_The Dome Builders_
1. THE MAMLUKS OF THE RIVER
SALADIN had raised Cairo once more to the rank of an imperial capital.
By his fortifications he had strengthened it against attack, and by his
theological foundations he had united it to the great comity of Muslim
culture. He had no doubt added seriously to the responsibilities of
future rulers of Egypt, who found themselves engaged in controversy,
diplomacy, or war with the minor rulers of Syrian cities, members of
Saladin’s kindred, as well as with the Franks of the coast of Palestine,
who had not yet abandoned the dream of “_Gerusalemme liberata_,” and
were now fully aware that the road to the Holy City, circuitous as it
might seem, lay through Egypt. It is no part of the story of Cairo to
relate the campaigns waged by Saladin’s brilliant brother, el-‘Ádil
Seyf-ed-din—“the noble Saphadin” of the _Talisman_, the friend of King
Richard, who actually gave the accolade of Christian knighthood to one
of Saphadin’s sons, as Humphrey of Toron had given it before to Saladin
himself. Succeeding, after a brief interval, to his brother’s empire in
1200, el-‘Ádil soon showed that the loss of the hero was not
irreparable. He had loyally served Saladin as his right hand for a
quarter of a century, and for another quarter of a century he held
together the empire which his nephews and cousins were doing their best
to shatter into fragments. He prudently kept on terms with the Franks by
the cession of a couple of ports in Palestine, and such hostilities as
took place in spite of his concessions did not lower his prestige. He is
described by one who knew him as a man of immense experience and
information and much foresight, physically robust and high-spirited, and
capable of eating a whole lamb at a meal. A contemporary Arabic poet
dwells on his extraordinary alertness and personal control of every part
of his wide dominions—
A Monarch, whose majestic air
Fills all the range of sight, whose care
Fills all the regions everywhere;
Who such a ward doth keep
That, save where he doth set his lance
In rest to check the foe’s advance,
His eye with bright and piercing glance
Knows neither rest nor sleep.
Even his vigilance, however, could not avert that periodical calamity of
mediæval Egypt an insufficient inundation of the Nile, and its usual
concomitants plague, pestilence, and famine. This happened in 1201 and
was repeated in 1202, and the results were exceptionally disastrous. We
have the appalling narrative of an eye-witness of undoubted veracity and
professional experience for this time of horror:—
“The Baghdád physician, ‘Abd-el-Latíf, who lived at Cairo for ten years
(1194-1204), attending the professors’ lectures at the Azhar mosque,
records the terrible experiences of the famine. The distress was so
desperate that the inhabitants emigrated in crowds, whole quarters and
villages were deserted, and those who remained abandoned themselves to
atrocious practices. People habitually ate human flesh, even parents
killed and cooked their own children, and a wife was found eating her
dead husband raw. Men waylaid women in the streets to seize their
infants. The very graves were ransacked for food. This went on from end
to end of Egypt. The roads were deathtraps, assassination and robbery
reigned unchecked, and women were outraged by the multitude of
reprobates whom anarchy and despair had set loose. Free girls were sold
at five shillings apiece, and many women came and implored to be bought
as slaves to escape starvation. An ox sold for 70 dinárs and corn was
over ten shillings the bushel. The corpses lay unburied in the streets
and houses, and a virulent pestilence spread over the delta. In the
country and on the caravan routes flocks of vultures, hyenas, and
jackals mapped the march of death. Men dropped down at the plough,
stricken with the plague. In one day at Alexandria an imám said the
funeral prayers over 700 persons, and in a single month a property
passed to forty heirs in rapid succession. The depreciation of property
was disastrous. Owing to the decrease of population, house-rent in Cairo
fell to one-seventh of its former price, and the carvings and furniture
of palaces were broken up to feed the oven-fires. Violent earthquakes,
which were also felt throughout Syria and as far north as Armenia, shook
down countless houses, devastated whole cities, and increased the
general misery.”
The invasion of John de Brienne, who captured Damietta, kept Egypt in a
tremor of anxiety for three years (1218-21); but el-‘Adil, who died at
the beginning of the trouble, left a singularly able successor in his
son el-Kámil; the Crusaders departed in ignominy; and when some years
later the emperor Frederick II. himself “took the cross” and came to
Palestine, the prudent sultan not only let the emperor crown himself in
Jerusalem without striking a blow, but actually concluded (1229) a
general defensive alliance with Frederick against even the Franks of
Syria. The Holy City was surrendered to the Christians with the road to
it, but the Muslims retained the sacred enclosure of the Mosque of
‘Omar, which was all they cared for. The treaty was the most singular
ever concluded between a Christian and a Muslim power; but it must be
remembered that the Pope had called Frederick “a follower of Mohammad,”
and the emperor’s correspondence with the Arab philosopher Ibn-Sab‘in
and the metaphysical debates he held with Kámil’s ambassadors point to
“emancipated views” that in the case of less eminent people commonly
conducted them to the stake. Frederick was much admired by Muslim
writers, and for his part Kámil had shown himself broad-minded. He had
entertained the emperor’s envoy, bishop Bernard, at Cairo, released the
poor prisoners taken in the “Children’s Crusade,” and loyally stood by
his treaty. It is not surprising that good Muslims regarded him in much
the same light as the bishop of Rome held the emperor. They were wrong,
however, for Kámil was a thorough Muslim, and had only treated with the
“infidel” in the cause of peace. His college, the Dar-el-Hadíth or
Kamilíya, some relics of which still stand in Beyn-el-Kasreyn, bears
evidence to his zeal for orthodox Islám, whilst his father’s
intellectual powers shone in the son when he took part in the meetings
of the learned at his palace on Thursday evenings. To him Cairo owed the
completion of the Citadel, where he took up his residence, and Egypt was
improved in cultivation by his assiduous superintendence and enlargement
of the canals and dikes.
The new régime of the Ayyúbids or successors of Saladin had introduced
something besides an imperial sway and a revival of orthodox learning:
it had brought with it a feudal system that dominated Egypt, for better
or for worse, for six hundred years, and vitally affected the social
conditions, arts, literature, and material aspect of Cairo. The _Mamlúk_
period may be said to begin with Saladin. It is true of course that
there had been mamlúks, _i.e._ white slaves, long before, and many of
them had attained to power. Ibn-Tulún, or at least his father, was a
mamlúk, and many of the later governors belonged to the same class of
emancipated slaves whether Turks or Greeks, from Turkistan or from Asia
Minor. Under the Fátimid caliphs slaves had risen to the highest rank.
Gawhar, the founder of Cairo, was a Greek or a Slav—it is not certain
which—and we have seen how the Armenian slave Bedr became practically
master of Egypt. Slavery in the East is no disgrace; on the contrary the
relationship ranks far above mere hired service. The slave is regarded
almost as a son, and we find an amusing instance of this feeling in the
undoubted slur that attached to a famous emír (Kusún) in the fourteenth
century, because he had the misfortune _not_ to be a slave, like the
rest of his world. The Fátimid armies were full of such mamlúks, and
they acquired rank and lands. But the system had not reached the
completeness that we see under Saladin’s successors. The great champion
of Islám was brought up in the mamlúk system, as organized by the
Seljúks and their followers, whose power rested upon a military basis
formed by hired or purchased troops, paid by grants of fiefs, lands,
castles, towns, or even whole provinces, held on strict condition of
military service. The higher feudatories sublet parts of their fiefs to
minor vassals, who had to furnish a certain number of men to their lord,
just as he had to bring his contingent to aid the sultan in his wars.
This system was adopted in all the provinces governed by officers of the
Seljúk empire. Nur-ed-din, who sprang from the Seljúk officers, carried
it out in Syria; Saladin, trained under Nur-ed-din, brought it to Egypt,
where the land and villages were parcelled out among the generals of his
armies, who lived on them during the winter, and joined their overlord
at the head of their retainers each year as soon as the campaigning
season opened.
We find this feudal system in force in Egypt from the arrival of Saladin
and his Turkish troops down to the accession of Mohammad ‘Aly in the
nineteenth century. It took a dominant place in Cairo when el-‘Adil’s
grandson, es-Sálih, established a picked battalion of mamlúks in the new
palace and barracks which he built on the island of Roda, opposite Misr.
From their quarters on the river (_el-bahr_) they were known as the
Bahry or Nilotic Mamlúks. Their splendid valour at the battle of
Mansúra, when under the leading of Beybars they drove back the finest
chivalry in Europe, decided the fate of the disastrous Crusade of Louis
IX. Thenceforward they ruled Egypt for a century and a half, and in
spite of much lawlessness, tyranny, intrigue, and slaughter, the reign
of the Bahry Mamlúks is among the glorious pages in the history of
Cairo. Their triumph at Mansúra was not the less remarkable because they
were then under the sovereignty of a woman. Queens are rare in
Mohammedan history, for the blessed Prophet had a prejudice against
them; but among the three or four Muslim women that have held the
sceptre, queen Sheger-ed-durr—“Spray of Pearls” is the translation of
her charming name—holds the first place. She was only a slave, and her
lord and husband, es-Sálih, grandson of el-‘Adil, died in the midst of
the campaign with the Crusaders; but she at once took command, kept the
sultan’s death secret till his son could be fetched from the other end
of the empire, controlled the government, organized the defence, gave
instructions to the generals and governors at her levees, and with
wonderful courage and wisdom held the state together. When the heir
arrived (1250) she surrendered her regency, but on the assassination of
the brutal young man by the exasperated mamlúks within two months,
“Spray of Pearl” resumed her authority, and honourably observed the
treaty of ransom with St Louis, who probably owed his life to the high-
minded queen.
[Illustration: ISLAND OF ER-RODA]
She possessed great qualities, and she had the title, such as it was,
that was conveyed by her having borne a son to the late Ayyúbid sultan.
The baby was dead, but she still based her claim to rule upon her
motherhood, and her signature and her coins[67] bore a string of
feminine titles ending with “Mother of the victorious King Khalíl,”
though the little “king” had never been conscious of his royalty.
She was not long left to rule alone. The idea of queenship was too
repugnant to Muslim prejudices, and the caliph of Baghdád interfered
with all the authority of a pope. “If they had no man among them,” he
wrote to the emírs of Cairo, “he would send them one.” So the commander-
in-chief, Aybek, was chosen to marry the queen, and a joint-king, a
child of Saladin’s kindred, was appointed to keep up the figment of the
departed dynasty. But “Spray of Pearls” still ruled, in fact though not
in name. She kept her hold on the exchequer, and evidently treated her
new husband with scant respect. Like a true woman however, she could be
jealous; she made him divorce another wife, and when Aybek ventured to
propose a fresh marriage with a princess of Mosil the queen gave way to
a regrettable act of resentment; having lured him by fair words to the
Citadel—the facts unhappily cannot be softened—she had him murdered in
the bath (1257). Her punishment was speedy and terrible. In three days
all was over. The mamlúks shut her up in the Red Tower, where she
vindictively pounded her jewels in a mortar that they might adorn no
other woman, and then she was dragged before the wife whom she had made
Aybek divorce, and there and then beaten to death with the women’s
clogs. For days her body lay in the Citadel ditch for the curs to worry,
till some good Samaritan buried it. Her tomb may still be seen beside
the chapel of Sitta Nefísa, and a pious hand of these latter days has
shrouded it with a cloth on which the Arabic name of “Spray of Pearls”
is worked in gold.
The rule of the Bahry Mamlúks now began, without further pretence of
joint-kingship with one of Saladin’s house, though not without
opposition and intrigue from members of the family in Syria, nor without
hostility from the Arabs of Egypt, who got up a national movement and
were put down with great severity. The bare list of the twenty-three
sultans of the Bahry dynasty—all Turks, and most from Kipchak—who
succeeded Aybek and ruled from 1257 to 1382 is misleading unless one
takes the conditions of their rule into account. Of the twenty-three,
only four reigned for any considerable period, and the four reigns of
Beybars, Kalaún, en-Násir, and Hasan, account for more than half the sum
of all the twenty-three reigns. A sultan was nothing more than the chief
mamlúk, elected by his comrades, _primus inter pares_ indeed, but with a
distinct understanding that they were his peers. For example, when Lagín
was elected sultan by a conspiracy of the emírs, they marched at his
stirrup and did him fealty, but they made him swear, and then swear
again, that he would remain one of themselves, act only by their
counsel, and never favour his own mamlúks to the detriment of the rest:
and when he broke his oath by making a favourite, they murdered him. It
was only a very strong man who could hold the dangerous position for
long, as Beybars did, partly by the prestige of his brilliant campaigns
in Syria; and after the strong man’s death, which as likely as not
happened by design, his son would be set on the throne as a stop-gap
whilst the rival emírs tried their strength, arranged their
combinations, and bought off competitors. Then the strongest of them, or
the most diplomatic, would remove the warming-pan and ascend the throne,
to hold it as long as he could; after which the same process would be
renewed.
We must at least give the mamlúks their due as a splendid soldiery. Four
times they had to meet the most formidable of all possible invasions,
the repeated advance of the Mongol hordes led by Ginghiz Kaan’s
successors, and four times they rolled them back. Kutuz was the first to
bear the brunt. Hulagu’s Mongol envoys came to Cairo with insulting
demands of submission: Kutuz cut off their heads and hung them up at the
Zuweyla Gate; then marched into Syria, routed the Mongols in a glorious
victory at Goliath’s Well in 1260, and rid the land of them. Beybars
swam the Euphrates at the head of his troops and defeated the Mongols at
Bira in 1273; then turning west he slew seven thousand of the enemy at
Abu-lusteyn and seated himself on the Seljúk throne, which they had
usurped, at Cæsarea of Cappadocia. Kalaún stemmed another invasion in
1281. Mustering every man he could enrol, mamlúks of the guard,
Turkmáns, desert Bedawis, Arabs from the Euphrates and the Higáz, backed
by the steady veterans of the old principality of Hamáh which still
owned a prince of Saladin’s blood, the sultan won a decisive battle at
Emesa, and freed Syria once more from the locust-cloud of devouring
Mongols. Again they returned in the time of his son en-Násir, and this
time the Egyptian army sustained a terrible reverse at the battle of the
Treasurer’s Ghyll near Emesa in 1299. Damascus was lost, and the Mongol
envoys appeared at Cairo to treat for the respectful submission of the
sultan. But the mamlúks had not lost heart; the armourers of Cairo were
busy, recruits were pouring in, and remounts were in such demand that
the price of a horse rose at a bound from £12 to £40. Syria was in a
panic, after an orgy of Mongol license; but the great emírs, Beybars
Gashnekír and the other mamlúk chiefs, rode proudly on to victory. Once
more the opposing armies met, in the plain of Marg-es-Suffar, in 1303,
and for the fourth time, and the last, the Mongols were driven out of
Syria. “Násir returned to Cairo in a wave of glory. Messengers had
announced the news, and the emírs vied with one another in setting up
costly pavilions, or grand stands, richly decorated and furnished, along
the route of his procession. Workmen were forbidden to do anything but
set up these triumphal erections. Rooms along the route were let at from
£2 to £4 for the day. Silken carpets were laid in the street; and the
proud sultan rode between the brilliant façades and admired the nobles’
pavilions, while troops of Mongol prisoners in chains, each with a
fellow Mongol’s head hanging from his neck, completed the triumph. So
noisy were the rejoicings and so deafening the tumult of drums and music
throughout Egypt, that nothing short of an earthquake sobered the
people.”
Nor was it the Mongols alone who felt the edge of the mamlúks’ steel.
Beybars the Great—a blue-eyed Turk from Kipchak afflicted by a cataract
which caused him to fetch but £20 in the slave market—despite his humble
beginnings, had the courage and the zeal of a second Saladin. He waged
the Holy War for ten years in Palestine, where the Franks were disposed
to league with the Mongols. He seized and razed Cæsarea and Arsúf in
1265, and dragged their defenders in cruel ignominy to Cairo, where they
were paraded with reversed banners and broken crosses. Jerusalem had
been recovered from the Christians twenty years before, but the embers
of Crusading zeal still smouldered feebly on the coast and at a few
inland fortresses. Beybars resolved to extinguish the last flicker.
Jaffa fell in 1268, Belfort surrendered, and Antioch, the Christian
capital of northern Syria, was stormed and burnt to the ground; three
years later the great fortress of the Hospitallers, Crac des Chevaliers,
lowered its flag, and the Teutonic knights lost Montfort.[68] Even
Cyprus, whence the Franks got their supplies, was invaded by the mamlúk
fleet. The mountain fastnesses of the dreaded Assassins were seized and
disarmed, and the Wehmgericht sank into impotence. Before Beybars died
his commands were obeyed from the Pyramus and the Euphrates to the south
of Arabia and the fourth cataract of the Nile. The Holy Cities of Mekka,
Medina, and Jerusalem were his; he held the ports of Sawákin and ‘Aydháb
on the Red Sea; the Arabs of the desert were his servants, the chiefs of
Barbary paid him tribute; the great Khan of the Golden Horde on the
Volga was his sworn ally and sent him his daughter in marriage—Mongol
though he was, Baraka Khan was the inveterate foe of the Mongols of
Persia who had overrun Syria;—embassies were exchanged with the Eastern
Emperor, who permitted a mosque to be restored at Constantinople, while
Beybars supplied him with a patriarch; diplomatic and commercial
relations were established with Manfred of Sicily, James of Aragon,
Alfonso of Seville, Charles of Anjou. To crown his glory he revived the
old ‘Abbásid caliphate, extinguished at Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258;
brought a meek representative of the sacred line to Cairo and housed him
in great state in the Citadel, as the supreme legitimate pontiff of
Islám, and humbly received at the caliph’s hands the purple robe and
black turban and golden chain and anklets which betokened a sovereign
recognized by the spiritual power. Henceforward there was ever a caliph
at Cairo—however _fainéant_—till the Ottoman conquest and the assumption
of the caliphate by the Sultans of Turkey in 1538.[69]
A great soldier and a consummate if perfidious diplomatist, Beybars was
also an able and laborious administrator. Under him the land was quietly
if not quite godly governed, and his energy was unbounded. He seemed to
be in several places at once, so rapid and secret were his journeys, and
it was a favourite device of his to lie hidden in the Citadel for days
together, watching his deputies, when he was believed to be in Syria all
the time. “The greater part of his reign was spent in campaigns outside
Egypt, but he generally passed the winter months at Cairo, whilst his
troops rested and rains or snow hindered marching, and he devoted these
intervals to improving the country and the capital. It was not only in
founding and restoring mosques and colleges, or rebuilding the Hall of
Justice at the foot of the Citadel, that he showed his public interest.
He enlarged the irrigation canals and dug new ones, made roads and
bridges, fortified Alexandria and repaired the pharos, and protected the
mouths of the Nile from the risk of foreign invasion. He revived the
Egyptian fleet, built forty war galleys, and maintained 12,000 regular
troops—not reckoning, one must assume, the Arab and Egyptian militia or
occasional levies. His heavy war expenses entailed heavy taxation; and
though with a view to popularity he began his reign by remitting the
oppressive taxes imposed by Kutuz to the amount of 600,000 dinárs a
year, he found himself compelled to increase the fiscal burdens as his
campaigns developed. Yet we read more often of old taxes repealed than
of fresh duties imposed, and his treasury was filled less by the imposts
of Egypt than by the contributions from the conquered cities and
districts of Syria, the tribute of vassal states and tribes, and the
valuable custom-dues of the ports.
“His government was enlightened, just and strict. He met the severe
famine of 1264 by measures at once wise and generous, by regulating the
sale of corn, and by undertaking, and compelling his officers and emírs
to undertake, the support of the destitute for three months. He allowed
no wine (though the tax on it used to produce 6000 dinárs a year), beer,
or hashish in his dominions; he attempted to eradicate contagious
diseases by scientific isolation; he was strict with the morals of his
subjects, shut up taverns and brothels, and banished the European women
of the town; though, personally, he was addicted to the Tatar kumiz, and
was suspected of oriental depravity. He was no sybarite, whatever his
vices; no man was more full of energy and power of work. If his days
were often given to hunting or polo, lance-play or marksmanship, his
nights were devoted to business. A courier who arrived at daybreak
received the answering dispatches by the third hour, with invariable
punctuality.” Sometimes over fifty dispatches were dictated, signed and
sealed late in the night, after a fatiguing march. There was a mail
twice a week carried by relays of horses, besides a well-organized
pigeon-post.
It was no wonder that such a man was adored by the people, who thought
him the ideal of a gallant and generous soldier-king, and who still
listen with delight to the romance in which the story-teller of the
cafés of Cairo clothes the great deeds of the ever popular Záhir
Beybars. Even the devout admired a king who endowed religious
foundations and held an even balance between the four contending schools
of orthodox divines, from each of which he nominated a separate kády.
Only the emírs and officers dreaded one who, if he was true as steel to
a good servant, never forgave a bad one, and whose restless suspicion
watched their every move. It was inevitable that some day one of the
many grudges should be paid off, and after seventeen years of a
resplendent reign Beybars died in 1277 by a cup of poison which he had
apparently made ready for another.
Beybars was the true founder of the mamlúk power and the organizer of
the mamlúk system. Since the day when he led the charge of the Bahry
guard against Louis of France at the battle of Mansúra, he had
sedulously watched over the army, stimulated recruiting from fresh
blood, and encouraged good service by liberal distribution of fiefs. His
was the foreign policy maintained in Egypt for many years, and his court
formed the pattern for succeeding kings. A very magnificent and
ceremonious court it was, where the sultan sat surrounded by the great
officers of state and of the household,—Viceroy, Commander-in-chief,
Major domo, Captain of the Guard, Armour-bearer, Master of the Horse,
Cup-bearer, Taster, Master of the Wardrobe, Grand Huntsman, Polo-bearer,
Slipper-holder, Lord of the Seat; the Master of the Halberds with his
Gentlemen at Arms; the Adjutant-General with his thirty Lords of the
Drums, each followed by forty troopers and a band of ceremony of ten
drums, four trumpets, and two hautbois; the eunuch guards, equerries and
chamberlains, secretaries and court physicians, judges and divines. All
these functionaries had their allowances, fiefs, or appanages; a lord of
the drums, for instance, would draw an income of about £16,000 a year;
and the expenses of the royal household may be judged by the estimate
that 20,000 lbs. of food were daily prepared in the larder, and that the
daily cost in meat and vegetables in the time of en-Násir was from £800
to £1200.
The great officers of the court and of the army were of course the most
powerful men next to the sultan, and each deemed himself a fit successor
to the throne. On their loyalty, and especially on that of the
bodyguard, a brigade of several thousand picked men who held in fief a
large part of Egypt, rested the safety and power of the sultan, who
stood more or less at their mercy. Each of the great lords, were he an
officer of the guard, or a court official, or merely a private nobleman,
was a mamlúk sultan in miniature. He, too, had his guard of slaves, who
waited at his door to escort him in his rides abroad, were ready at his
behest to attack the public baths and carry off the women, defended him
when a rival lord besieged his palace, and followed him valiantly as he
led the charge of his division on the field of battle. These great
lords, with their retainers, were a constant menace to the reigning
sultan. A coalition would be formed among a certain number of
disaffected nobles, with the support of some of the officers of the
household or of the guard, and their retainers would mass in the
approaches to the royal presence, while a trusted cupbearer or other
officer, whose duties permitted him access to the king’s person, would
strike the fatal blow or administer the insidious cup; and the
conspirators would forthwith elect one of their number to succeed to the
vacant throne. This was not effected without a struggle; the royal guard
was not always to be bribed or overcome, and there were generally other
nobles whose interests attached them to the reigning sovereign rather
than to any possible successor, except themselves, and who would be sure
to oppose the plot. Then there would be a street fight; the terrified
people would close their shops, run to their houses, and shut the great
gates which isolated the various quarters and markets of the city; and
the rival factions of mamlúks would ride through the streets that
remained open, pillaging the houses of their adversaries, carrying off
women and children, holding pitched battles in the road, or discharging
arrows and spears from the windows upon the enemy in the street below.
These things were of constant occurrence, and the life of the merchant
classes of Cairo must have been exciting. We read how the great bazar,
called the Khan-el-Khalíly, was sometimes shut up for a week while these
contests were going on in the streets without, and the rich merchants of
Cairo huddled trembling behind the stout gates.
There were fine doings of this kind when Ketbugha deposed the child-king
Násir, for a time. The Ashrafis—or mamlúks of the late sultan, el-Ashraf
Khalíl—raised a revolt and besieged the Citadel. Then Ketbugha’s troops
rode out to quell the tumult and slashed through the ranks; the rebels
were blinded, maimed, drowned, beheaded, nailed to the gate of Zuweyla;
and so a new reign began (1294). A plague followed, when seven hundred
corpses were carried out of one gate of Cairo in a single day. A fresh
conspiracy was formed, Ketbugha fled, and the viceroy Lagín was elected
sultan in his place. The streets which had lately been shambles were now
_en fête_ with decorations, for the new sultan was a generous man and
promised to remit taxes; bread was cheap and Lagín was popular.
The idea of hereditary succession was wholly foreign to the mamlúk
system; yet it presented the only correction to these scenes of violent
supercession, and after a time some sort of hereditary title seems to
have been established. Kalaún had been succeeded by his son Khalíl, and
then by a younger son en-Násir Mohammad in 1293, and though the last, as
a mere child, was temporarily deposed, he came back in 1298 after the
murder of his brother-in-law Lagín. After another trial of usurpation by
Beybars Gashnekír (the Taster) in 1308, Násir was restored and began a
third reign which lasted thirty-one years (1310-1341), and after his
death his incapable descendants sat on the throne, with little or no
real authority, till the close of the dynasty. Thus from 1279 to 1382
Egypt was ruled, except for six or seven years, by members of one
family, the House of Kalaún. The founder of this family, whose history
refutes the theory that these foreigners were unprolific in Egypt, was
himself a notable figure, a brave general, a prudent statesman, and a
great encourager of commerce. His passports to traders were in force as
far as India and China, and he did all he could to develop the commerce
of Egypt. Like most of the mamlúk sultans he was a notable builder. It
is extraordinary how these men of war, in the midst of alarums and
intrigues, took a delight in architecture. The brilliant queen, first of
the mamlúks, built (1250) the tomb-mosque over her husband Sálih, which
still stands on part of the site of the old palace of the Fátimids in
Beyn-el-Kasreyn. Beybars founded a college in 1262 on another part of
the palace called the “Hall of the Tent,” and also a great mosque
outside the Bab-el-Futúh in 1267-9, both of which still exist, though
the college is a ruin, and the mosque was used, _infandum!_ as a bake-
house for the French troops a century ago, and recently as a slaughter-
house for the British army of occupation. Kalaún, stirred by a dangerous
illness, vowed to build a hospital, and his Maristán is still to be seen
in the Nahhasín, though no longer used for its original purpose: it was
a madhouse less than a hundred years ago. It stands beside his mosque
and tomb, the latter notable for its exquisite plaster tracery and red
granite pillars, and for the oddly decorated stone minaret and fine
inscription. Ibn-Tulún and Saladin had built hospitals, and Kalaún
carried on the good tradition of these pious benefactors. Cubicles for
patients were ranged round two courts, and at the sides of another
quadrangle were wards, lecture rooms, library, baths, dispensary, and
every necessary appliance of those days of surgical science. There was
even music to cheer the sufferers; while readers of the Korán afforded
the consolations of the faith. Rich and poor were treated alike, without
fees, and sixty orphans were supported and educated in the neighbouring
school. People still visit the tomb where the good sultan and his son
en-Násir lie buried, to touch their clothes in sure belief that they
will be cured of sundry diseases and disabilities.
[Illustration: “JOSEPH’S HALL”: PALACE OF EN-NASIR IN CITADEL, WITH HIS
MOSQUE IN BACKGROUND]
The long reign of en-Násir was a golden age of mamlúk architecture.
However much this sultan may have profited by the sense of tranquillity
which hereditary title inspired, he owed his long tenure of the
precarious throne partly to his personal qualities. “This self-
possessed, iron-willed man—absolutely despotic, ruling alone—physically
insignificant, small of stature, lame of a foot, and with a cataract in
the eye—with his plain dress and strict morals, his keen intellect and
unwearied energy, his enlightened tastes and interests, his shrewd
diplomacy degenerating into fruitless deceit, his unsleeping suspicion
and cruel vengefulness, his superb court, his magnificent buildings—is
one of the most remarkable characters of the Middle Ages. His reign was
certainly the climax of Egyptian culture and civilization.” He carried
on the traditions of Beybars and Kalaún; maintained the alliance with
the Golden Horde and married a princess from the Volga, the lady
Tulbíya, whose tomb may still be seen, with that of another of his
wives, in the eastern cemetery; he preserved the normal boundaries of
the empire, from the Pyramus and Euphrates to Sawákin and Aswán, and
arranged, if not alliances, diplomatic connexions with the emperor of
Constantinople and the king of Bulgaria, as well as the rulers of
Abyssinia and Arabia. He married eleven daughters to the highest nobles,
and each wedding cost him half a million. Násir was not only a
statesman; he was a farmer, trainer, and sportsman, who would pay £4000
for a horse, kept a systematic stud-book, knew all his horses’
pedigrees, prices, and ages, and broke in three thousand fillies every
year with Bedawy grooms, for the races in which he and his emírs took
the keenest possible interest. He kept thirty thousand sheep, and
imported the finest breeds from abroad, and like most of the sultans he
was devoted to falconry. Ibn-Batúta, who saw him in 1326, describes
Násir as a king “of noble character and great virtues,” beneficent to
pilgrims and assiduous in his duty of sitting in appeal twice a week to
hear causes and complaints in person. Under his rule Egypt thrived;
vexatious taxes were repealed, a new survey of the land was made,
millers and bakers who tried to raise prices in bad years were scourged,
and when his son-in-law, the great emír Kusún was reported to him for
extortion, the sultan smote him with the flat of his sword and flogged
his factor. Prices were kept down by his vigilance, wine-bibing and
immorality were severely punished, and if Násir recouped himself by
sweeping confiscations among the nobles, and cut down the “tall poppies”
remorselessly, the people gained by the new method, and prospered
exceedingly.
Even to the Copts Násir was indulgent, though the Christians were never
so well used under mamlúk rule as they had been under the Fátimids and
in the time of el-Kámil. At the time of Saladin’s invasion there had
been a great destruction of churches, due rather to the burning of Misr
and the turmoil of war than to any fanaticism of the conquerors. Saladin
himself was no friend to Christians; he was too rigid a Muslim to be
tolerant; but he did not persecute them. The flight or expulsion of the
Armenian patriarch and his followers was more probably the result of the
close association of the Armenians with the Fátimid government than of
religious bigotry. But the Holy War in Palestine, though waged against
the Latin branch of the church catholic, reacted unfavourably upon the
Copts, and Saladin’s brother el-‘Adil was stern and tyrannical towards
his Christian subjects. His son el-Kámil often interceded for them
successfully, and when he came to the throne of Egypt himself, he
displayed a spirit of toleration rare indeed in that age. He received St
Francis of Assisi courteously, when the good friar came to teach him the
truth as he perceived it, and the Christians of Egypt unanimously
regarded Kámil as the kindest ruler they had ever known. His son es-
Sálih seems to have followed in his steps during his short reign, for he
wrote to Innocent IV to express his regret that he could not converse
with the Dominicans by reason of his ignorance of Latin.
The Crusade of Louis IX naturally upset these amicable relations, and it
is not surprising that the Muslims wreaked their vengeance upon many
churches in Egypt. Nor was the temper of the succeeding mamlúk sultans,
excited by repeated victories over the remnant of the Franks in Syria,
conducive to a good understanding with their Christian subjects. The new
colleges founded by Saladin and his successors were working a change in
Cairo, and a fanatical spirit was encouraged by the teachers of these
divinity schools, whose influence grew stronger as time went on. In 1280
all the Coptic scribes employed at the war-office were dismissed and
their places supplied by Muslims. In 1301 the old humiliating sumptuary
rules prescribing distinctive dresses and the like were revived. In 1321
occurred a series of outbreaks which brought terrible persecution on the
Christians. The disturbance began when en-Násir’s workmen, digging a
lake called Nasir’s Pool, near the Lion’s Bridge (west of the Lúk and
close to the mosque of Taybars) undermined the church of ez-Zuhry, which
en-Násir had commanded to be respected. Without the knowledge of the
government the people rushed to the church one Friday after prayers and
utterly demolished it. Thence they went to the church of St Mina in the
Hamra and sacked it, and did the like to the “Church of the Maidens” by
the seven watermills, dragging out the nuns, and pillaging and burning
everything. The sultan was indignant when the smoke of the burning
churches told the tale of disaster, and sent troops at once to coerce
the mob. Meanwhile news arrived of the destruction of two other churches
in the quarters of Zuweyla and of the Greeks, and it was found that the
mob was attacking the Mo‘allaka in the fortress of Babylon. Here the
sultan’s troops happily arrived in time to protect the church. There was
evidently a popular excitement difficult to quell. Wild fakírs got up in
the mosques and shouted “Down with the infidels’ churches! To the
foundations! To the foundations!” The same thing was going on all over
Egypt; at Alexandria, at Damascus, at Kus, churches were burning.
A month later mysterious fires began to break out at Cairo. One after
the other great conflagrations burst forth, and a strong wind carried
the flames far and wide. People went up the minarets and cried to God,
thinking that the whole city would be burnt down, and there was groaning
and weeping over the loss of homes and possessions. Every effort was
made to extinguish the fires. All the water-carriers were impressed, and
twenty-four emírs of the highest rank worked at the head of the lines of
men carrying water from the baths and cisterns, and demolishing acres of
fine houses to clear a space round the burning buildings. The street
from the Deylem quarter to the Gate of Zuweyla ran with water like a
river. No sooner was one fire extinguished than another began. Almost
every day witnessed a fresh conflagration.
It was noticed that these fires were apparently aimed at mosques, and
that they were the work of incendiaries was evident from clothes soaked
in oil and pitch and naphtha that were discovered. A Christian was
caught at the mosque of ez-Záhir with packets of naphtha and pitch,
which he was lighting in the mosque. Put to the torture he confessed
that the conflagrations were the organized work of Christians. Two
monks, under torture, admitted that they had set the fires afoot to
avenge the destruction of the churches. The Coptic patriarch was called
in, and, with tears, denounced the incendiaries as wild enthusiasts who
were paying off the foolish church-destroyers in their own coin. He was
sent back to his house in honour. The populace however were in no mood
to see a patriarch respected, and would gladly have torn him in pieces,
but for the sultan’s guard. As it was they burned four monks from the
Melekite “Convent of the Mule” (el-Kuseyr) in the Mukattam hills. Two
Christians caught in the act of arson were by the sultan’s orders burnt
alive in a pit in the presence of an exulting multitude, and an innocent
Coptic secretary, passing by, only escaped being thrown to the flames by
hasty apostasy. The mob was becoming dangerous, and the sultan, who,
though much alarmed, had done his utmost to calm the people, took strong
measures. Troops were sent through the whole of Cairo with orders to
charge the crowds and spare none. The news had preceded them, and they
found the bazars closed and the streets deserted. Not a man was to be
seen between the Citadel and the Gate of Succour. Some two hundred were
arrested near the Nile, and brought before the sultan, who ordered them
to be executed or to lose their hands. In vain they pleaded innocence;
even the emírs interceded for them; en-Násir was resolved to make an
example of somebody. Gallows were set up all the way from the Gate of
Zuweyla to the Rumeyla, and there the unlucky Muslims were hung by their
hands in order to teach other people not to raise an uproar.
The result of this excitement was the revival of the old regulations as
to dress which Násir had endeavoured to drop since 1301. Any Christian
found riding a horse or wearing a white turban might be killed at sight.
The Copts were compelled to wear blue turbans, to carry a bell round
their necks at the baths, and to ride only the ass, and that with the
face to the tail. The emírs were not allowed to employ Christian
servants, nor were the Copts any more to hold posts in the government
offices. They hardly dared to show themselves abroad, and a great many
became Muslims. This was probably the worst persecution since the days
of el-Hákim, three centuries before, but it must be admitted that there
was grave provocation on both sides, and that the outrages sprang from
popular fury, not from the fanaticism of the rulers. Similar
persecution, though scarcely on so large a scale, went on throughout the
mamlúk period, and the Copts, who had perhaps waxed over-fat and kicked
during the tolerant epoch of the later Fátimids, paid dearly for their
past favour. They were gradually reduced to the state of suffering
insignificance from which they are only now being to some extent raised.
Whilst churches were being thus destroyed mosques were rising with
amazing prodigality. There never was such a harvest for the builder and
the architect as in the reign of en-Násir. The sultan set the example
himself. He was a man of fine taste and high culture, the patron of
scholars, and the intimate friend of the learned historian Abu-l-Fida,
whom he restored to the princedom of Hamáh, which had been held by his
family since the days of his ancestor, Saladin’s brother. It was an age
of brilliant artistic production, and the immense sums spent by the
sultan and his emírs on building and decorative works show that the
wealth of the country was vast, and was nobly expended. Some of Násir’s
own furniture has been preserved—there are two exquisite inlaid-silver
tables of his in the Arab Museum at Cairo—and his two chief buildings,
the college in Beyn-el-Kasreyn (1304), next to the Maristán, with its
Gothic gateway brought from ‘Akka by his brother Khalíl, and the old
mosque (1318) in the Citadel, are worthy memorials of his taste, though
unhappily they show but few traces of their original splendour. The
great dome which once surmounted the Citadel mosque has fallen in, and
most of the marble mosaics which adorned the kibla have vanished, as
well as the iron grille which enclosed the sultan’s place of prayer
(_maksúra_). There is still a range of clerestory windows all round the
mosque, but the tracery and stained glass is almost all gone; yet the
ten great granite columns, and the marble mosaics on the south wall, and
other relics, show what the mosque must once have been. Its most
remarkable feature is the coating of the minarets with green tiles,
which may probably be ascribed to the Tatar influence of Násir’s wife,
who belonged to the royal family of the Golden Horde. That the Citadel
mosque is not wholly destroyed is due to the care of Colonel C. M.
Watson, C.M.G., who rescued it from the degradation of an army
storehouse, and removed the wooden partitions which had been set up when
the beautiful building was converted into a prison. There was once a
“Hall of Columns” belonging to Násir’s “Striped Palace” of black and
white stone in the Citadel (which cost, it is said, twenty millions, but
the figure is incredible), which still stood three quarters of a century
ago; the fortress was largely rearranged and added to in his reign, and
the aqueduct which brought the Nile water to the citadel, though
commonly ascribed to Saladin and probably a reconstruction of some
Ayyúbid conduit, was Násir’s work (1311), afterwards restored in stone
by el-Ghúry. He also built a mosque beside the shrine of Seyyida Nefísa,
the Kubbat-en-Nasr near the Red Hill, and other chapels.
[Illustration: AQUEDUCT AND HOUSE OF THE “SEVEN WATERMILLS”]
Where the sultan led, the court followed. The emírs of that day were
never content till they had built a mosque, a college, or a tomb-chapel,
to celebrate their piety and lay up riches where they stood most in need
of a balance. The Moorish traveller, Ibn-Batúta, who was at Cairo in
1326, was impressed by the zealous emulation of the emírs in founding
mosques and monasteries for recluses, such as the Khankah or convent of
Beybars Gashnekír, still standing, and he gives a curious account of the
monastic rules.[70] One cannot count the colleges (medresas), he says,
and he is lost in admiration of the great hospital of Kalaún, with its
excellent apparatus and drugs, and its revenue amounting, he was told,
to 1000 dinárs a day. More than forty mosques and colleges were erected
between 1320 and 1360—more than a fourth of the total number recorded
from the Arab conquest to the time of Makrízy—and many of them still
survive to bear witness to the munificence of the great nobles of the
time. Such are the mosques (_gami‘_) of the emír Hoseyn (founded A.H.
719, A.D. 1319), Almás, the chamberlain (730), Kusún (730), Beshták
(736), Altunbugha el-Maridány, the cupbearer (740), Aslam, the armour-
bearer (746), Aksunkur (747), Arghún el-Isma‘íly (748), Mangak, the
proconsul (750), Sheykhú (750); the colleges (_medresa_) of Almelik, the
polo-master (719), Sengar el-Gáwaly (723), Ahmad, the master of the
ceremonies (Mihmandár, 725), Akbugha, the major domo (734), Sarghitmish,
captain of the guard (757); the monasteries (_Khankáh_) of Kusún (736),
el-Gáwaly (723), Sheykhú (756); besides the mosque of “the Lady Miska”
(a slave of Násir’s named Hadak, 740), the college of Násir’s daughter,
the Lady Tatar el-Higazíya (761), and the great mosque of his son Sultan
Hasan facing the Citadel (757-60).
[Illustration: MOSQUE OF SULTAN HASAN]
To describe these mosques of the Násiry epoch in detail would demand a
whole volume. Some of them indeed are sadly ruined and present but
fragments of their original building. Some, like Aksunkur’s and el-
Isma‘íly’s were restored, the one with much taste by Ibrahím Agha in
1652; the other, with none, fifty years ago by one of the Khedivial
family. But even in what remains of the original work of the twenty-one
mosques enumerated above there is so much variety in plan, in treatment
of the parts, and in decoration, that no verbal description can take the
place of ocular study on the spot. Almost every one of these buildings
deserves separate and attentive examination. Three features, however,
may here be signalized as characteristic. The old mosques had no
external decoration; their enclosing walls were plain, and only in the
late Fátimid mosque el-Akmar do we find the beginning of a façade. The
mamlúk mosques, copying no doubt the buildings of the Crusaders in
Palestine, generally present fine façades, with sunk panels, portals in
recess, and decorative cornice and crownwork. The next characteristic is
the development of the minaret, which becomes more graceful, is built of
well-faced stone, and shows delicate articulations and gradations of
tapering from the square to the polygon and cylinder, with skilful use
of “stalactite” or pendentive treatment of angles and transitions and
supports for the balconies. The third is the construction of large
domes. Hitherto small cupolas over the mihráb or above the entrance were
the utmost achievements of the earlier architects. The feature of a
great dome was introduced by Saladin’s successors, for example in the
dome of the tomb-mosque of esh-Sháfi‘y in the Karáfa, and probably in
other edifices, but too little remains of the Ayyúbid period to permit
of very exact definition.
The mamlúks were dome-builders _par excellence_. A large proportion of
their mosques and colleges were also the founders’ tombs; the tomb-
chapel adjoined the main building, and the dome, as we have said, is
pre-eminently a sepulchral canopy. From the mamlúk period begins that
adornment of the city with those beautiful bulbs which still form its
dominant architectural note. From the plain dome with a small cupola on
top comes the fluted dome, and next the dome covered with ornament,
chevrons, arabesques, or geometrical _entrelacs_, all chiselled in the
stone. The most elaborate ornament belongs to the work of the Circassian
sultans of the fifteenth century, but already in the fourteenth the dome
had taken its place among the leading features of Saracenic
architecture.
As an example of the fourteenth century style we cannot do better than
take the great mosque of Sultan Hasan, which includes most of the
characteristics of the Násiry epoch, and displays them on the grandest
scale. Sultan Hasan,—who sat on the throne from 1347 to 1351, was
deposed by the emírs, and then restored from 1354 to 1361,—was far from
an interesting or estimable character, and his mosque was his one good
deed. It was built between 1356 and 1359 (A.H. 757-760) and is said to
have cost him 1000 dinárs a day, but one distrusts the round figures of
Eastern chroniclers. The sultan was so charmed with his masterpiece that
he cut off the architect’s hand in the vague idea that its loss would
cripple his genius and prevent his repeating his success. The mosque is
of the usual form of medresa, a cross formed of a central court and four
deep transepts or porticoes, and the founder’s tomb may be compared to a
lady-chapel behind the chancel or eastern portico. The outside does not
of course reveal the cruciform character of the interior, since the
angles are filled with numerous rooms and offices.[71] The prevailing
impression from without is one of great height, compared with other
mosques. The walls are 113 feet high and built of fine cut stone from
the pyramids, and have the peculiarity, rare in Saracen architecture, of
springing from a socle. Windows—two with horseshoe arches, the rest
simple grilles—slightly relieve the monotony of the broad expanse of
wall; but the most beautiful feature is the splendid cornice built up of
six tiers of stalactites each overlapping the one below, which crowns
the whole wall. There are some graceful pilasters or engaged columns at
the angles, and a magnificent portal set in an arched niche, 66 feet
high, vaulted in a half sphere which is worked up to by twelve tiers of
pendentives. Bold arabesque medallions and borders, geometrical panels,
and corner columns with stalactite capitals, enrich this stately gate.
[Illustration: GATEWAY OF SULTAN HASAN’S MOSQUE]
Inside, the first impression again is of size rather than detail. The
great span of the four arches—that at the east is 90 feet high and
nearly 70 wide—is unmatched in Cairo, but the plaster coating of the
interior of the transepts detracts from the general effect, nor are the
mosaics and marbles, handsome as they are, equal in delicacy of design
or harmony of colour to many others in the _mihrábs_ of earlier and
later mosques. The black, white, and yellow panels are too garish, and
so is the colouring of the pulpit; but the concave niche itself is
singularly rich in decoration, and the tribune, instead of being as
usual an unpretentious wood platform, stands upon graceful stone columns
of alternate drums of coloured marbles. A fine Kufic inscription forms a
frieze round the top of the walls. The tomb-chamber, entered from the
sanctuary by a noble door plated with arabesques in bronze, is
surrounded by a marble dado 25 feet high, above which is the Throne-
Verse from the Korán carved in wood, whilst the angles are gradually
worked up to the circle of the dome by stalactites also carved in wood
and much decayed. In the centre is the plain marble grave of the
founder. The dome itself is comparatively modern, and quite unworthy of
the great mosque. The original great dome, admired by Pietro della Valle
in 1616, collapsed in 1660. There were to have been four minarets, but
scarcely was the third built when it fell (1360), crushing some three
hundred children in the school below. Thirty-three days later Sultan
Hasan was murdered. Of the two that then remained, one minaret became
ruined and was rebuilt too short in 1659. The great bronze lanterns and
many of the enamelled glass lamps are preserved in the Arab Museum; and
the fine bronze-plated entrance door was removed by el-Muáyyad to his
own mosque in 1410.
The mosque of Sultan Hasan suffered greatly from its position. Its wide
terrace-roof was an excellent post of vantage for cannon and musketry
during the constant émeutes of the Mamlúk period, and shots were
frequently exchanged between it and the Citadel down to the time of
Mohammad ‘Aly: some of the balls may still be seen in the masonry.
Barkúk found the mosque so dangerous as a place of attack that he
demolished its handsome steps and closed the great door. At one time it
remained closed for half a century, and the students and worshippers had
to slink in by a window or a side-door. The tall minaret was even used
in the middle of the fifteenth century to support a tight-rope stretched
to the Citadel on which a European gymnast disported himself to the
tremulous delight of the populace. In a quieter situation the mosque
might have escaped injury, but even as it is, scarred with bullets and
lopped of its original dome and minarets, it remains the most superb if
not the most beautiful monument of Saracenic art in the fourteenth
century.
[Illustration: TOMB-MOSQUE OF BARKUK AND FARAG]
2. THE MAMLÚKS OF THE FORT.
When the feeble descendants of en-Násir, after enduring rather than
enjoying a mock sovereignty for forty years under the tyranny of a
series of powerful emírs—Kusún, Sheykhú, Sarghitmish, and the rest—gave
way to the usurpation of the emír Barkúk in 1382, the change made little
difference in the government of Egypt. The hereditary principle was
gone, indeed, and was never reaffirmed until the latter part of the
nineteenth century; and the new dynasty consisted of isolated emírs, who
sometimes bequeathed their throne to a son until some other emír deposed
him, but who never founded a royal house like that of Kalaún. The new
line was known as the Burgy Mamlúks, or “slaves of the fort,” because
they belonged to a brigade of troops which had been quartered in the
Citadel ever since their original enrolment by Kalaún a century before.
They are also called the “Circassian Sultans,” from their common race,
for none of them were Turks, though two were Greeks. There was little to
choose, however, in character, between the Circassians and their Turkish
predecessors, and the change on the whole was for the worse. The sultans
of the new line were even more at the mercy of the leaders of military
factions than before. The mamlúk guard of each king formed a distinct
party, calling itself after his throne-title—as Ashrafy, Muáyyady,
Násiry—and after his death or deposition they remained a separate factor
in politics and contributed to the bloodshed, confusion, and intrigues
of the period. The sultans could scarcely restrain their own soldiery,
much less these formidable relics of their predecessors, and the
frequent changes of rulers show how unstable the royal authority had
become. Six of the twenty-three Burgy sultans reigned for 103 out of the
total of 134 years covered by the dynasty, leaving but thirty-one years
for the remaining seventeen, or less than two years apiece.
The character of the rulers was much the same as before, but everything
was on a meaner scale. There was hardly one warrior-king among them, and
this accounts in a large degree for the lack of the prestige that had
kept a soldier like Beybars or Kalaún on the throne. The Circassians
were not soldiers but schemers; they relied less upon success in war or
personal courage than on ruse, chicanery, and corruption, to retain
their hold of power. The Greek Khushkadam excelled the rest in his
adroit management of the contending factions and the heavy bribes he
extorted in the sale of public offices. The governorship of Damascus
cost its possessor 45,000 dinárs in fees to the sultan, and his previous
post was sold to another man for 10,000. Ministers of state were put out
of the way if their enemies made it worth the Greek’s while, and the
ceremonious visits of this ingenious sultan were apt to be expensive to
those he honoured with a call. Throughout the domination of the
Circassian dynasty corruption reigned unchecked; justice was bought and
sold; and even the Sheykh-el-Islám, the religious chief justice, stole
trust-money. The soldiers, who were purchased white slaves, Greeks,
Circassians, Turks and Mongols, ran riot in the streets, insomuch that
decent women dared not leave their houses and the fellahín feared to
bring their stock to market lest it should fall a prey to the mamlúks or
the government. In the country the population diminished under the
oppression of the troops; in the capital there was seldom peace or
order, and sometimes rival factions pounded each other from the Citadel
ramparts and the opposite roof of Sultan Hasan’s mosque, barricaded the
streets, and made cockpits of the bazars, where processions of rebels
nailed to camel-saddles till they died were no uncommon sights.
In spite of this corruption and violence the Burgy sultans contrived not
only to preserve the power of Egypt but even to enlarge its dominions
and greatly extend its trade. They withstood the invasion of Tamerlane
boldly in 1399, though in the end they found it politic to accept his
terms; but at least the great conqueror never ventured to attack Egypt.
They fought several campaigns in Asia Minor, where for some time they
secured the submission of Karaman, Cæsarea, Iconium, and Larenda. They
even conquered Cyprus—a nest of the pirates who disturbed the Egyptian
shipping—in 1426, with a fleet of galleys built at their port of Bulák,
not long risen from the Nile; and King James of Lusignan, captured at
the battle of Chierocitia, was brought in triumph to the Citadel of
Cairo, with the crown of Cyprus and his disgraced standards, and made to
kiss the ground before the Sultan Bars-Bey. He was ransomed by the
Venetian consul and European merchants, and rode through the streets and
bazars in great state, after becoming a vassal of the Egyptian king.
Cyprus paid tribute until the end of the Circassian dynasty, but several
attempts upon Rhodes in 1440-4 were successfully repelled by the
knights. To the end of the dynasty the Egyptian frontier still extended
north as far as the Pyramus and Euphrates.
Among the strange anomalies of Oriental history none perhaps is more
surprising than the combination of extreme corruption and savage cruelty
with exquisite refinement in material civilization and an admirable
devotion to art which we see in the mamlúk sultans. The Circassians were
not inferior to their Turkish forerunners as great architects.
Personally some of the second line of sultans were men of considerable
culture. Barkúk, Muáyyad, Gakmak, and Káit-Bey were fond of learned
society and literary talents; Bars-Bey, though he knew little Arabic,
liked to listen to Turkish histories read to him by el-‘Ayny; and
Timurbugha the Greek was a philologist, historian, and theologian. They
were also good Muslims, fasted regularly and even supererogatorily,
abstained from wine, made pilgrimages, and insured their place in the
next world by building mosques, colleges, hospitals, schools, and every
kind of religious establishment, in this. El-Muáyyad, for example,
though utterly unable to control the disorders of his time, “was
personally a devout man and a learned, a good musician, poet, and
orator, scrupulous in the observance of the rules of his religion, very
simple and unpretentious in his dress and mode of life, bearing himself
in all religious functions as a plain Muslim among fellow worshippers,
and robing himself in common white wool in mourning for the pestilence
that ravaged the land.” The eastern arcade of his splendid mosque
(1415-21) is still preserved in the Sukkaríya street, and a number of
boys may there be seen at their lessons under the brilliant gold
inscriptions and frescoes of the sanctuary, which has been carefully
restored by Herz Bey, who discovered traces of the original polychromy
beneath the whitewash of ages. The minarets of the mosque are built on
the flanking towers of the Zuweyla gate. There is also a ruined hospital
(el-Maristán el-Muáyyady, 1418), near the Citadel, that commemorates his
pious benefactions. Bars-Bey’s great mosque, the Ashrafiya (1423), is
still a place where congregations meet, at the corner of the Musky,
where one turns into the Ghuríya. Barkúk built (1386) an exquisite
medresa in Beyn-el-Kasreyn, which has recently been restored by Herz
Bey; and his tomb-mosque with the two domes, begun by himself but
completed by his son, the Sultan Farag, in 1410, is one of the most
picturesque features in that beautiful group of fawn-coloured domes and
slender minarets, the eastern cemetery. But the gem of the group is the
perfect tomb-mosque (1472) of Káit-Bey, which represents the highest
achievement of the later mamlúk school. The admirable arabesques of its
shapely dome, the skilfully graduated transitions of its stately minaret
from square to octagon, and from octagon to circle, with every ingenuity
of stalactite concealment of angles, and the fine inlaid marbles in the
_liwán_, are treasures of indestructible beauty even after centuries of
neglect and spoliation.
[Illustration: EASTERN CEMETERY: SO-CALLED “TOMBS OF THE CALIPHS”]
Káit-Bey, whose long reign of twenty-eight years (1468-96) was
phenomenal in this quickly changing dynasty, had worked his way up from
the usual humble beginning. Bought by Bars-Bey for twenty-five guineas,
he had passed from master to master, and rank to rank, till he became
commander-in-chief, under the Greek Timurbugha, of an army which cost
the state nearly £300,000 a year—a very large military budget for the
fifteenth century. “He was an expert swordsman, and an adept at the
javelin play. His career had given him experience and knowledge of the
world; he possessed courage, judgment, insight, energy, and decision.
His strong character dominated his mamlúks, who were devoted to him, and
overawed competitors. His physical energy was sometimes displayed in
flogging the president of the council of state or other high officials
with his own arm, with the object of extorting money for the treasury.
Such contributions and extraordinary taxation were absolutely necessary
for the wars in which he was obliged to engage. Not only was the land
taxed to one-fifth of the produce, but an additional tenth (half-a-
dirhem per ardebb of corn) was demanded. Rich Jews and Christians were
remorselessly squeezed. There was much barbarous inhumanity, innocent
people were scourged, even to the death, and the chemist ‘Aly ibn el-
Marshúshy was blinded and deprived of his tongue, because he could not
turn dross into gold.
“The Sultan had the reputation of miserliness, yet the list of his
public works, not only in Egypt, but in Syria and Arabia, shows that he
spent the revenue on admirable objects. His two mosques at Cairo—one
outside among the so-called ‘Tombs of the Caliphs’ (1472), the other
near Ibn-Tulún (1475)—and his wekálas or caravanserais are among the
most exquisite examples of elaborate arabesque ornament applied to the
purest Saracenic architecture. He diligently restored and repaired the
crumbling monuments of his predecessors, as numerous inscriptions in the
mosques, the schools, the Citadel, and other buildings of Cairo
abundantly testify. He was a frequent traveller, and journeyed in Syria,
to the Euphrates, in Upper and Lower Egypt, besides performing the
pilgrimages to Mekka and Jerusalem; and wherever he went he left traces
of his progress in good roads, bridges, mosques, schools,
fortifications, or other pious or necessary works. No reign, save that
of en-Násir ibn Kalaún, in the long list of mamlúk sultans, was more
prolific in architectural construction or in the minor industries of
art. The people suffered for the cost of his many buildings, but a later
age has recognized their matchless beauty.”[72]
[Illustration: MOSQUE OF KAIT-BEY IN EASTERN CEMETERY]
In the buildings of Káit-Bey and his contemporaries we see the
perfection of the art of pure arabesque and elaborate geometrical
ornament. In the early days of Saracenic architecture the ornament was
worked in soft gypsum or plaster, and the use of a tool (never a mould)
in the soft material gave extraordinary freedom and boldness to the
lines—for example, in the scroll-work of the mosque of Ibn-Tulún.
Plaster continued to be the base of decorative friezes and borders
throughout the Fátimid period: it may be seen in the original arcades of
the Azhar and in the eastern sanctuary of el-Hákim. The most exquisite
specimen of plaster ornament, however, is seen in the tomb-mosque of
Kalaún, where the borders of the arches that supported the original
dome, and of the clerestory windows above, are formed of a delicate
lace-like tracery in plaster foliate designs, broadly treated and worked
into a pattern so continuous that it is almost impossible to break off
at any middle point. After en-Násir, who also used stucco, however, it
was generally abandoned in favour of stone, though we still see
admirable examples of plaster decoration in the dome of Aksunkur and the
beautiful designs in the cupola of el-Fadawíya. In the mosque of the
Sultan Hasan all the sculpture except the Kufic frieze is in stone, and
as the material is unyielding we find at once a certain hardness of
treatment, a loss of freedom in the lines, and a tendency to substitute
geometrical design for the pure arabesque of earlier work. The stone
pulpit erected by Káit-Bey in 1483 in Barkúk’s tomb-mosque is one of the
finest examples of geometrical chiselling in Cairo. Its side view is
triangular, like the wooden pulpits of other mosques, but instead of
carved or inlaid wooden panels making up the designs on each side, the
whole is of stone slabs, admirably joined, and chiselled with
geometrical figures produced outwards, so as to cover the whole surface
with a network of interlacing lines forming a star-like pattern, the
interstices of which are filled with floral arabesques. Similar carving
enriches the walls of the staircase and the canopy of this unique
pulpit.
Káit-Bey was the most scrupulous of all Cairo architects: he allowed no
detail of his numerous edifices to be neglected, and the wealth of
ornament which he lavished upon them was all cut in limestone or
marble.[73] One may realize the richness of this decoration in his
mosque within the city, near Ibn-Tulún’s, where the chief arch is formed
of twenty-three blocks of stone on each side, alternately red and white,
and every one of the white blocks is covered with arabesque or
geometrical designs, no two of which appear to be alike. The arabesques
consist of the usual trefoil surrounded by very beautifully intertwined
foliage conventionally treated. The geometrical patterns, though at
first sight composed of irregular pentagons and hexagons, are all
symmetrically arranged, and form one elaborate design. On the spandrils
of the arch will be noticed medallions—there are many such in
Cairo—containing the name of the Sultan and a benediction upon him. A
broad band of Koranic inscription, separated by arabesque patterns, runs
as a frieze under the sculptured cornice. The general effect of the
whole is wonderfully rich, and there is hardly a space that is not
filled by some delicate design. Even in his wekálas, or inns, Káit-Bey
was no less careful in details. Few buildings in Cairo are more fertile
in varied designs than his wekála in the street on the south side of the
Azhar. The interior, unhappily, is deserted and in decay, but once, no
doubt, it was richly ornamented. The façade is still in good
preservation, and deserves careful study by all who wish to understand
arabesque and geometrical ornament at its best.[74] When we say at its
best, some objection may be taken to the fact that certain designs are
systematically repeated in reverse, in contrast to the honest way of the
older artists who scorned to repeat themselves. But by the time of Káit-
Bey the beauty of uniformity had been realized, and it was seen that a
certain symmetry and recurrence of the designs really improved their
effect. This change was part of the general tendency towards symmetrical
finish and architectural proportion, which distinguishes the later from
the earlier Mamlúk style. There is, however, abundant variety in the
numerous panels of arabesque and geometrical ornament which form the
borders above the thirteen shops of the inn front, in the superb arched
gateway in the centre, and in the beautiful engaged column in the
corner, next the sebíl or fountain, with its carved drums and stalactite
capital. In its original state this wekála must have been a noble
building: even as it is, one may call it almost a text-book of Saracenic
decoration.
[Illustration: TOMB-MOSQUES]
Indeed the epoch of Káit-Bey was almost a repetition of the great
building epoch of en-Násir. The Circassian mosques are usually the
favourites with architects as well as with the unprofessional sight-
seer: their exquisite proportions, delicate minarets, beautifully
sculptured domes, elaborate stalactites in portals, cornices, and
wherever angles had to be masked, and their rich marble mosaics and
incrustated kiblas, are perfect in taste and disposition. Besides the
two exquisite mosques of Káit-Bey, those of the emírs Ezbek el-Yúsufy
(1495), Kheyr Bek (1502), and the Master of the Horse (emír akhór) Kany
Bek (1503), are full of fine work, whilst for a little gem of the best
Circassian type nothing is better worth seeing than the Medresa of Kady
Abu-Bekr ibn Muzhir or Mazhar (1480) which has been restored with
exceptional skill by the Commission for the Preservation of the Arab
Monuments, whose architect, Herz Bey, has devoted the greatest pains to
tracing the original colours and designs and faithfully reproducing
them. Another careful restoration is that of the mosque of the emír
Kagmás el-Isháky (1481), and both show conspicuous improvement upon the
earlier experiments in restoring the Barkukíya medresa.
It is to be noticed that, in the majority of the medresas of the
fifteenth century, the original cruciform shape is considerably
modified. The medresa, though still a college, gradually usurped the
position of the gámi‘ or congregational mosque. Friday prayers were held
in the medresa, since few new gámi‘s were erected—the most important
were those of Muáyyad, Bars-Bey and Ezbek—and the court and the eastern
transept (sanctuary or chancel) were enlarged, whilst the side transepts
became smaller, and even dwindled to mere recesses. Probably the
reduction of the side transepts was due in some measure to the fact that
only two of the four orthodox schools, the Sháfi‘y and the Hánafy, had
any great following in Egypt, and there was thus no necessity for the
retention of the original plan of four separate lecture halls. The
result is that we find under the Circassian Sultans that a compromise
has been made between the gámi‘ and the medresa, and the form of the
latter has been modified to suit the requirements of the former. This
modified medresa form is almost universal in the Circassian period of
architecture, and the salient features—the enlargement of the sanctuary
and the diminishing of the side transepts—is particularly conspicuous in
the medresa of Kagmás.[75]
[Illustration: TOMBS OF THE MAMLUKS]
Even to the end, when the Ottoman conquest was obviously at hand, the
Circassian mamlúks retained much of their vigour and all their aesthetic
powers. There are few more interesting figures in their line than the
old sultan el-Ghúry, called to the throne in 1501, after four
incompetent rulers in as many years had succeeded Káit-Bey. He was a man
of bold decision and boundless energy. He restored order in the anarchy
of Cairo, levied ten months’ taxes at a stroke to replenish his
treasury; taxed water-wheels, boats, camels, Jews, Christians, servants,
every possible source; increased the customs-dues, confiscated vast
estates and levied enormous death-duties. Having restored the revenue,
and earned an evil name for extortion, he proceeded to spend it on great
public works. Canals, roads, fortifications on the coast, the
strengthening of the Citadel of Cairo, the improvement of the pilgrims’
route to Mekka, these were among his good deeds. His college (1503) and
tomb-mosque (where, however, he is not buried) still face each other at
opposite sides of the street that bears his name, the Ghuríya, though
badly mauled by the injudicious restoration of thirty years ago. He also
built a minaret for the Azhar, the mosque of the Nilometer on the island
of Roda, the Sebíl-el-Muminín or Fountain of the Faithful in the
Rumeyla, the watermills at Masr-el-‘Atíka, and restored the aqueduct to
the Citadel. He was sumptuous in his court, and generous to poets and
musicians, whilst he mulcted the heirs of his nobles and robbed orphans
of their dower. Fully alive to the importance of the Indian trade, then
menaced by the Portuguese, he furnished a fleet in the Red Sea and sent
it to India, where with the help of the governor of Diu it defeated the
interloping senhors under the younger Almeida in an engagement off Chaul
in 1508. Finally, but too late, he led his army into Syria to do battle
with the advancing Ottomans, and fell fighting at the age of seventy-six
on the fatal field of Marg Dábik, near Aleppo, where the desertion of
the two wings under Kheyr Bek and el-Ghazzály left the old sultan alone
with his bodyguard to be trampled under the horses of the troopers he
vainly tried to rally (24th August, 1516). An engagement near Heliopolis
to the north of Cairo completed the rout of the mamlúks. Tumán Bey tried
to make a stand against the invaders at the Bab-en-Nasr, but Selím took
him in the flank, and after hand to hand fighting in the streets, the
Citadel was stormed, Tumán was crucified at the Gate of Zuweyla, and
Egypt became a province of the Ottoman Empire.
[Illustration: SKETCH PLAN SHOWING THE GROWTH OF CAIRO]