reading, writing, or resting; if the comfortable feeling produced by a
brightly burning little fire in the cool of the evening is necessary to
him for his health or his pleasure--then he should not attempt to spend
the entire winter in the city of the Khedive. The mean temperature there
during the cold season--that is, six weeks in January and February--is
said to be 58 deg. Fahrenheit. But this is in the open air; in the houses
the temperature is not more than 54 deg. or 52 deg., and often in the evening
lower. The absence of fires makes all the difficulty; for out-of-doors
the air may be and often is charming; but upon coming in from the bright
sunshine the atmosphere of one's sitting-room and bedroom seems chilly
and prison-like. There are, generally speaking, no chimneys in Cairo,
even in the modern quarter. Each of the hotels has one or two open
grates, but only one or two. Southern countries, however, are banded
together--so it seems to the shivering Northerner--to keep up the
delusion that they have no cold weather; as they have it not, why
provide for it? In Italy in the winter the Italians spread rugs over
their floors, hang tapestries upon their walls, pile cushions
everywhere, and carpet their sofas with long-haired skins; this they
call warmth. But a fireless room, with the thermometer on its walls
standing at 35 deg., is not warm, no matter how many cushions you may put
into it; and one hates to believe, too, that necessary accompaniments
of health are roughened faces and frost-bitten noses, and the extreme
ugliness of hands swollen and red. "Perhaps if one could have in Cairo
an open hearth and three sticks, it would, with all the other pleasures
which one finds here, be too much--would reach wickedness!" was a remark
we heard last winter. A still more forcible exclamation issued from the
lips of a pilgrim from New York one evening in January. Looking round
her sitting-room upon the roses gathered that day in the open air, upon
the fly-brushes and fans and Oriental decorations, this misguided person
moaned, in an almost tearful voice: "Oh, for a blizzard and a _fire_!"
The reasonable traveller, of course, ought to remember that with a
climate which has seven months of debilitating heat, and three and a
half additional months of summer weather, the attention of the natives
is not strongly turned towards devices for warmth. This consideration,
however, does not make the fireless rooms agreeable during the few weeks
that remain.
[Illustration: THE NILE BRIDGE, CAIRO
From a photograph by Sebah, Cairo]
Another surprise is the rain. "In our time it rained in Egypt," writes
Strabo, as though chronicling a miracle. Either the climate has changed,
or Strabo was not a disciple of the realistic school, for in the January
of this truthful record the rain descended in such a deluge in Cairo
that the water came above the knees of the horses, and a ferry-boat was
established for two days in one of the principal streets. Later the rain
descended a second time with almost equal violence, and showers were by
no means infrequent. (It may be mentioned in parenthesis that there was
heavy rain at Luxor, four hundred and fifty miles south of Cairo, on the
19th of February.) One does not object to these rains; they are in
themselves agreeable; one wishes simply to note the impudence of the
widely diffused statement that Egypt is a rainless land. So far nothing
has been said against the winter climate of Cairo; objection has been
made merely to the fireless condition of the houses--a fault which can
be remedied. But now a real enemy must be mentioned--namely, the kamsin.
This is a hot wind from the south, which parches the skin and takes the
life out of one; it fills the air with a thick grayness, which you
cannot call mist, because it is perfectly dry, and through which the sun
goes on steadily shining, with a light so weird that one can think of
nothing but the feelings of the last man, or the opening of the sixth
seal. The regular kamsin season does not begin before May; the
occasional days of it that bring suffering to travellers occur in
February, March, and April. But what are five or six days of kamsin amid
four winter months whose average temperature is 58 deg. Fahrenheit? It is
human nature to detect faults in climates which have been greatly
praised, just as one counts every freckle on a fair face that is
celebrated for its beauty. Give Cairo a few hearth fires, and its winter
climate will seem delightful; although not so perfect as that of
Florida, in our country, because in Florida there are no January
mosquitoes.
MOSQUES
It must be remembered that Cairo is Arabian. "The Nile is Egypt," says a
proverb. The Nile is mythical, Pharaonic, Ptolemaic; but Cairo owes its
existence solely to the Arabian conquerors of the country, who built a
fortress and palace here in A.D. 969.
Very Arabian is still the call to prayer which is chanted by the
muezzins from the minarets of the mosques several times during the day.
We were passing through a crowded quarter near the Mooski one afternoon
in January, when there was wafted across the consciousness a faint,
sweet sound. It was far away, and one heard it half impatiently at
first, unwilling to lift one's attention even for an instant from the
motley scenes nearer at hand. But at length, teased into it by the very
sweetness, we raised our eyes, and then it was seen that it came from a
half-ruined minaret far above us. Round the narrow outer gallery of this
slender tower a man in dark robes was pacing slowly, his arms
outstretched, his face upturned to heaven. Not once did he look below as
he continued his aerial round, his voice giving forth the chant which we
had heard--"Allah akbar; Allah akbar; la Allah ill' Allah. Heyya
alas-salah!" (God is great; God is great; there is no God but God, and
Mohammed is his prophet. Come to prayer.) Again, another day, in the old
Touloun quarter, we heard the sound, but it was much nearer. It came
from a window but little above our heads, the small mosque within the
quadrangle having no minaret. This time I could note the muezzin
himself. As he could not see the sky from where he stood, his eyes were
closed. I have never beheld a more concentrated expression of devotion
than his quiet face expressed; he might have been miles away from the
throng below, instead of three feet, as his voice gave forth the same
strange, sweet chant. The muezzins are often selected from the ranks of
the blind, as the duties of the office are within their powers; but this
singer at the low window had closed his eyes voluntarily. The last time
I saw the muezzin was towards the end of the season, when the spring was
far advanced. Cairo gayety was at its height, the streets were crowded
with Europeans returning from the races, the new quarter was as modern
as Paris. But there are minarets even in the new quarter, or near it;
and on one of the highest of these turrets, outlined against the glow of
the sunset, I saw the slowly pacing figure, with its arms outstretched
over the city--"Allah akbar; Allah akbar; come, come to prayer."
There are over four hundred mosques in Cairo, and many of them are in a
dilapidated condition. Some of these were erected by private means to
perpetuate the name and good deeds of the founder and his family; then,
in the course of time, owing to the extinction or to the poverty of the
descendants, the endowment fund has been absorbed or turned into another
channel, and the ensuing neglect has ended in ruin. When a pious Muslim
of to-day wishes to perform a good work, he builds a new mosque. It
would never occur to him to repair the old one near at hand, which
commemorates the generosity of another man. It must be remembered that
a mosque has no established congregation, whose duty it is to take care
of it. A mosque, in fact, to Muslims has not an exclusively religious
character. It is a place prepared for prayer, with the fountain which is
necessary for the preceding ablutions required by Mohammed, and the
niche towards Mecca which indicates the position which the suppliant
must take; but it is also a place for meditation and repose. The poorest
and most ragged Muslim has the right to enter whenever he pleases; he
can say his prayers, or he can simply rest; he can quench his thirst; he
can eat the food which he has brought with him; if he is tired, he can
sleep. In mosques not often visited by travellers I have seen men
engaged in mending their clothes, and others cooking food with a
portable furnace. In the church-yard of Charlton Kings, England, there
is a tombstone of the last century with an inscription which concludes
as follows: "And his dieing request to his Sons and Daughters was, Never
forsake the Charitys until the Poor had got their Rites." In the Cairo
mosques the poor have their rites--both with the _gh_ and without. The
sacred character of a mosque is, in truth, only made conspicuous when
unbelievers wish to enter. Then the big shuffling slippers are brought
out to cover the shoes of the Christian infidels, so that they may not
touch and defile the mattings reserved for the faithful.
[Illustration: BEFORE THE LITTLE MOSQUE
From a photograph by Sebah, Cairo]
After long neglect, something is being done at last to arrest the ruin
of the more ancient of these temples. A commission has been appointed by
the present government whose duty is the preservation of the monuments
of Arabian art; occasionally, therefore, in a mosque one finds
scaffolding in place and a general dismantlement. One can only hope for
the best--in much the same spirit in which one hopes when one sees the
beautiful old front of St. Mark's, Venice, gradually encroached upon by
the new raw timbers. But in Cairo, at least, the work of repairing goes
on very slowly; three hundred mosques, probably, out of the four hundred
still remain untouched, and many of these are adorned with a delicate
beauty which is unrivalled. I know no quest so enchanting as a search
through the winding lanes of the old quarters for these gems of
Saracenic taste, which no guide-book has as yet chronicled, no dragoman
discovered. The street is so narrow that your donkey fills almost all
the space; passers-by are obliged to flatten themselves against the
walls in response to the Oriental adjurations of your donkey-boy behind:
"Take heed, O maid!" "Your foot, O chief!" Presently you see a
minaret--there is always a minaret somewhere; but it is not always easy
to find the mosque to which it belongs, hidden, perhaps, as it is,
behind other buildings in the crowded labyrinth. At length you observe a
door with a dab or two of the well-known Saracenic honeycomb-work above
it; instantly you dismount, climb the steps, and look in. You are almost
sure to find treasures, either fragments of the pearly Cairo mosaic, or
a wonderful ceiling, or gilded Kufic (old Arabian text) inscriptions and
arabesques, or remains of the ancient colored glass which changes its
tint hour by hour. Best of all, sometimes you find a space open to the
sky, with a fountain in the centre, the whole surrounded by arcades of
marble columns adorned with hanging lamps (or, rather, with the bronze
chains which once carried the lamps), and with suspended ostrich
eggs--the emblems of good-luck. One day, when my donkey was making his
way through a dilapidated region, I came upon a mosque so small that it
seemed hardly more than a base for its exquisite minaret, which towered
to an unusual height above it. Of course I dismounted. The little mosque
was open; but as it was never visited by strangers, it possessed no
slippers, and without coverings of some kind it was impossible that
unsanctified shoes, such as mine, should touch its matted floor; the
bent, ancient guardian glared at me fiercely for the mere suggestion.
One sees sometimes (even in 1890) in the eyes of old men sitting in the
mosques the original spirit of Islam shining still. Once their religion
commanded the sword; they would like to grasp it again, if they could.
It was suggested that the matting might, for a backsheesh, be rolled up
and put away, as the place was small. But the stern old keeper remained
inflexible. Then the offer was made that so many piasters--ten (that is,
fifty cents)--would be given to the blind. Now the blind are sacred in
Cairo; this offer, therefore, was successful; all the matting was
carefully rolled and stacked in a corner, the three or four Muslims
present withdrew to the door, and the unbeliever was allowed to enter.
She found herself in a temple of color which was incredibly rich. The
floor was of delicate marble, and every inch of the walls was covered
with a mosaic of porphyry and jasper, adorned with gilded inscriptions
and bands of Kufic text; the tall pulpit, made of mahogany-colored wood,
was carved from top to bottom in intricate designs, and ornamented with
odd little plaques of fretted bronze; the sacred niche was lined with
alabaster, turquoise, and gleaming mother-of-pearl; the only light came
through the thick glass of the small windows far above, in
downward-falling rays of crimson, violet, and gold. The old mosaic-work
of the Cairo mosques is composed of small plates of marble and of
mother-of-pearl arranged in geometrical designs; the delicacy of the
minute cubes employed, and the intricacy of the patterns, are
marvellous; the color is faint, unless turquoise has been added; but the
glitter of the mother-of-pearl gives the whole an appearance like that
of jewelry. Upon our departure five blind men were found drawn up in a
line at the door. It would not have been difficult to collect fifty.
[Illustration: TOMB-MOSQUE OF KAIT BEY]
Another day, as my donkey was taking me under a stone arch, I saw on one
side a flight of steps which seemed to say "Come!" At the top of the
steps I found a picture. It was a mosque of the early pattern, with a
large square court open to the sky. In the centre of this court was a
well, under a marble dome, and here grew half a dozen palm-trees. Across
the far end extended the sanctuary, which was approached through arcades
of massive pillars painted in dark red bands. The pulpit was so old that
it had lost its beauty; but the entire back wall of this Mecca side
was covered with beautiful tiles of the old Cairo tints (turquoise-blue
and dark blue), in designs of foliage, with here and there an entire
tree. This splendid wall was in itself worth a journey. A few single
tiles had been inserted at random in the great red columns, reminding
one of the majolica plates which tease the eyes of those who care for
such things--set impossibly high as they are--in the campaniles of old
Italian churches along the Pisan coast.
It may be asked, What is the shape of a mosque--its exterior? What is it
like? You are more sure about this shape before you reach the Khedive's
city than you are when you have arrived there; and after you have
visited three or four mosques each day for a week, the clearness of your
original idea, such as it was, has vanished forever. The mosques of
Cairo are so embedded in other structures, so surrounded and pushed and
elbowed by them, that you can see but little of their external form;
sometimes a facade painted in stripes is visible, but often a doorway is
all. One must except the mosque of Sultan Hassan (which, to some of us,
is dangerously like Aristides the Just). This mosque stands by itself,
so that you can, if you please, walk round it. The chief interest of the
walk (for the exterior, save for the deep porch, which can hardly be
called exterior, is not beautiful) lies in the thought that as the walls
were constructed of stones brought from the pyramids, perhaps among
them, with faces turned inward, there may be blocks of that lost outer
coating of the giant tombs--a coating which was covered with
hieroglyphics. Now that hieroglyphics can be read, we may some day learn
the true history of these monuments by pulling down a dozen of the Cairo
mosques. But unless the commission bestirs itself, that task will not be
needed for the edifice of Sultan Hassan; it is coming down, piece by
piece, unaided. The mosques of Cairo are not beautiful as a Greek temple
or an early English cathedral is beautiful; the charm of Saracenic
architecture lies more in decoration than in the management of massive
forms. The genius of the Arabian builders manifested itself in ornament,
in rich effects of color; they had endless caprices, endless fancies,
and expressed them all--as well they might, for all were beautiful. The
same free spirit carved the grotesques of the old churches of France and
Germany. But the Arabians had no love for grotesques; they displayed
their liberty in lovely fantasies. Their one boldness as architects was
the minaret.
It is probably the most graceful tower that has ever been devised. In
Cairo the rich fretwork of its decorations and the soft yellow hue of
the stone of which it is constructed add to this beauty. Invariably
slender, it decreases in size as it springs towards heaven, carrying
lightly with it two or three external galleries, which are supported by
stalactites, and ending in a miniature cupola and crescent. These
stalactites (variously named, also, pendentives, recessed clusters, and
honey-combed work) may be called the distinctive feature of Saracenic
architecture. They were used originally as ornaments to mask the
transition from a square court to the dome. But they soon took flight
from that one service, and now they fill Arabian corners and angles and
support Arabian curves so universally that for many of us the mere
outline of one scribbled on paper brings up the whole pageant of the
crescent-topped domes and towers of the East.
The Cairo mosques are said to show the purest existing forms of
Saracenic architecture. One hopes that this saying is true, for a
dogmatic superlative of this sort is a rock of comfort, and one can
remember it and repeat it. With the best of memories, however, one
cannot intelligently see all these specimens of purity, unless, indeed,
one takes up his residence in Cairo (and it is well known that when one
lives in a place one never pays visits to those lions which other
persons journey thousands of miles to see). Travellers, therefore, very
soon choose a favorite and abide by it, vaunting it above all others, so
that you hear of El Ghouri, with its striking facade and magnificent
ceiling, as "the finest," and of Kalaoon as "the finest," and of Moaiyud
as ditto; not to speak of those who prefer the venerable Touloun and
Amer, and the undiscriminating crowd that is satisfied, and rightly,
with Aristides the Just--that is, the mosque of Sultan Hassan. For
myself, after acknowledging to a weakness for the mosques which are not
in the guide-books, which possess no slippers, I confess that I admire
most the tomb-mosque of Kait Bey. It is outside of Cairo proper, among
those splendid half-ruined structures the so-called tombs of the
Khalifs. It stands by itself, its chiselled dome and minaret, a
lace-work in stone, clearly revealed. It would take pages to describe
the fanciful beauty of every detail, both without and within, and there
must, in any case, come an end of repeating the words "elegance,"
"mosaic," "minaret," "arabesque," "jasper," and "mother-of-pearl." The
chief treasures of this mosque are two blocks of rose granite which bear
the so-called impressions of the feet of Mohammed; the legend is that he
rests here for a moment or two at sunset every Thursday. "How well I
understand this fancy of the prophet!" exclaimed an imaginative visitor.
"How I wish I could do the same!"
THE GIZEH MUSEUM
One of the great events of the winter of 1890 was the opening of the new
Museum of Egyptian Antiquities at Gizeh. This magnificent collection,
which until recently has been ill-housed at Boulak, is now installed in
another suburb, Gizeh, in one of the large summer palaces built by the
former Khedive, Ismail. To reach it one passes through the new quarter
and crosses the handsome Nile bridge. Not only are all these streets
watered, but the pedestrian also can have water if he likes. Large
earthen jars, propped by framework of wood, stand here and there, with
the drinking-bottle, or kulleh, attached; these jars are replenished by
the sakkahs, who carry the much-loved Nile water about the streets for
sale. One passes at regular intervals the light stands, made of split
sticks, upon which is offered for sale, in flat loaves like pancakes,
the Cairo bread. There are also the open-air cook shops--small furnaces,
like a tin pan with legs; spread out on a board before them are saucers
containing mysterious compounds, and the cook is in attendance, wearing
a white apron. These cooks never lack custom; a large majority of the
poorer class in Cairo obtains its hot food, when it obtains it at all,
at these impromptu tables. Before long one is sure to meet a file of
camels. The camel ought to appreciate travellers; there is always a
tourist murmuring "Oh!" whenever one of these supercilious beasts shows
himself near the Ezbekiyeh Gardens. The American, indeed, cannot keep
back the exclamation; perhaps when he was a child he attended (oh, happy
day!) the circus, and watched with ecstasy the "Grande Orientale Rentree
of the Lights of the Harem"--two of these strange steeds, ridden by
dazzling houris in veils of glittering gauze. The camel has remained in
his mind ever since as the attendant of sultanas; though this impression
may have become mixed in later years with the constantly recurring
painting (in a dead-gold frame and red mat) of a camel and an Arab in
the desert, outlined against a sunset sky. In either case, however,
the animal represents something which is as far as possible from an
American street traversed by horse-cars, and when the inhabitant of this
street sees the identical creature passing him, engaged not in making
rentrees or posing against the sunset, but diligently at work carrying
stones and mortar for his living, no wonder he feels that he has reached
a land of dreams.
[Illustration: A SELLER OF WATER-JUGS, CAIRO. From a photograph by
Sebah, Cairo]
Most of us do not lose our admiration for the Orientalness of the camel.
But we learn in time that he has been praised for qualities which he
does not possess. He is industrious, but he continually scolds about his
industry; he may not trouble one with his thirst, but he revenges
himself by his sneer. The smile of a camel is the most disdainful thing
I know. On the other side of the Nile bridge one comes sometimes upon an
acre of these beasts, all kneeling down in the extraordinary way
peculiar to them, with their hind-legs turned up; here they chew as they
rest, and put out their long necks to look at the passers-by. But the
way to appreciate the neck of a camel is to be on a donkey; then, when
the creature comes up behind and lopes past you, his neck seems to be
the highest thing in Cairo--higher than a mosque.