the historians) fell by degrees, and the prodigious famine and
anarchy of the time of Mustansir in the eleventh century finished the
ruin. We shall hear of this terrible reign of chaos in a later chapter;
but though it is anticipating the course of the story the final
destruction of the two faubourgs must be noted here. These quarters had
become so ruinous by 1070 that a wall was built all the way from the new
palace of Káhira to Fustát—or in other words from the Gate of Zuweyla to
near the mosque of ‘Amr—in order that the caliph, when he rode out,
might not be distressed by the sight of the dead cities. The ruins of
Katái‘ and ‘Askar became as it were a quarry from which people got the
materials for building elsewhere; the whole space between the new Cairo
and Fustát reverted to a state of desert, except for a few gardens and
country houses, and though, after 1125, the people began to build houses
outside the gate of Zuweyla, the rest of the site of the faubourgs
remained unoccupied, save about the mosque of Ibn-Tulún, down to the day
when Makrízy wrote in 1424.
It was no wonder that the place beside the hill of Yeshkur, known as the
“Castle of the Ram,”[23] where “Pharaoh’s Seat” once stood, and Abraham
slew his sacrifice, became the haunt of the Ginn. In the eighteenth
century an ancient sarcophagus, belonging to a lady of the XXVIth
Dynasty, still occupied the site of the Mastaba Fara‘ún, and anything
brought there, were it but a handful of dates, immediately turned into
gold. But now the alchemy is exhausted, the sarcophagus is in the
British Museum, where no such miracle has been known to happen, and even
the Ginn have deserted the spot.