“I have taken a city,” wrote the Arab conqueror of Alexandria, “of which
I can only say that it contains 4000 palaces, 4000 baths, 400 theatres,
12,000 greengrocers, and 40,000 Jews.” It contained a lighthouse, too,
for the Pharos was still perfect and functioned for a few years more,
lighting the retreating fleets of Europe with its beams. Then a slow
dissolution began, and it shrinks, looms through the mists of legend,
disappears. The first, and the irreparable, disaster was the fall of the
lantern in the eighth century, carrying with it scientific apparatus
that could not be replaced. Annoyed (say the Arabs) with the magic
mirror that detected or scorched their ships, the Christians made a
plot, and sent a messenger to Islam with news of a treasure in Syria.
The treasure was found, whereupon the messenger reported something
supreme—the whole wealth of Alexander and other Pharaohs which lay in
the foundations of the lighthouse. Demolition began, and before the
Alexandrians, who knew better, could intervene, the mirror had fallen
and was smashed on the rocks beneath. Henceforward the Pharos is only a
stump with a bonfire on the top. The Arabs made some restorations, but
they were unsubstantial additions to the octagon, which the wind could
blow away. Structural repairs were neglected, and in the twelfth century
the second disaster occurred—the fall of the octagon through an
earthquake. The square bottom story survived as a watch-tower. Two
hundred years later it vanished in a final earthquake, and the very
island where it had stood modified its shape and became a peninsula,
joined to the mainland by a strip of sand.
Though unable to maintain the lighthouse on earth, the Arabs did much
for it in the realms of fancy, increasing its height to seven hundred
feet, and endowing it with various magical objects, of which the most
remarkable was a glass crab. There really were crabs at Alexandria, but
of copper, quite small, and standing under Cleopatra’s Needle; America
possesses one to-day. Oriental imagination mixed two monuments into one,
and caused a Moorish army to invade the Pharos and to ride through its
three hundred rooms. The entrance gate vanished, and they could not find
their way out, but ever descending the spirals came at last to the glass
crab, slipped through a crack in its back and were drowned. Happier,
though equally obscure, was the fate of another visitor, the poet El
Deraoui. Who sings:
A lofty platform guides the voyager by night, guides him with
its light when the darkness of evening falls.
Thither have I borne a garment of perfect pleasure among my
friends, a garment adorned with the memory of beloved
companions.
On its height a dome enshadowed me, and there I saw my friends
like stars.
I thought that the sea below me was a cloud, and that I had set
up my tent in the midst of the heavens.
Only occasionally does the note of disillusionment and bitterness creep
in. Jelaled Din ibn Mokram complains that:
The visitor to Alexandria receives nothing in the way of
hospitality except some water and a description of Pompey’s
Pillar.
Those who make a special effort sometimes give him a little
fresh air too, and tell him where the Pharos is, adding a sketch
of the sea and its waves and an account of the large Greek
ships.
The visitor need not aspire to receive any bread, for to an
application of this type there is no reply.
As a rule, life in its shadow is an earthly ecstasy that may even touch
heaven. Hark to Ibn Dukmak:
According to the law of Moses, if a man make a pilgrimage round
Alexandria in the morning, God will make for him a golden crown
set with pearls, perfumed with musk and camphor and shining from
the east to the west.
Nor were the Arabs content with praising the lighthouse: they even
looked at it. “El Manarah,” as they called it, gave the name to, and
became the model for, the minaret, and one can still find minarets in
Egypt that exactly reproduce the design of Sostratus—the bottom story
square, second octagonal, third round.
The Fort of Kait Bey, built in the fifteenth century and itself now a
ruin, stands to-day where the Pharos once stood. Its area covers part of
the ancient enclosure—the rest is awash with the sea—and in its
containing wall are embedded a few granite columns. Inside the area is a
mosque, exactly occupying the site of the lighthouse, and built upon its
foundations: here, too, are some granite blocks standing with druidical
effect at the mosque’s entrance. Nothing else can be attributed to the
past, its stones have vanished and its spirit also. Again and again,
looking at the mosque, have I tried to multiply its height by five, and
thus build up its predecessor. The effort always failed: it did not seem
reasonable that so large an edifice should have existed. The dominant
memory in the chaos is now British, for here are some large holes, made
by Admiral Seymour when he bombarded the Fort in 1882 and laid the basis
of our intercourse with modern Egypt.
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