_Saladin’s Castle_
CAIRO at the beginning of the thirteenth century was a very different
city from the Fátimid royal compound. It covered a much larger space,
included a number of new buildings of a character unknown in Egypt
before, and it possessed a citadel. All these changes were due to
Saladin, though he did not live to see them completed. To trace in
detail the causes which led to the invasion of Egypt by the Crusading
king of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Franks by the armies of Nur-
ed-din, sultan of Damascus, would carry us far away from our proper
subject. The principal element in the political situation was the
partition of the Fátimid province of Syria between two new and
aggressive powers, the Crusaders and the Seljúk Turks. The gradual
infiltration of Turkish officers into the Baghdád caliphate had ended in
a great invasion of this race, led by the Seljúks, who not only subdued
the whole of Persia and Mesopotamia in the middle of the eleventh
century and made the ‘Abbásid caliph their tool, but overran the Fátimid
dominions in Syria, which had always been loosely held, took possession
of Damascus in 1076, and were only prevented from invading Egypt by the
bribes and warlike preparations of the Armenian vezír Bedr el-Gemály.
The Seljúk empire broke up at the close of the century; but its Syrian
fragment, under the brilliant leadership of the Atabeg Zengy and his son
Nur-ed-din, was little less formidable to the Fátimid authority than the
undiminished empire of the Seljúks. Meanwhile a fresh complication was
introduced into Syrian politics by the beginning of the Crusades, the
recovery of Jerusalem by the Christians in 1099, and the establishment
there of the Latin Kingdom. Step by step the Fátimid garrisons were
driven south. The Armenian Afdal, Bedr’s son, after attempting
negotiations, fought a series of campaigns in Palestine, but the advance
of the Crusaders was not to be stayed. Tripolis fell in 1109, Tyre
followed in 1124, and after a long interval Ascalon, the last Fátimid
outpost, surrendered in 1153. The Crusaders now touched the Egyptian
frontier, and their fortresses at Karak and Montréal, by the Dead Sea,
intercepted communications with Syria.
[Illustration: CAIRO BEFORE 1200]
Of the two powers, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Turkish
Sultanate of Damascus, neither was strong enough to crush the other.
Egypt was the key of the situation. If either power could obtain
possession of the Nile, it would take its rival on the flank and win the
mastery. The natural combination would of course be between the two
Muslim states of Damascus and Cairo; but religious sectarianism barred
the way. Nur-ed-din was a zealous Muslim of the orthodox school, and
would have no traffic with Shí‘a heretics. The vezírs Ibn-es-Salár and
Talái‘ did indeed open a diplomatic correspondence with the king of
Damascus, but received little encouragement. It was not till his hand
was forced by the actual presence of a Crusading army at Cairo that Nur-
ed-din at last sent his troops to Egypt. The interference was due to the
quarrels of rival vezírs who were struggling over the remains of the
Fátimid power. One of these, Sháwar, expelled by Dirghám, appealed to
Nur-ed-din, and Dirghám sought the alliance of Amalric, the king of
Jerusalem, who had already invaded Egypt to claim the yearly
subsidy—_annua tributi pensio_ as William of Tyre describes it—which the
decrepit Fátimid government had recently paid as blackmail to its
Christian neighbour. Sháwar returned in 1164 supported by a Syrian army
commanded by Shirkúh, with his nephew Saladin on his staff. Dirghám,
defeated at Bilbeys, made another stand at Cairo, where he held the
Fátimid city whilst Sháwar and the Syrians occupied Misr. Popular as
Dirghám had been—he was a brave Arab, who had fought the Crusaders at
Gaza and commanded the Barkíya battalion of the Fátimid army—he ruined
his cause by laying hands on the _wakf_ (pious benefactions) to meet his
military necessities. His followers fell away, and the caliph withheld
his countenance. The final scene was tragical:—
“Driven to bay, for the last time he sounded the ‘assembly.’ In vain
‘the drums beat and the trumpets blared, _ma-sha-llah!_ on the
battlements’; no man answered. In vain the desperate emir, surrounded by
his bodyguard of 500 horse, all that remained to him of a powerful army,
stood suppliant before the caliph’s palace for a whole day, even until
the sunset call to prayer, and implored him by the memory of his
forefathers to stand forth at the window and bless his cause. No answer
came; the guard itself gradually dispersed, till only thirty troopers
were left. Suddenly a warning cry reached him: ‘Look to thyself and save
thy life!’—and lo! Sháwar’s trumpets and drums were heard, entering from
the Gate of the Bridge. Then at last the deserted leader rode out
through the Zuweyla Gate: the fickle folk hacked off his head, and bore
it in triumph through the streets; his body they left to be worried by
the curs. Such was the tragic end of a brave and gallant gentleman,
poet, and paladin.”
As soon as Dirghám was disposed of, the treacherous Sháwar turned upon
his deliverers, and called in the aid of Amalric to drive away the
Syrians. After a prolonged conflict, an armistice was eventually
arranged, and both armies, Christian and Syrian, retired from Egypt
without immediate result. But the invasion was the beginning of a
permanent occupation. On their return to Damascus the Syrian troops
described the weakness of the Fátimid rule and urged upon Nur-ed-din the
importance of the conquest of Egypt. The cautious sultan was slow to
move, but when the news came that Amalric was again intriguing with
Sháwar, the Syrian army set out a second time for the Nile and crossed
it just as the Crusaders came up (1167). Amalric, however, succeeded in
getting possession of Cairo, and made the treaty with the caliph which
was the occasion of the memorable audience of the two knights described
above (p. 131). Shirkúh, on the other hand, overran Upper Egypt, and
Saladin held Alexandria for seventy-five days. Then another truce was
arranged, and the two armies went back respectively to Syria and
Palestine. The Franks, however, left a Resident at Cairo and manned the
guards of the gates, quartering a garrison in the mosque of el-Hákim;
and the representations of these spectators of the weakness and
distraction of the government of Egypt brought Amalric back in the
following year with the definite intention of annexing the land. This
breach of faith, followed by a barbarous massacre at Bilbeys, so alarmed
the Egyptians that they sent urgent entreaties to Nur-ed-din—the caliph
even plied him with the touching argument of tresses of his wives’
hair—and for the third time, at the beginning of 1169, Shirkúh and
Saladin arrived in Egypt. This time they stayed for good. Amalric
retired without even giving battle; Sháwar, after plotting the murder of
his rescuers, was arrested and executed; Shirkúh was appointed vezír,
and on his death two months later Saladin was invested with the robe of
office in March 1169.
As vezír of the Shí‘a caliph and at the same time viceroy of the
orthodox king of Damascus, Saladin’s position was clearly untenable, and
though he carried on the business of state for two years in this
anomalous situation it was obvious that the Fátimid caliphate must come
to an end. The last of the Fátimids was dying, and the opportunity was
taken to make the necessary change. At the Friday prayers on the 10th of
September 1171, the ‘Abbásid caliph of Baghdád was duly proclaimed in
the mosques of Cairo. A similar ceremony is described by an Arab
traveller from Spain twelve years later.
“In one of these Friday Mosques,” says Ibn-Gubeyr, “the Sermon was
preached to-day. The Preacher herein followed the Sunny rite, beginning
his sermon with an invocation conjointly for the Companions, the
Followers and their fellows, also for the Mothers of the Faithful, who
are the Wives of the Prophet, and for his two noble uncles Hamza and
el-‘Abbás;—further, he preached so fine a sermon and so moving a
discourse that hard hearts were humbled and dry eyes shed tears. He
delivered his sermon robed in black, as is the ‘Abbásid rule; for he
wore a black cloak over which hung a _taylasan_ or veil of fine black
linen, such as in Spain would be called an _ihrám_; his turban also was
black, and he was girt with a sword. As he ascended the pulpit, he
struck a blow on the step with the ferule of his scabbard, when he first
began to go up, such as the congregation might hear, and as though it
were a call to silence, and in the midst of his ascent he struck another
blow, and when he reached the top, a third; after which he pronounced
the blessing, turning first to the right and then to the left, standing
there between two black banners that had white marks on them, which were
fixed in the upper part of the pulpit. On this occasion, further, he
invoked a blessing first on the ‘Abbásid caliph, who is en-Násir-li-
dini-llah, the son of el-Mustady, and next he prayed for the restorer of
his power, Yúsuf, son of Ayyúb, who is the Sultan Saladin, and then for
his brother and heir apparent, Abu-Bekr, who is named Seyf-ed-din
(Saphadin).”[59]
The congregation who first heard this bidding-prayer in 1171 showed
little surprise, and there was scarcely a murmur. The Shí‘a propaganda
had probably been attended with little success in Cairo, and the bulk of
the people retained their leanings to the orthodox creed, in spite of
two centuries of dominant heresy. At least, the revolution was
accomplished without a shock. The last of the Fátimid caliphs passed
away without hearing of his deposition. His relations were kept in
luxurious captivity, and his slaves and household dispersed. The palaces
were too magnificent for Saladin’s modest wants, and he quartered the
officers of his army there, and himself occupied the House of the
Vezírs. The great library of 120,000 books, which had been studiously
collected since the dispersal of the earlier library a century before,
was given to the learned chancellor, Kády el-Fádil. The treasure was
distributed or sold. The palaces and every memory of the Fátimids
gradually disappeared, save their mosques, and orthodoxy once more
reigned supreme in Egypt.
The career of the great champion of Islám was made chiefly outside
Egypt. Of Saladin’s reign of twenty-four years—for reign it was from the
beginning, though nominally subject to the king of Damascus for the
first five years—he spent but eight at Cairo, and his greatest triumphs,
as well as his few reverses, took place in Syria, Mesopotamia, and
Palestine. When he left Cairo on the 11th of May, 1182, and the great
officers of the court came to his stirrup to bid him farewell, as the
cavalcade halted by the Lake of the Abyssinians, a voice was heard above
the music and the singing: “Enjoy,” it cried in the classical lines of
an Arab poet,
“Enjoy the perfume of the ox-eyes of Nejd;
After to-night there will be no more ox-eyes.”
The evil omen came true: there were no more ox-eyes in Egypt for him,
and Cairo saw him never again. He conquered the land of the Euphrates;
held kingly state at Damascus, which he had annexed after the death of
Nur-ed-din; won his great victory at Hittín over the Crusaders;
recovered Jerusalem, sacred to him as well as to Christians, and brought
all the Holy Land to his feet; and fought the long duel with the
chivalry of Europe which wavered about ‘Akka for two years, and ended in
the running fight with Richard of England that has made Saladin a
household name even in Europe. After the last dash upon Jaffa and its
repulse, the treaty of peace was signed, and in the following March,
1193, Saladin died and was buried at Damascus.
“The Holy War was over; the five years’ contest ended. Before the great
victory at Hittin in July, 1187, not an inch of Palestine west of the
Jordan was in the Muslims’ hands. After the Peace of Ramla in September,
1192, the whole land was theirs, except a narrow strip of coast from
Tyre to Jaffa. At the Pope’s appeal all Christendom had risen in arms.
The Emperor, the Kings of England, France and Sicily, Leopold of
Austria, the Duke of Burgundy, the Count of Flanders, hundreds of famous
barons and knights of all nations, had joined with the King and Princes
of Palestine and the indomitable brothers of the Temple and Hospital, in
the effort to deliver the Holy City and restore the vanished Kingdom of
Jerusalem. The Emperor was dead, the Kings had gone back; many of their
noblest followers lay buried in the Holy Land: but Jerusalem was still
the city of Saladin, and its titular king reigned over a slender realm
at Acre. All the strength of Christendom concentrated in the Third
Crusade had not shaken Saladin’s power. When the trials and sufferings
of the five years’ war were over, he still reigned unchallenged from the
mountains of Kurdistan to the Libyan desert, and far beyond these
borders the King of Georgia, the Catholicos of Armenia, the Sultan of
Koniya, the Emperor of Constantinople, were eager to call him friend and
ally.”[60]
Brief as was Saladin’s residence at Cairo, none of its rulers has left
more lasting traces of his influence. It is to him that the capital owed
the form and extent it has borne ever since, until comparatively recent
times. Its most conspicuous feature, the Citadel, was Saladin’s
creation, and its most pervasive architectural form, the Medresa, was
his introduction. All these changes were due to his initiative, and
when, after eight years, he went away, and thenceforth continually
called upon Egypt to send its contingents to his yearly campaigns, he
left behind him officers and kinsmen who carried out the great works he
had begun. These works were partly defensive, and partly religious. The
defensive works were the Citadel, the new wall, and the great dike, and
all three are original features. Hitherto the various rulers of Egypt
had contented themselves with building official or royal suburbs, each
half a mile or so further to the north-east. Even the Fátimid “city” of
Káhira, as we have seen, was an official and palatial residence of the
caliphs, not a metropolis of Egypt. Saladin was the first to elaborate a
comprehensive plan of a great capital. Instead of following the example
of earlier sovereigns and building a new suburb, he resolved to unite
the existing inhabited districts within one great wall, and to crown the
whole by a citadel. The burned city of Misr was then struggling to rise
from its ashes, like the phœnix, and renew its youth: Saladin resolved
to help it. The scattered settlements upon the site of the ruined
faubourgs were also to be gathered in, and the port of Maks was to be
joined to its city by a wall, as Peiraeus was to Athens. The enclosing
wall was to be of stone, and to prolong the defences of Bedr the
Armenian to Maks on the west and to the hill of Mukattam on the south,
and thence to run round the remains of the old Town of the Tent till it
touched the Nile.
The great scheme was never completed: its author was busy on his Syrian
campaigns, and probably his representatives at Cairo had enough to do to
raise men and money for his support without carrying out more building
than was absolutely necessary. It is also possible that further
reflection convinced him or his deputies that the plan of enclosing so
decayed a town as Misr was hardly worth the cost of a couple of miles of
wall. What was actually accomplished was this: the wall of Bedr on the
north was prolonged from its terminus at the canal to the Nile, where
the fortified tower of Maks was erected; on the east the old wall was
prolonged southwards to the Bab-el-Wezír, near the wall of the new
Citadel;—the Sultan’s death stopped the work before a junction had been
made, and the south and west walls were not even begun. A large part of
Saladin’s walls still stands: though often lost among houses, they can
be traced between the canal and the Iron Gate (Báb-el-Hadíd, formerly
called the Bab-el-Bahr, or Nile Gate, beside the fort of Maks, which has
disappeared), where the contrast between the last square bastion of the
Fátimid wall and the neighbouring rounded bastion of Saladin’s curtain,
with its bosses, watch-towers, and loopholes, is clearly marked. The
same characteristics are seen on the east wall which separates the city
from the Káit-Bey cemetery, until a modern style appears at the Bab-el-
Wezír.[61] A portion of the wall at the N.E. angle, with the Burg ez-
Zafar, lies outside in the desert, showing that here only has the modern
city shrunk within its twelfth century limits.
The walls were but a development of the earlier enceinte of Bedr. The
Citadel was a new idea. It may have been partly inspired by Saladin’s
dislike to the palaces so intimately associated with the schismatic
caliphs, for though he did not live to dwell in the Citadel, except for
a brief visit, there can be no doubt that he intended to make it his
residence, as his successors did. But the obvious explanation of the
fortress is to be found in his Syrian experience. There every important
city had its _Kal‘a_ or castle, and nothing could be more natural than
that Saladin, looking with a soldier’s eye at the jutting spur of
Mukattam, should at once have recognized it as the proper place for a
citadel. It is true that whilst commanding Cairo from its height of 250
feet, the fortress is itself commanded by higher positions on Mukattam;
but this would hardly injure its efficiency in days of stone-slings and
short-ranged mangonels. It was a strong enough position for twelfth
century engineers, and no pains were spared to make it impregnable from
beneath, in case of an insurrection in the city. The work was begun in
1176-7 under the direction of the eunuch Karakúsh, one of Saladin’s most
faithful emírs, who in spite of great services and warlike deeds has by
a strange freak of fortune come to be associated with the ribald antics
of Karakúsh, the Oriental Punch. It was not till six years later that
the founder’s inscription was set up which still surmounts the “Gate of
Steps” (Bab-el-Mudarrag) in the original (west) part of the Citadel,
where we read how “the building of this splendid Castle,—hard by Cairo
the Guarded, on the terrace which joins use to beauty, and space to
strength, for those who seek the shelter of his power,—was ordered by
our master the King Strong-to-aid, _Saláh-ed-dunya wa-d-din_ (Saladin),
Conquest-laden, Yúsuf, son of Ayyúb, Restorer of the Empire of the
Caliph; with the direction of his brother and heir the Just King
(el-‘Adil) Seyf-ed-din Abu-Bekr Mohammad, friend of the Commander of the
Faithful; and under the management of the Emír of his Kingdom and
Support of his Empire Karakúsh son of ‘Abdallah, the slave of el-Melik
en-Násir, in the year 579” (1183-4).
The smaller pyramids of Giza were used as quarries for the stone, and
the masonry was executed in part by Frank or European prisoners taken in
Saladin’s wars. The Spanish traveller Ibn-Gubeyr, who visited Cairo in
1183, saw the building in progress. “Both the workmen,” he says, “whose
forced labour is employed for building the Citadel and their overseers
are Christian prisoners of war of the Franks; their number is so great
as cannot be reckoned, and but for them there would be no means of
carrying out these works, for only they can support the toil and heavy
labour of sawing the marble, dressing the great blocks of stone, and of
quarrying the fosse which encompasses the wall of the Citadel, which
fosse is cut like a ditch in the solid rock with crowbars, a wonder of
wonders for ever. Elsewhere there is another building of the Sultan
which is being carried out by the Frank prisoners who work here; but
even those of the Muslims, who give their service in these and similar
public works, must do it at their own cost, for there is no pay given to
any who work here.” Corvée labour was no new thing in Egypt, however
strange it may have appeared to a visitor from Spain.
[Illustration: CASTLE OF THE RAM: KAL‘AT-EL-KEBSH]
The Citadel was not finished till 1207-8, when Saladin’s nephew el-Kámil
was king. As the chief residence and stronghold of every successive
ruler down to 1850, it has been frequently altered and enlarged by
several of the Mamlúk Sultans, and finally by Mohammad ‘Aly Pasha, and
none of the mosques or vestiges of palaces on it belongs to Saladin’s
age. The old mosque was built by en-Násir in 1318; the more conspicuous
mosque with slender Turkish minarets was begun by Mohammad ‘Aly in 1824.
The “Hall of Yúsuf,” believed to be Saladin’s, was part of a Mamlúk
palace. The interior towers are not original, and the gateway opening on
the Rumeyla was built in the middle of the 18th century. Still there is
much remaining of the original structures, besides the famous “Well of
the Winding Stairs,” 280 feet deep, which was excavated by Karakúsh.
Saladin’s walls are still preserved in a large part of the enceinte,
though it needs some architectural knowledge to distinguish them from
later additions and restorations, and some of the internal passages and
constructions date from the foundation. The prevalent use of round,
slightly truncated, and well-projected bastions, commanding a long
stretch of the curtain, the absence of interior chambers or low
loopholes in the curtain, and the _arc brisé_ or square openings,
besides certain technical peculiarities in the masonry, reveal the
original work, and associate it with the Franco-Syrian rather than the
Byzantine school.
The last work of defence was the great dike of Giza on the west bank of
the Nile. Ibn-Gubeyr describes it as a gigantic undertaking. “The
Sultan,” he says, “to his glory and as a lasting work that shall serve
the need of the Muslims, has begun to build a great dike of arches to
the westward of Misr, and at a distance from it of seven miles. This
forms a continuation of the embankment which, beginning opposite Misr,
runs along the side of the Nile like a hill that has been flattened on
the ground: after traversing which you come at the end of six miles to
the dike continuing it. This dike consists of forty arches, each of the
largest size of bridge-arches, and runs in the direction of the delta
which extends thence to Alexandria. It is a wonderful work, and such as
only a king of great foresight would emprise, as a precaution against
sudden attack by an enemy from the Alexandrian frontier at the time of
the inundation, when, the land being under water, the usual road becomes
impassable for troops. The dike thus forms a causeway available at all
seasons of need.”[62] The object of this defence is evident. Saladin had
not forgotten the history of the successive Fátimid invasions from the
Libyan side, when there was nothing to stop them from marching straight
to the Nile, and he determined to be forearmed. Ibn-Gubeyr mentions that
there were fears of an attack from the Almohades, who after subduing all
Morocco and southern Spain, had conquered Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli in
1158, till the frontier of their victorious leader ‘Abd-el-Mumin
actually touched the western border of Egypt. Saladin did well to take
precautions, though the threatened invasion never came.
These defensive works against external enemies were accompanied by other
measures taken with a view to internal order and content. It must not be
supposed that the new régime had no difficulties to contend with.
However well disposed the mass of the people may have been towards a
ruler who showed himself so magnanimous, generous, and yet indomitable
as Saladin, the traditions of two centuries were not to be uprooted in a
day. The partisans of the Fátimid family were numerous and active.
Before the death of el-‘Ádid, there was a formidable rising of the black
troops, abetted by the caliph himself, and Saladin had hard work to put
it down. The Sudánis were at last driven to bay and slaughtered for two
days till they cried quarter, when they were banished the city. The part
called el-Mansuríya, outside the Zuweyla Gate, that had been covered
with their barracks, was utterly burned down, and the site turned into
gardens; so that a few years later, when Saladin rode from the palace to
the new Citadel, he passed between trees and flowers, and standing at
the mosque of Ibn-Tulún he could see the Gate of Zuweyla with no
building intervening. Other conspiracies followed, supported by the
Franks who threatened Alexandria, and stern measures were needed before
the new sultan felt his power secure. So long as there was a strong
party sympathizing with the captive survivors of the fallen dynasty
there would always be danger.
How zealous the Shí‘a still were may be judged by the scene described by
the Spanish traveller in the famous shrine which preserved the head of
the martyr Hoseyn, in the mosque adjoining the Great Palace of the
Fátimids. “The Head is preserved in a chest of silver buried
underground, over which a mighty building has been erected such as any
description thereof must fail to portray, for the understanding cannot
compass it. Its walls are tapestried with brocades of various kinds, and
it is set round with what are like great columns, the same being white
candles, though some are of smaller size, the most being set in
candlesticks of pure silver or of silver gilt. Above are suspended
silver lamps, and the whole of the part above this is set with the like
of golden apples, and so arranged as to resemble [the chapel at Medina
where the Prophet is buried called] er-Roda; and by the beauty and
magnificence thereof it rivets the sight, for herein are all kinds of
rare variegated marbles wonderfully wrought in mosaic work such as no
imagination can depict, nor can he who would describe it attain thereto
with any description. The entrance to this chapel is through a mosque
that is the equal of it in regard to the pleasure of the eye and the
rare sight that it affords, for all its walls are of marble after the
fashion above described. To the right of the chapel (where the Head is),
and to the left of it, are two chambers, through which you enter the
same, and each of these is in every particular similar to this last, and
curtains in brocade stuff of wondrous workmanship are here hung on all
sides. But the most curious of the many things that we saw was on
entering this most blessed mosque; for a stone is set in the wall facing
him who enters, which is so extremely black and lustrous that the whole
person is reflected therein, as though it were in an Indian steel mirror
newly polished. And we saw the people kissing this blessed tomb (where
the Head of Hoseyn is buried), embracing it with their arms and
prostrating themselves upon it, after which they would lay their hands
on the pall that covers it and then, crowding one on another, circle
round, praying, weeping, and supplicating Allah—to whom be praise—for
the blessing that pertains to this holy grave, humbling themselves
before Him in such fashion as melts the heart and overcomes the feelings
of the spectator; for this is a wonderful matter and a sight that is
awful in its aspect. May Allah cause us to benefit by the blessing
vouchsafed to this holy Oratory!”[63]
Such a demonstration, recalling the hysterical emotions of the Persian
Passion Play, shows that twelve years after the deposition and death of
the last Fátimid caliph Shí‘a fanaticism was still ardent in Cairo.
Saladin’s mode of dealing with it was characteristic of his
statesmanship. Despite his gentle and chivalrous nature he was quite
capable of fierce persecution “for righteousness’ sake.” A Muslim of the
Muslims, rigidly orthodox, and deeply imbued with the puritanical ideas
of the theologians with whom he loved to converse, he had no toleration
for heretics and infidels. The grievous confiscation and destruction
which the Copts and their churches suffered in the orthodox reformation
showed that Saladin’s magnanimity did not extend to matters of faith.
But in the case of the Shí‘a he had to deal with a more powerful and
dangerous movement, which had two centuries of dominance behind it, and
he met it not by overt persecution but by a counter propaganda. The
people of Cairo must be taught the true religion, and then there would
be little fear of heresy. At the time of his accession there was not a
single college in Egypt where orthodox theology was taught. This want
was at once supplied, and Saladin began the foundation of those
_Medresas_ or theological colleges which have ever since been the
leading architectural feature of Cairo.
In 1176 he established the first _Medresa_ ever built in Egypt. It was
next to the shrine of the Imám Sháfi‘y, the founder of the school of
orthodoxy to which most Egyptian Muslims have since belonged. The tomb-
mosque may still be visited in the wilderness of graves to the south of
Cairo, but the college has long disappeared. In 1183 the shrine is
described as “a magnificent oratory of vast size, and strongly built,
standing opposite to a Medresa,” so large and so surrounded by buildings
as to resemble “a township with its dependencies. Over against it is the
_hammám_ with all other needful offices, and the building and additions
are still going on at a cost not to be counted. The Sheykh Negm-ed-din
el-Khabushány himself oversees it, being imám of the mosque, a pious
learned man. The sultan of the land, Saladin, has munificently supplied
all that is required therefor, commanding that the buildings shall be
well cared for and beautified, and all expenses set down to him. . . .
We met this Khabushány and gained the blessing of his prayers—his fame
had reached us even in Andalusia. We visited him in his mosque and also
at his private dwelling within the precincts, a small house with a
narrow court, and here he offered up prayer for us when we left. In all
Egypt we did not meet his equal.”[64]
Besides the Sháfi‘y College, Saladin built a medresa close to the
stronghold of the enemy, the shrine of Hoseyn, turned the old palace of
Mamún into the Seyf-ed-din college for the Hanafy divines, and built
another for the Sháfi‘is and a fifth for the Málikis in Misr. In
recording his benefactions one must not forget his hospitals. Everyone
knows the Maristan or hospital of the Mamlúk Sultan Kalaún in the Suk-
en-Nahhasín, but it is not generally known that this noble institution
was anticipated by Saladin. To quote Ibn-Gubeyr again:—
“Among the famous institutions of this Sultan which we saw was the
Maristán or Hospital, which stands in the city of Cairo. It is one of
the great palaces there, spacious and magnificent, and the Sultan has
been prompted to the meritorious deed of establishing this hospital
solely by the hope of gaining favour with God and recompense in the
world to come. He has appointed here an administrator, a man of
knowledge, in whose charge a provision of drugs has been placed, with
power to compound potions with these according to diverse recipes, and
to prescribe them. In the chambers of this palace couches have been
placed, which the sick folk make use of as beds, these being fully
provided with bed clothes, and the administrator has under him servants
who are charged with the duty of inquiring into the condition of the
sick folk morning and evening, and these last receive food and medicines
according as their state requires. Opposite this hospital is another,
separate therefrom, for women who are sick, and they also have persons
who attend on them: while adjacent to these two hospitals is another
building with a spacious court, in which are chambers with iron
gratings, which serve for the confinement of those who are mad, and
these also are visited daily by persons who examine their condition and
supply them with what is needful to ameliorate the same. The Sultan
himself inspects the state of these various institutions, investigating
everything and asking questions, verifying the statements with care and
trouble even to the uttermost; and in Misr also there is another
hospital, exactly after the pattern of the one just described.
“Between Misr and Cairo stands the great mosque called after its
founder, Ahmad ibn Tulún, which is one of those from ancient times used
for the Friday prayers. It is admirably built and very spacious, being
at the present day set apart by the Sultan as a dwelling-place for
strangers from the Western lands, where they may abide and hold their
assemblies, the Sultan having provided monthly rations for their
support. And one of the most remarkable matters related to us is this
which we heard from a person cognizant of the facts, namely, that the
Sultan allows the strangers entirely to govern themselves, and lays no
hand on any one of them, for they elect from among themselves their
governor, and to his rule they conform, submitting to his judgment in
all cases of disputes that arise in their affairs. They are people who
seek to live in piety and peacefulness, being solely occupied in the
worship of the Lord, and thus, through the favour of the Sultan, they
may gain grace enabling them to hold the better part in the way of
righteousness. Indeed there is no one either of the great mosques, or of
the lesser mosques, or any one among the diverse chapels that are built
over the tombs of saints, neither any of the various colleges or
schools, but is the object of the grace of the Sultan, and aid in money
from the public treasury is freely given to all who frequent these
places, or have their abode there by reason of necessity, in relief of
their needs.”
The institution of the Medresa by Saladin marks a conspicuous change in
the architecture of Cairo. Hitherto the mosques had been of one form
only, that of the _Gámi‘_ (commonly pronounced _gama_, and meaning a
place of assembly) or congregational mosque, where alone the Friday
prayers (_gum‘a_) and sermon take place. The form was specially adapted
to the meeting of large congregations. There was the ample east end or
sanctuary, where a considerable number of worshippers could kneel under
cover; and in case of a great crowd, as on certain festivals, there was
the great open court where a multitude could prostrate themselves
towards the _kibla_. The arcades round the court served for professors
to hold classes, and as shelter for fakírs and mendicants; but these are
no essential parts of the gámi‘, which, as its name implies, is a place
of congregational worship. There were only four such buildings when Ibn-
Gubeyr visited Cairo, and these were the gámi‘s el-Azhar, el-Hákim, Ibn-
Tulún, and ‘Amr. The few others that existed, such as el-Akmar and es-
Sálih Talái‘, and perhaps two or three less important and probably
ruined, though built in the gámi‘ form and used at one time for
congregational worship, fell into disuse when the death of their
founders or some other cause removed them from the list of fashionable
churches. New gámi‘s were always being built from time to time, as we
shall see in the next chapter, and they always formed, and form, the
leading mosques of Cairo; but they were not by any means the only kind
of mosque.
The word mosque itself comes, through the old Italian _meschita_ (Span.
_mesquita_) and later _moschea_, from the Arabic _Mesgid_, which means a
place of worship, but does not imply a congregation. Comparatively few
mosques were known as mesgids, and such as bore the name were small
buildings used chiefly for private prayer.[65] Another term, more
commonly employed, is _Záwiya_, which means properly an ingle or nook,
but in its application to mosques differs hardly at all from mesgid,
unless the not unusual assignation of a záwiya as a hospice for poor
students or devotees constitute a difference. Both the mesgid and the
záwiya were comparatively insignificant edifices, and it may be doubted
whether any ordinary visitor to Cairo has noticed a single example of
either, except as a decorative feature in a by-street.
The buildings which everyone knows and which everyone calls “mosques”
are really colleges, _medresas_. They include most of the famous
architectural gems of the city—such as Sultan Hasan, Barkuk, Ibn-Muzhir,
Násir, Kalaún, and so forth, and they differ altogether from the gámi‘
both in form and object. They were not intended or used for
congregational worship, but were expressly built for the purpose of
theological training; and this purpose radically influences their form.
Instead of the great open court where vast congregations could muster on
Fridays, there is only a small central square, and in most cases this
was originally covered by a flat roof of painted planks and joists, with
perhaps a small cupola or skylight in the centre. The sides, instead of
being surrounded by long arcades or cloisters, are formed of four
transepts each spanned by a single lofty arch. The transept towards the
east, forming the liwán for prayer, is deeper than the other three, and
is furnished with mihráb, pulpit, tribune, and other accessories for
worship; since worship takes place there, or may do so, though not as a
rule the regular Friday congregations of the gámi‘. Each of the four
transepts was originally assigned—or ready to be assigned—to one of the
four orthodox schools, Sháfi‘y, Máliky, Hánafy, and Hánbaly, and in each
there might be found a group of students following the instruction of
the professor of the particular school. These professors and students
often had lodgings in the college, and there were also a variety of
lecture rooms, libraries, laboratories, and other adjuncts built in the
spaces that intervened between the cruciform interior and the
rectangular exterior. The subjoined sketch representing the later
medresa of Sultan Hasan (1359) will give a general idea of the
arrangement.
[Illustration: PLAN OF MEDRESA]
This then was Saladin’s method of counteracting heretical tendencies by
building and endowing a number of orthodox colleges—state-supported
theological seminaries or divinity schools. The idea was not his own: he
brought it with him from Syria, where his former sovereign Nur-ed-din
had been zealous in founding similar colleges for Hanafis at Damascus
and other cities; and Nur-ed-din himself only followed the example of
the pattern of the age in Asia, the great Seljúk Sultan Melik Shah,
whose vezír, the scarcely less famous Nizám-el-Mulk, the friend of ‘Omar
Khayyám, had established the splendid Nizamíya college at Baghdád. The
introduction of colleges into Egypt, however natural and inevitable in
the pupil of such masters, was little less than a revolution in culture
as well as in architecture. The old stigma of heresy removed, and these
new colleges founded, the wave of intellectual commerce once more flowed
to Cairo from all parts of the Muslim world. The chief control in Egypt
during Saladin’s long absence was vested in his brother or son, subject
to the counsels of his chancellor, the Kády el-Fádil, an Arab of
Ascalon, a learned scholar and a wise man, whose very ornate dispatches
concealed a vast amount of sound sense. Under his influence foreign
students began again to frequent the mosques of Cairo, and Egypt
rejoined the comity of Islám. Professors from remote cities of Persia or
even from beyond the Oxus met the learned men of Cordova and Seville. In
1176, for example, there arrived “a stranger from Xativa in distant
Andalusia, drawn eastward by the fame of the revival of learning: it was
Ibn-Firro, who had composed a massy poem of 1173 verses upon the _variae
lectiones_ in the Korán, simply ‘for the greater glory of God.’ This
marvel of erudition modestly confessed that his memory was burdened with
enough sciences to break down a camel. Nevertheless, when it came to
lecturing to his crowded audiences, he never uttered a superfluous word.
It was no wonder that the Kády el-Fádil, chief judge and governor of
Egypt under Saladin, lodged him in his own house and buried him in his
private mausoleum. The presence of such philosophers tempered with cool
wisdom the impetuous fire of the predatory chiefs. Many of the great
soldiers of that age delighted in the society of men of culture. Nur-ed-
din was devoted to the society of the learned, and poets and men of
letters gathered round his court; whilst Saladin took a peculiar
pleasure in the conversation of grave theologians and solemn
jurists.”[66] “I found him,” wrote ‘Abd-el-Latíf, the Baghdád physician,
“a great prince, whose appearance inspired at once respect and love, who
was approachable, deeply intellectual, gracious, and noble in his
thoughts. . . . I found him surrounded by a large concourse of learned
men who were discussing various sciences. He listened with pleasure and
took part in their conversation.” It was not the least of Saladin’s
titles to fame that he brought the collegiate mosque to Cairo. The
training of the medresa may have been narrow and bigoted, but it was the
system of the whole Muslim world, and its adoption put Cairo in touch
with the thought of the other leading centres of Islám.