THE BLUE MOSQUE AND KASR-ESH-SHEMA
I have never passed a season in Cairo without making a study of some
sort in the Blue Mosque. There are many mosques of much greater
architectural pretensions, as well as of more historical interest; but
so long as artists continue to flock to Egypt in search of subjects,
so long will the Blue Mosque serve them for material. On entering
the blue-tiled _liwán_ after a tramp through the glare and the dust
of the open spaces around the citadel, something of the pleasure is
experienced of him who, after a desert journey, first rests his eyes
on the green of cultivation. The pleasure is as much a physical as an
intellectual one, for the hot season draws one there far more than does
the cold. The temperature would be no higher were the walls a scarlet,
but I’m sure it would be more felt; and this is not only so to those
whose training inclines them to search out beautiful colour, for I have
observed that more people come here to sleep through the heat of the
day than to any other mosque.
The actual structure was raised by a certain Aksunkur during the
middle of the fourteenth century, and many much finer mosques of that
period are still remaining. It was restored more than three centuries
later by Ibrahim Agha, and, whatever the purist may have to say to the
contrary, it is these restorations which give the charm to the place.
Blue tiles cover the whole wall of the vast _liwán_; from the matted
pavement to the spring of the vaulting they spread around the
prayer-niche till, high up, they reach the ribbing of the dome. This
was a great undertaking of Ibrahim Agha, for though the tiles were not
worth the fancy prices of the present day, it must have been a very
costly affair even in his time. The domed chapel, containing the tomb
of the founder, is more beautiful still, but it is almost too dark to
make painting a possibility.
The look of neglect and gentle decay is not depressing, as in many a
Cairene building which lies under the sentence of complete renovation
or of a total collapse. Some structural repairs have lately been made,
which were doubtless badly needed; but I hope it may stop at that. The
Moslem has all he wants now for his frequent prayers or his midday nap,
and no renovation of the mosque would ever compensate for the loss of
its present charm.
The mosques of Cairo can be an endless source of instruction to any
one interested in the builder’s art, their number is so great (over
four hundred) and they are so varied in character; they suit their
surroundings as if they had grown into the spaces they occupy, and
those who worship there look as if they had been grown for that purpose.
Interesting as are the temples of ancient Egypt, they have not the
human interest of the Cairene mosques. Old and decrepit as the latter
may be, the beauty of life is still there; the temple at its best has
but the beauty of a corpse. The restoration of the mosques, if well
done, as happily is often the case here, may rob them of some temporary
charm, but it preserves to the people a valuable heritage; whereas the
restored temples will merely give future generations something to laugh
at.
What temple is grander than Tulún’s mosque? Or in which of them did the
builder’s art excel that of the Sultan Hassan? Yet how few visit these
mosques compared with the crowds who are rushed through the temples of
Upper Egypt. The one of all others which every tourist is taken to see
is the mosque of Mohammed Ali, which crowns the citadel heights. It is
imposing from its magnificent position; but who ever leaves it with any
higher thought than of the money which has been lavished on it?
An appreciative guide to the mosques may now be found in Douglas
Sladen’s _Oriental Cairo_, and to do here inadequately what he has done
so well is not the purpose of these pages.
If so much enjoyment is to be got out of the study of Saracenic
structures, what about the early Christian churches? They provide
less æsthetic entertainment than do the mosques, solely because their
number is very much more restricted. But where in this wide world can
any one interested in the dawn of Christianity find a spot to appeal
more to his sympathies than in the seven Coptic churches which cluster
round the old fortress of Babylon? Concealed as they are from public
view, one enters their precincts with much the same feelings as on
entering the catacombs of Rome. Within the walls of this Christian
settlement, dark and narrow passages lead to the unobtrusive interiors
of the churches. The search for the doorkeeper, and when he is found,
the primitive key with which he unbolts the ponderous lock, and the
man’s dress, which twelve centuries of Mohammedan rule has not altered,
all tend to take one back to the days when in these hidden places the
shrines of Abu-Sarga and of Kadisa-Barbára were raised.
The first of these two, which is more familiar to us as Saint Sergius,
is usually visited before the others. It dates from the tenth century,
when the more tolerant rule of the first Fátimid khalifs would allow
of its construction; but it stands on the site of a church of a very
much earlier date. The crypt of its predecessor still remains, and this
takes one back to the times when Memphis stood where some rubbish hills
now only mark its site on the western banks of the Nile; when Bab-li-On
was in truth the southern gate of On, the ‘City of the Sun,’ of which
nothing now is visible but the obelisk of Heliopolis.
A tree marks the spot where the Virgin and the child Jesus are said
to have rested. It is about a mile this side of the obelisk, and some
fifteen miles from the fortress of Babylon which the Romans built on
the site of the gate of On, and whose name it retained. Tradition has
it that near this tree the Virgin bathed her child in some brackish
water, and this becoming sweet, the pilgrims to this day drink of that
fountain. Tradition helps us to trace the journey of the Holy Family
from this tree to the crypt below the church of Abu-Sarga, for it
tells us of another resting-place about midway, and that is Joseph’s
well on the citadel hill.
We are taken down some dilapidated steps to visit the crypt, which
we are told was the Egyptian house of Joseph and Mary while they hid
their child from Herod’s wrath. Needless to say that the crypt is a
Christian structure, and of a later date than the Roman fortress, which
at its earliest is placed in the second century of our Lord. But there
is no reason why this spot should not have been chosen by the Holy
Family after their flight into Egypt. Some ruined shrine to a god of
the decadent mythology may have stood here in which they may have made
their home, as the early Christians oftentimes did some three centuries
later. To build a church on so hallowed a spot would have been the
first thought of these Christians, if any record still remained. When
Babylon was besieged by the Mohammedan invaders, this church might have
then been destroyed, or if it survived so long a siege, it would have
disappeared after Merwán, the last of the Omayyad khalifs, had set fire
to Fostat.
Be this as it may, it is quite probable that this pretty tradition has
some foundation in fact.
There is little at present to see in the crypt by the light of the
tallow dip which the Coptic servant holds in his fingers, but I should
have regretted not to have seen that little. The tenth-century church
above it is a little gem, and however much the dirt of those who attend
it, and the formal ritual which few of the worshippers can understand,
may prejudice one against the modern Copts, the fact remains that their
faith has withstood centuries of persecution. Stanley Lane-Poole
wisely remarks that ‘no one can stand unmoved in a Coptic church
during the celebration of the Mass, or hear the worshippers shout with
one voice, just as they did some fifteen hundred years ago, the loud
response, “I believe this is the Truth,” without emotion.’
The whole of the Coptic settlement here is built within the girdle-wall
of the Roman castle of Babylon, or ‘el-Kasr-esh-Shema,’ as the natives
still call it. This Arabic name, ‘The Castle of the Sun,’ emphasises
the position it held in regard to ancient Heliopolis, of which it was
a bulwark. We also hear mention of this esh-Shema in the prophecies of
Jeremiah xliii. 13: ‘He shall break also the images of Beth-shemesh,
that is in the land of Egypt; and the houses of the gods of the
Egyptians shall he burn with fire.’
Perched up between two bastions of the Roman castle, and over its gate,
is the Mu’állaka or the ‘hanging’ church. Less rich in traditions
than its neighbour, with some of its romance destroyed by a modern
approach, it gives the intelligent visitor even greater pleasure than
Abu-Sarga which he has seen. He may confuse its plan with that of the
neighbouring churches, and time may obliterate the construction of
its piers and barrel-shaped roof, but never will he forget the little
Byzantine pulpit standing on the fifteen slender Saracenic columns, and
relieved against as rich a screen as ever closed in a sanctuary.
I have attempted to enter into more of the details of these Coptic
churches in _Below the Cataracts_, also of the history of Fostat, the
‘Town of the Tent,’ which Amr Ibn el-Âs built around the fortress of
Babylon, and which during successive dynasties of khalifs was extended
until it covered the space now occupied by the old city of Cairo.
The topography and history has been admirably given to us by Stanley
Lane-Poole; students of early Christian architecture can find all that
is known of the Coptic churches in that scholarly work of Dr. A. J.
Butler, _The Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt_.
I cannot, however, refrain from mentioning the ‘hanging garden’
which adjoins the Mu’állaka. The palms which grow there, high above
the fertilising Nile, are watered by the faithful to perpetuate the
tradition that the Virgin Mary, on arriving at her new abode, first
broke her fast with some dates which she culled from a palm-tree
growing near this spot.
Four more Coptic churches are within easy reach of this one, and as
parts of them date back to the third century, there is much to occupy
the time of the archæologist even if the artist does not always find
what is best suited to his brush.
The fortress of Babylon and the Coptic settlement within its walls
are two or three miles south-west of the main part of the city,
and situated at the back of an old suburb, opposite the island of
Rodah, known as Old Cairo. This name is misleading, for the present
mediæval Cairo existed long before this suburb, which was built on
land recovered from the Nile after Fostat had become a ruinous waste.
It looks old enough now, but it does not require many generations to
impart an ancient appearance to the poorer Arab dwellings.
The Kasr-esh-Shema, on the higher level, is that part which might
justly be called Old, for it is the nucleus from which the present huge
city developed.
There are also several Coptic churches in Cairo proper, and one in Beyn
es-Sureen, near the Armenian Church, is said to be the oldest in Egypt,
and consequently one of the earliest churches in Christendom. A portion
of the Copts, who have joined communion with the Roman Catholics, have
their church close by. I saw a great deal of their priest, and of some
leading members of his community, while I spent a summer in a village
on the Lebanon. They had gone there partly for their health and partly
to escape the hottest months of the Egyptian summer. The priest was
a very different type of man intellectually from the lethargic monks
I met in the convents at Wadi el-Natrún. I am indebted to him for
much information about the Catholic churches in the Near East. He had
been prepared for Holy Orders in Rome, although he and his community
are under allegiance to the Pope, and do not call themselves Roman
Catholics, but members of the Coptic Catholic Church, while they are
very tenacious of the privileges which they secured when they seceded
from the main body of the Copts. The priests are allowed to marry,
and also to say Mass in the obsolete Coptic language. My friend told
me that though allowed to marry if he wished to do so, he had come to
the conclusion that the Latin Church was right in enforcing celibacy
on its clergy. ‘No! no! no!’ from the ladies who were present at our
conversation, shows that my friend’s views were not popular.
Similar privileges have been allowed to the other members of eastern
Christian churches when they submitted to the Church of Rome. It is
the exception when their priests go to a theological college at Rome,
and the great majority evidently do not hold my friend’s views on
matrimony, for few remain single.
As only the Church of Rome repeats the Mass in Latin, it might have
been expected that the eastern churches under her authority would have
made use of languages understood by their congregations. But this
is not so. No Copt can understand the Coptic liturgy which he hears
repeated; only a few cultured Syrian Maronites can follow the Syriac
Mass, and the Catholic Greeks, the Armenians, and the Chaldeans all
hear the liturgy in languages long obsolete.
My friend could follow the meaning of the Coptic phrases he daily used;
but apart from these, Coptic is a dead language to him. He kindly
repeated the Lord’s Prayer to me, and, with possibly an Arabic accent,
his words must have sounded the same as those in use in the days of
the Ptolemies. A few Coptic words have still survived and are in use
amongst the peasantry of Upper Egypt, and possibly philologists may
discover some in the colloquial Arabic of the Delta. It is in Upper
Egypt that we still find the type portrayed in the ancient sculptures,
amongst the Moslems as well as the Christians; but in the Delta the
Copt shows his ancestry more conspicuously, as the Moslems amongst whom
he dwells have there a greater admixture of Arab blood. I was very
much struck with the resemblance a Coptic gentleman, who was staying
at the same inn as myself, bore to the celebrated ‘Sheykh-el-Beled,’
the fifth dynasty statue in the Cairo museum. He was younger and not as
stout as the statue, but he might have passed for a younger brother.
The broad nose and full lips, the rather prominent cheek-bones, and a
slight upward inclination of the eyes from the nose, were all there as
in his prototype of some sixty centuries ago. I remarked to him that
while we were savages his forebears were the greatest people in the
world. His answer was, ‘Yes; and now you are the greatest people in
the world, while we are the savages.’ Lane remarks that the Egyptian,
in answering a question, is more likely to say what he thinks may be
agreeable to his hearer than to stick to the absolute truth. This
looked rather like it.
I have heard our missionaries accused of deceiving the subscribers
to the missions, by stating the numbers of their converts and not
specifying whether these converts were from Islam or were merely Copts
who had changed from one form of Christianity to another. If this is
true, the subscribers might justly feel that they had been deceived.
But I should like further proof of this accusation before accepting
the truth of it; the tendency of Europeans in the East is to believe
anything which may discredit the missionary. That Islam is a barrier
which the missionary has so far failed to break through is true enough,
and missionaries whom I have met have been the first to admit this.
Can one wonder, then, that they turn from so barren a soil to sow
their seed amongst the Copts, who have shown some tendency to receive
it? The faith of the Copts has sustained them through centuries of
persecution; but it is amazing how stagnant a faith may sometimes hold
a people together.
When I think of those lazy monks at Wadi el-Natrún; their neglected
chapels; their barren gardens, though water was there had they the
energy to draw it; I marvel how this people has ever risen to be a
power in Egypt. That they are a power to be reckoned with we have
lately seen. The common mistake of judging a people from a few
specimens who are forced into one’s notice is evident here. A very
much larger proportion of them are literate compared with the Moslem
Egyptians, and they fill, in consequence, a much larger proportion of
situations where some instruction, other than that of the Koran, is
necessary. The grievance they are ventilating is that they do not get
their share of the highly salaried government posts, and as far as I
could ascertain, they have a subject of complaint. Their numbers will
probably increase largely, now that persecution no more drives their
weaker brethren into the folds of Islam. They are fervent in business
if they do not always serve the Lord, and some have accumulated great
wealth.
The black and sometimes the blue turban, which distinguishes them from
the Mohammedans, was originally forced on them with other and more
vexatious enactments; they still wear it, however, though of course
free to put on what they like. The women used to wear the face veil
when out of doors, more as a protection than as an ordinance of their
religion, and at present most of them have discarded it.