IN WHICH I GET ANOTHER SERVANT AND HUNT FOR A CROCODILE; ALSO A
CONTINUATION OF THE STORY OF PRINCESS ZOHRA
I found a man, who was used to attending artists on their rounds,
sooner than I had hoped for. He was a rougher type of man than my
last one, but one to whom I took much more readily. He spoke no
English, which was in his favour, for though this might sometimes be
inconvenient, it suited my purpose better to practise my Arabic than to
have him airing his English on me.
Mahmood Hanafy is his name. I give it with pleasure, and in hopes
that possibly these lines may be read by some one who might be glad
of his services. No two men of the same nationality could have been
a greater contrast than this Mahmood and the disgraced Mansoor. The
more traps Mahmood had to carry, the more he seemed to like it; when
I suggested taking a cab, he would say the place was no distance, and
cabs were very dear--he had evidently been well trained by former
brother-brushes. Mansoor, on the other hand, always had a cab near the
hotel when we started, and would place my sketching things on the box
in hopes I would take it. Distances were always enormous with him, and
when I took a cab, he would declare that the doubled fare asked was
none too much. The extra squeeze he could then get out of the cabby
harmonised with his natural laziness. Mahmood was a plucky fellow, and
ready to clear a street of people if he thought they were in my way;
while Mansoor’s bravery never went further than slapping a child if the
parents were not present, whereas, if some hooligans promised to be a
nuisance, he generally slipped away.
Mahmood had one drawback which his predecessor had not, and that was
a loud voice. Now, as no pillow was ever thick enough to prevent my
hearing my watch ticking, a huge volume of sound was not necessary
when he answered my questions. If he thought I did not understand
him, he evidently took it for hardness of hearing, and his answers
would be loud enough to startle the street. I could not correct him
of this, though he tried to mend. Trained as a donkey-boy, this voice
had doubtless been of use both in directing his beast and in the
altercations which often end a ride. Possibly the deafest donkeys were
placed in his care. He was now the owner of many donkeys, he told me,
and he let them out by the month instead of running after one himself.
He was always ready, however, to run after one if I should require it.
His dress was more humble than that of Mansoor, but he never pleaded
poverty to try and get something over his wage. He told me he had all
he wanted, and should I not wish to use him for a few days, he would
willingly rest till his services would be required.
The other man, though smartly dressed, had always some tale of poverty
handy when I gave him his wage, and always begged for an advance on
his future pay. Had he not a number of people dependent on him? and the
cost of food, had it not risen so much? I found out afterwards that
he had no dependants, and that he sponged on his sisters when he was
out of work. He had the appearance of one addicted to hashsheesh, and
probably only smoked this of an evening, for I could never detect the
smell.
This drug is happily now forbidden to enter the country, and strong
measures are taken to prevent its use. A certain amount does, however,
get smuggled in, and the _ḥashshash_ or victim to the drug can still
procure it if he can pay for its enhanced price. The smell of its
fumes was much more familiar formerly in the humbler coffee-shops;
but it is not quite absent now. It is often mixed with _tumbák_, a
kind of Persian tobacco, and is smoked in the _gózeh_, a pipe made
of a cocoanut-shell, which has a long cane stem. One who indulges
slightly in the habit would not be termed a _ḥashshash_ any more than a
moderate drinker in England would be termed a drunkard. The opprobrium
attached to the term is much increased through its association with
the _Ḥashshashseyn_ of the time of the Crusades, whom we know as the
Assassins--the subjects of the ‘Sultan of the Castles and Fortresses,’
more commonly called ‘the old man of the mountain.’ They were said to
indulge freely in hashsheesh when sent on some murderous errand by
their chief. Rowdy or riotous people are often termed ‘Hashshasheen’
whether they be addicted to the drug or not.
Seeing an excitable crowd quite recently, in one of the principal
squares of Cairo, I approached to see what was the matter. A
brutal-looking man was struggling with a couple of policemen who were
taking him off to jail, while others were placing on a stretcher a
youth who was terribly hacked about his face and head. On inquiry I
heard that the man in charge of the police was employed at the public
slaughter-house, that he was given to hashsheesh, and that in a fit
of madness he had just assaulted with his butcher’s knife the wounded
youth. The term _hashshash_, which was freely used by the crowd, had a
particularly gruesome sound on that occasion.
Loud and furious were the comments of Mahmood, and had he not been
carrying my materials he would have joined in the struggle with the
butcher.
As this took place just within the limits of the European quarter, it
was fully reported in the foreign Cairo papers. The youth succumbed to
his wounds, and the _hashshash_ paid the death penalty.
I was on my way to the Khaleeg to look for a subject which had
attracted me on a former visit, and before this canal had been filled
in by the tramway company. A change for the better, possibly, from a
hygienic point of view, and also as a means of communication; but a sad
loss to the picturesque. Many historic buildings which backed on to the
canal have been pulled down, and commonplace frontages will soon blot
out all remembrance of them.
The tramway having come to stay, it is as well to make the best of
it, and to use its cars along the couple of miles which bisect the
city from north to south. From this route many a peep into some old
courtyard, or the back of a mosque or palm-shaded shrine, may induce a
descent from the cars and a tramp along the dusty road.
Just beyond the present governorat was an angle of the enclosure known
as the ‘guarded city.’ This formed more or less of a square of rather
more than half a mile each way, and its western wall stood on the east
side of the present filled-in canal. The building of this enclosure
marks such an important date in the mediæval history of Egypt that a
few words here may not be amiss.
Stanley Lane Poole tells us, in the _Story of Cairo_, how in 959
Gawhar, the victorious general of el-Mo’izz (the first Khalif of the
Fatimid dynasty), entered Masr, as the capital of Egypt was then
called, and still is by its native inhabitants. Plague and famine had
so reduced the population, that scarcely any resistance was offered
to the troops which Gawhar had led from Tunis into the valley of the
Nile. His first thought was to build a fortified place away from the
plague-stricken city, and yet near enough to keep it in subjection.
Beyond its northern extremity he pitched his camp on a sandy waste,
unobstructed by any buildings save an old convent. The prevailing winds
being from the north, hygienic reasons were also in favour of this site.
When the boundaries of the enclosure were marked out, astrologers
were consulted as to an auspicious hour in which to start digging the
foundations. From poles stuck in the ground ropes were stretched, from
which bells were hung, and thousands of men stood ready with shovel
and pick to dig out the trenches as soon as the astrologers shook
the poles, and by the tinkling of the bells announced the auspicious
moment. The intentions of the astrologers were, however, forestalled
by a raven who, alighting on a rope, set the bells aringing, and every
spade was instantly stuck into the soil. It was during the hour when
the planet Mars (el-Káhir) was in the ascendant--an evil omen for the
future peace of the place. ‘Masr el-Káhira’ thus became the name,
not only of the fortified enclosure, but also of the adjacent city.
‘El-Káhira,’ or the Martial, is that from which we get our Cairo. The
omen was turned to good account by the astrologers. Messengers were
sent to Mo’izz to announce that the foundations of a triumphant Masr
had been laid; the name of the last of the Abbasid Khalifs was no more
heard in the prayers which were offered up in the mosque of Amr, and
Mo’izz was proclaimed the ruler of Egypt. His conquests now extended
from the Atlantic to the Arabian desert, and for two centuries the
Fatimid dynasty ruled the country.
Walls, described as being thick enough to allow four horses to be
driven abreast on them, were built round the enclosure; the foundations
of a vast palace worthy of the great Khalif were laid; and buildings
were planned to accommodate his court, and those who would guard his
sacred person. The common folk were not admitted within the gates of
the enclosure after the Khalif had taken up his residence. It was then
designated ‘Kahira-el-Mahrusa,’ or the guarded city.
[Illustration: MOSQUE OF MOHAMMED BEY]
The Sheea heresy which Mo’izz had fostered, whether from conviction or
from policy, had a far-reaching influence on the destiny of the country.
In the mosques orthodox Moslems were replaced by sheykhs of the
favoured sect. Christians and Jews were tolerated and often put in high
positions. What civilisation gained here it more than lost by cutting
off Cairo from the great centres of Saracenic learning, and though bent
on destroying the power of the Sunnee or orthodox Moslems, there is no
reason to suppose that leanings of Mo’izz were towards Christianity. To
remedy this he built the university mosque of el-Azhar, proudly called
‘The Resplendent.’ He endowed it liberally, and gave the students
every opportunity to study the Sheea teaching which had caused the
rift in the Mohammedan world. A great impetus was given to art by the
removal of the prohibition to copy any natural objects; and birds and
beasts, flowers and foliage were freely made use of in design during
the Fatimid period. Unfortunately little remains of this, for, when
the orthodox party gained the ascendant during the rule of the House
of Salahedin, these decorations were ‘a mark of the beast’ and were in
most cases destroyed.
Vivid descriptions exist of the splendour of Mo’izz and the great ‘East
Palace’ which he built. But nothing of all this now remains except the
Azhar, which justly is still one of the most famous monuments of Cairo.
Parallel to the canal runs a narrow street called ‘Beyn-es-Sureyn’ or
‘Between the walls,’ and this conducts into another called ‘sharia
el-Benât,’ which means the street of the sisters. It is here I have
come to make a study of a doorway of little architectural pretensions;
it leads into a house built in the middle of the nineteenth century and
which backed into the canal. A terrific-looking crocodile used to hang
over the door, and this one as well as others had caught my attention
during former visits as being a characteristic ornament of a Nile city.
Stories, I have since heard, refer to this crocodile, and made me wish
to make a drawing of it. Children used to pass it and speak with bated
breath; for it was said that it had grown to its size from feeding on
the children, the parents of whom the master of the house had slain in
Sennaar.
The house was built by the awe-inspiring Defterdar Ahmed, whom Mohammed
Ali had sent to the Sudan to avenge the murder of one of his sons, and
so terrible were his acts of retribution that he is since known as the
‘Tiger of Sennaar.’ His chief interest, however, for the present is,
that, partly as a reward for his valour, the great Pasha gave him one
of his daughters in marriage. Mohammed Ali is reported to have said
that the Tiger would be a fitting mate to his Tigress.
If my readers have not forgotten the fate of O’Donald, the young Irish
officer, they may recognise in this Tigress the lady of his undoing.
It is related that the princess Zohra, after the murder of her lover,
was for many days as one bereft of her senses. The first conscious act
we hear of her is when she stole from the palace in the dead of night
and found her way to the field where O’Donald was buried. The jackals
and dogs had left no trace visible of where the unfortunate man was
placed,--they had done their work as well as Abbas could have wished.
The poor woman was found at break of day, grubbing with her hands in
the soil to find the body of her beloved one. She was forcibly led back
to the palace and the matter was reported to her father. The servants
were severely punished for allowing her to escape from the hareem, and
Zohra was kept in strict confinement.
When the Defterdar returned soon after, from his campaign in the Sudan,
Ali wished to honour him as highly as he could. He saw also in him
one who had strength of will sufficient to be a match for his wilful
daughter. Ahmed was proud of the alliance, and built and furnished a
palace here in the ‘sharia el-Benât,’ worthy to be the home of his
exalted bride. Whether the Defterdar’s life was a happy one we are not
told. But it was a short one:--his death was due to a stroke, said the
court physicians; poison, whispered the neighbours; and poison, said
Abbas, whose hatred of his aunt and former playmate grew as time went
on.
Little was seen or heard of the widowed princess for some time after.
Few ladies from the different hareems were bold enough to call on her,
and the huge crocodile seemed more like a bogey to frighten people off
than an emblem of luck to the house which he adorned.
The mysterious disappearance of one or two young men became the talk
of the neighbourhood, and this increased as the absence of others
was observed. The body of one was found in the canal close to the
water-gate of Zohra’s palace, and shortly after this a second one
was seen there. No one dared voice their suspicions; but when the
public story-tellers (the _shoara_) told of Kattalet-esh-Shugan, the
Arabian Messalina, knowing looks were passed amongst the audience.
The tragedies were repeated from time to time, and every mother of a
handsome son trembled lest he should be caught in the toils of one she
hardly dared name, but whose name was in the thoughts of all.
Abbas kept himself well informed as to what went on in Zohra’s palace,
but he abided his time until Mohammed Ali should return from the wars,
or until fortune should favour his accession to the viceregal throne.
In 1841 the firmân of investiture, as it is called, brought the wars,
which Mohammed Ali had waged with varying success, to a close. The
hereditary sovereignty of Egypt had been secured to the family of the
great Pasha and, except for the annual tribute to be paid to the Porte,
Egypt had become an independent state.
Prince Abbas now informed his grandfather of the goings-on in his
daughter’s palace. Gentle persuasion was never a characteristic of the
old gentleman, and the manner in which he put a stop to these scandals
reads like a story in the _Arabian Nights_. It is related that thirty
masons and twenty-five donkeys laden with bricks were immediately
despatched to wall up, during that very day, every outside window and
door except the one surmounted by the crocodile. A company of soldiers
were also sent to see that these orders were strictly carried out.
Before sundown Zohra’s palace had become a veritable prison.
A modest house immediately facing the crocodile was inhabited by a
Coptic scribe. This innocent man and his family were bundled out with
all their belongings, and his house was turned into a guard-room. A
watch was kept here day and night to see that no one, or nothing but
what was necessary to the upkeep of the household, should pass through
the one access to the palace.
We are not told how the princess passed the next few years in her
prison. Mohammed Ali sank into his dotage, and the reins of government
were taken over by his adopted son Ibrahim. Prince Abbas had not to
wait long before the legitimate succession came to him, for Ibrahim
Pasha died within a year of his viceroyalty and shortly before the
demented Mohammed Ali’s decease. Abbas then became the ruler of Egypt.
Zohra now realised her danger in remaining in Cairo. In spite of the
guard set to watch her movements she succeeded in escaping from the
canal side of her palace, and she crossed into Syria before her flight
became known to her nephew. From Syria she repaired to Constantinople,
where she sought and obtained the protection of the Sultan of Turkey.
We will leave her there for the present, and perhaps we may refer to
her doings later on.
The crocodile I was in search of had disappeared, and nothing remained
whereby I could exactly locate the palace. The story of Zohra, though
of so recent a date, seems now to take its place with the tragedies
enacted within Mo’izz’s ‘guarded city.’