ARCHITECTURE.
The arts of the Saracens are for the most part intimately connected with
their buildings; they are chiefly employed for the decoration of their
mosques and houses. Of the examples of Saracenic art that have come down
to us, the large majority form part of the ornament and furniture of
mosques, or, in a less proportion, of private dwellings. Thus wood-work
mainly consists of carved panels from the doors of mosques, pulpits,
ceilings, and the panelled doors and lattice windows of houses; the
mosaics and marble ornament, no less than the stone carvings, are
chiefly derived from the walls of mosques and other buildings. The
finest ivory is found in the doors of Mohammadan pulpits and the screens
of Coptic churches; glass is represented by mosque lamps and perforated
stained windows; pottery is mainly displayed in the form of tiles on the
walls of mosques and houses; and of existing textiles, the most
important, though not native to Egypt, are the prayer carpets. The only
branch of art industry that does not more or less share in this intimate
connection with a building is the metal work, which includes many small
objects which have no stated position, but might be placed anywhere
without violating their natural intention; and even metal-work in Cairo
is best seen in the embossed bronze doors of the mosques. As a whole, it
may be said that the art of mediaeval Egypt was centred in the
beautifying of its mosques and palaces, and that in most departments of
artistic labour there is a certain architectural relation which shows
that the various objects were elaborated with a direct eye to their
effect when in the mosque or house. Of course, it does not follow that
because the extant examples of Saracenic art in the middle ages are
chiefly of this decorative character, there was no art of a less
obviously relative nature. The artists who carved the wood and ivory of
the mosques must have employed their skill on other things as well. But
the sanctity of the mosques has procured for them a measure of respect
which has preserved much of their decoration comparatively perfect to
the present century, and a similar protection was not to be expected in
the case of mere portable articles of furniture which could be burnt and
broken and melted with no imputation of sacrilege. Objects of art which
form part of buildings, whether sacred or not, stand a far better chance
of survival than movable things, and this is, no doubt, to a large
degree the cause of the one-sidedness of Cairene art as we now study it.
Another cause is the simplicity of the Mohammadan idea of furniture. A
Muslim grandee had much fewer modes of gratifying his artistic tastes
than an English nobleman. The law of his Prophet, in the first place,
forbade luxury, prohibited gold and silver ornaments, rich silks, and
sumptuous apparel; it was impious to paint or chisel the image of man or
any animate creature; and if a prince were not strongly under the
influence of his religion, yet the general custom of his countrymen, and
the conservatism of the East, would restrain him from eccentric
innovations in the embellishment of his palace. Divans offered little
scope for the artist; their frames, if not constructed of ordinary
masonry, were made of palm sticks, or an unornamented framework of wood;
the coverings alone could be sumptuous. A little low round table formed
almost the sole piece of movable furniture in the room; there were no
chairs for the Egyptian Chippendale to exercise his fancy upon; no
bureaux, sideboards, book-cases, mirrors, mantel-shelves, or other
pieces of decorative furniture, to be carved or inlaid; the little
dining-table, or, rather, stool, with its round tray instead of a cloth,
permitted no array of fine glass and silver, though the few dishes that
could be ranged upon it were often of very exquisite workmanship, and
inlaid with the precious metals. Thus it happened that in the house as
in the mosque the chief skill of the artist was expended upon the
decoration of the structure, by mosaics and tiles on the wall, painting
the ceiling, panelling and carving the doors and cupboards, and
designing the stained windows.
No examination of the industrial arts of Egypt, therefore, would be
intelligent which did not start from a clear comprehension of the
characteristics of the buildings round which they were grouped. In a
work of the present scope it is of course impossible to attempt a
history of Saracenic architecture, even in its Cairene development; such
a task is worthy of the best endeavours of an architect, and would
demand a volume to itself. It will be sufficient for the present purpose
if the principal buildings of Cairo are briefly described in general
classes, the chief distinctions of style and plan noticed, and a clear
conception offered of what mosques and houses are like. For this purpose
it will not be necessary to take many examples. A large number of the
300 mosques that still remain in various stages of preservation in that
city offer no elements of originality, and not a few are modern and
unworthy of study, except by those who would carry the history of an art
down to its lowest stage of decadence. In houses we have unfortunately
but a small choice to select from. Most of the noble palaces of the
Mamlūk lords have long ago fallen to ruin, and there are now probably
very few that can be called representative of the great period of
Saracenic architecture. Still, while the palaces, for the most part,
have passed away, there are here and there smaller houses of remarkable
beauty, which preserve some of the best features of the true Cairo
style.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.—EAST COLONNADE OF THE MOSQUE OF ‘AMR.]
The first idea of a mosque was extremely simple. The Prophet’s mosque at
Medīna consisted of a small square enclosure of brick, partly roofed
over with wooden planks, supported on pillars made of palm stems
plastered over. All that was needed was retirement from passing scenes,
and shade from the sun’s rays. It was not necessary that the whole of
the square court forming the mosque should be roofed in, for the number
of worshippers who remained for any length of time in the mosque would
be small, and, for the brief periods occupied by the ordinary prayers,
the open court could be used if the roofed portions did not afford space
enough. The same principle was observed in the plans of the early
mosques of Egypt. An open court for occasional use, and roofed cloisters
for the regular congregation, were the essentials; and in the older
mosques in and around Cairo we find this plan carried out by a spacious
open court surrounded on the four sides by covered colonnades or
cloisters. The mosque of ‘Amr at Fustāt (or Old Cairo) has been so
repeatedly restored that it is not safe to draw conclusions from its
details; but it is certainly as old as the 10th century in its main
outline, which consists of an immense court surrounded by covered
colonnades (fig. 2). The mosque of Ibn-Tūlūn, which preserves, for the
most part untouched, its original form and ornament as completed in the
year 265 of the Hijra (A.D. 878), consists also of a vast open court
surrounded by arcades or cloisters, which differ considerably in the
details from the colonnades of ‘Amr’s mosque, but show the same general
plan. The mosque of the Fātimy Khalif El-Hākim, finished in 1012,
resembles that of Ibn-Tūlūn in plan and many of the details, and the
Azhar, though frequently restored, preserves its original colonnaded
court of 971. The mosque of Edh-Dhāhir Beybars, to the north of Cairo
(1268), and that of En-Nāsir Mohammad in the Citadel (1318), are also of
the arcade plan, resembling Ibn-Tūlūn, and the same form was adopted by
Kūsūn (1329), El-Māridāny (1339), and Aksunkur (1347), for their mosques
in the first half of the 14th century, by Barkūk at the end of the same
century for his tomb-mosque in the eastern cemetery of Cairo, and by El-
Muayyad for his mosque (1420) in the Ghōrīya, now in course of
restoration.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.—PLAN OF THE MOSQUE OF ‘AMR.]
The plan of an open court surrounded by colonnades is, as will be
readily recognised, simply a survival of the ancient Semitic temple, as
we see it in Phoenician and other ruins, and also in the porticos
surrounding the Ka‘ba at Mekka. The Arabs naturally adopted the form
most familiar to them, and also best suited to the climate, and to the
religious rites to be performed. This plan is universal in Egypt from
the 9th to the 13th century, so far as extant buildings permit us to
judge. From the 13th century the older plan shared the favour of the
Cairene architects with a new form, which was, however, rather a
development of the former than a new departure. As space became more
valuable in Cairo, and as architectural skill improved, and the art of
spanning wide intervals by great arches became better understood, the
cruciform mosque was naturally developed out of the old columnar or
cloistered court. Instead of surrounding a spacious court with shallow
arcades, a smaller court was enclosed by four deep recesses or
transepts, each of which was covered by a single large arch; the plan
thus resembles roughly a cross, of which the centre was formed by the
open court, and the arms by the four covered recesses. A reason for this
arrangement is perhaps to be found in the four sects into which the
Mohammadans of Egypt were divided: for some of the cruciform mosques
have inscriptions which show that a separate transept was allotted to
Mālikis, the Hanafīs, the Shāfi‘is, and the Hanbalīs. This plan seems to
have been introduced into Cairo by the Ayyūby Sultans of the family of
Saladin. The earliest examples are the buildings of El-Kāmil Mohammad,
Saladin’s nephew, whose collegiate mosque in the street known as Beyn-
el-Kasreyn, or “Betwixt-the-Palaces,” was erected in the year 1224. Two
sides of this building were standing in 1845 when Mr. Wild made some
sketches of the ornament, which he described as more like the Alhambra
than anything he had seen in Cairo. The most famous extant specimen of
the cruciform mosque is that of Sultan Hasan, built in 1356-9, where the
arches opening into the transepts are of magnificent dimensions.
Barkūk’s medresa or collegiate mosque in the Beyn-el-Kasreyn, 1384, and
the two mosques of Kāït Bey, one in the city, the other and more
celebrated in the eastern burial-ground, one of the most beautiful
monuments of Cairo (1472), also belong to the cruciform order, as does
that of El-Ghōry (1503), besides many less important mosques.
The standard example of the _cloistered mosque_ is that of Ibn-Tūlūn,
the bold and massive style of which recalls our own Norman architecture.
This is the oldest mosque of Cairo, or rather of the quarter called El-
Katāi‘, or “the Wards,” which was the residence of the princes of the
dynasty of Tūlūn, when Cairo was not yet founded. It occupies a space of
about four hundred feet. The exterior is very plain, as is always the
case with cloistered mosques. A high wall surrounds it on three sides,
leaving a space of some fifty feet vacant between the wall and the
mosque itself. The outer courts thus formed, in close resemblance to the
plan of the Egyptian temple (as seen, for example, at Edfu), were
intended to isolate the worshippers in the mosque from the noises of the
street without. The front or east side is shut off from the street by
houses and various apartments; and washrooms and other chambers for the
mosque attendants or for worshippers block up part of the western outer
court. The walls of the mosque have no ornament, except a crenellated or
embattled parapet. Originally the mosque was entered by two doors in
each of the three outer courts; the doors are simple and without any of
the elaboration of later mosques.
Passing through the inner partition wall we find ourselves in a cloister
or arcade looking into a magnificent court ninety-nine yards square
(fig. 3), in the centre of which is a square stone building surmounted
by a brick dome, which was built, however, a century later than the
mosque itself, in the place of the original marble fountain covered by a
painted dome resting on marble pillars. This vast court is surrounded on
all four sides by arcades of pointed arches resting on piers of
plastered brick. It is related that Ahmad Ibn-Tūlūn intended to have 300
columns for his mosque, but when he was informed that this would involve
the destruction or dismemberment of numerous churches throughout the
land of Egypt—for the Muslims took their pillars from Roman and Greek
buildings—he abandoned the project. His chief architect, a Copt[12],
whose religious sympathies may have had something to do with Ibn-Tūlūn’s
clemency towards the Christian churches, then undertook to build a
mosque without columns, save two at the niche which marked the direction
of Mekka; and when he had drawn his design on parchment, and shown it to
the prince, it was approved, and he was given a dress of honour, and
furnished with 100,000 gold pieces, or about £60,000 to build the
mosque. He began the work in A.H. 263, and completed it in 265 (878),
when he received a fee of 10,000 pieces of gold.[13] It is clear from
this account, which is derived from the historian El-Makrīzy, that the
mosque of Ibn-Tūlūn was the first experiment in brick piers instead of
stone columns. Three sides have two rows of arches; the fourth, that
which lies on the side towards Mekka, has five.[14]
[Illustration: FIG. 4.—MOSQUE OF IBN-TULUN.]
All the rows of arches run parallel to the sides of the court, so that
standing in the latter you look through the arches. The arches are all
pointed (fig. 5), and constitute the first example of the universal
employment of pointed arches throughout a building, three hundred years
before the adoption of the pointed style in England. They have a very
slight tendency to a return at the spring of the arch, but cannot be
said to approach the true horse-shoe form. They rest on heavy piers of
brick, the four corners of which are shaped in the form of engaged
columns, with no bases, and only very simple rounded capitals, coated,
like the rest of the building, with plaster, on which a rudimentary bud
and flower pattern is moulded. The spaces between the arches are partly
filled by windows with similar engaged columns and pointed arches. On
either side of each window, in the face fronting the court, is a rosette
moulded in the plaster, and a band of similar rosettes runs all round
the court above the arches, over which is the embattled parapet. The
faces of the arcades in the interior are somewhat differently treated.
Round the arches and windows runs a knop and flower pattern, which also
runs across from spring to spring of arch beneath the windows, and a
band of the same ornament runs all along above the arches, in place of
the rosettes, which only occur in the face fronting the court; over this
band, and likewise running along the whole length of all the inner
arcades, is a Kūfy[15] inscription carved in wood, and above this the
usual crenellated parapet. The arcades are roofed over with sycamore
planks resting on heavy beams. In the rearmost arcade the back wall is
pierced with pointed windows, which are filled, not with coloured glass,
but with grilles of stone, forming geometrical designs, with central
rosettes or stars; but it is not quite certain that these belong to the
original mosque; they may have been introduced in one of the
restorations which are known to have been made. To whatever period they
belong, they may compare favourably in variety and beauty of design with
any Gothic tracery in existence. With the exception of these grilles,
the central fountain, and the two marble columns by the niche in the
east end, the entire mosque is built with burnt brick, plastered on both
sides.[16]
The Mekka side, which is the _līwān_ or sanctuary, and specially the
place of prayer, is deeper, as has been said, consisting of five arcades
instead of two, and the arches fronting the court are filled almost to
the height of the piers by wooden screens or partitions, which rail off
the sanctuary from the court. It is ornamented in the same manner as the
other arcades, except that the back wall, which in the other sides is
plain, save for the grilled windows, in the east end was once carefully
decorated, though at present little remains of the original mosaic and
colour which El-Makrīzy says were used for its embellishment.
The essential parts of the east end of a mosque are the _mihrāb_ or
niche indicating the _kibla_ or direction of Mekka, the _mimbar_ or
pulpit for the Friday sermon, and the _dikka_ or tribune, a raised
platform from which the Korān is recited and the prayers intoned by the
imām or choragus. The niche is generally an arched recess in the centre
of the east wall, richly inlaid with mosaics of marbles and mother-of-
pearl, and often bordered with Arabic inscriptions. The niche of Ibn-
Tūlūn is adorned with marbles of different colours. Very often the whole
of the east wall is covered with ornament; dados of mosaic, friezes of
inscriptions, panels of marble and tiles, are arranged with exquisite
taste over the whole surface, broken only by the stained glass windows
which form so beautiful a feature in the later mosques.
At each end of the sanctuary of Ibn-Tūlūn is a small minaret, and there
is also a great stone minaret, in the west outer court, which has the
unique peculiarity of an external winding staircase (fig. 4), reminding
one of the traditional tower of Babel of the children’s picture books.
This is, however, quite phenomenal, and the ordinary minaret, which
forms the most beautiful external feature of the Cairo mosques, if not,
as Fergusson says, “the most graceful form of tower architecture in the
world,” has an internal winding staircase, and consists of a slender
tower, constructed in several stories, which generally diminish in size
and shape, from a substantial square at the base, through graduated
octagons, to a cylinder or a group of dwarf columns at the top, on which
is a small cupola surmounted by a knotted pinnacle and crescent, with
several wooden staffs fixed at angles to the round of the cupola, from
which lamps are suspended on the great festivals. Two or three galleries
project at various heights, supported by stalactite corbels and
cornices, and from these the muezzin proclaims the call to prayer five
times a day. It is recorded by El-Makrīzy that the first stone minaret
in Cairo was that of the mosque of El-Māridāny, built by the Master
Suyūfy—all the earlier ones being of brick.[17] A very beautiful example
of a minaret is seen in the engraving of the mosque of Kāït Bey
(frontispiece). Sometimes the cupola at the top is fluted, as in a very
pretty little minaret in the southern burial-ground of Cairo, which
tapers upwards from the square by a series of diminishing octagons till
the transition to the round can be gently effected. The transitions are
ingeniously managed by those stalactite or pendentive ornaments, which
are the peculiar property of the Saracenic architect, and are freely
used to mask angles and to modulate such transitions as those in the
dome and minaret. In describing the minaret we are, however,
anticipating the true chronological order, for the earlier mosques do
not present many of the graceful details which we see in that of Kāït
Bey. The great minaret of Ibn-Tūlūn indeed diminishes by stages, but
there are no stalactites in any part of this mosque, except over the
_mihrāb_, or niche, and these are probably a later addition.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.—ARCADES IN THE MOSQUE OF IBN-TULUN.
Ninth Century.]
Nothing has been said so far about the dome, and for this reason, that
the mosque of Ibn-Tūlūn has none. It is a mistake to suppose that the
dome is an essential feature of a mosque. The minaret is essential,
because there must be a raised tower from which the _Adān_ or Call to
Prayer may resound over the city, though even this was dispensed with in
the Prophet’s own mosque at Medīna, where the Muezzin Bilāl of the
stentorian voice shouted the call from the gate. A dome, however, has
nothing whatever to do with prayer, and therefore nothing with a mosque.
It is simply the roof of a tomb, and only exists where there is a tomb
to be covered, or at least where it was intended that a tomb should be.
Only when there is a chapel attached to a mosque, containing the tomb of
the founder or his family, is there a dome, and it is no more closely
connected with the mosque itself than is the grave it covers: neither is
necessary to the place of prayer. It happens, however, that a large
number of the mosques of Cairo are mausoleums, containing chambers with
the tomb of the founder, and the profusion of domes to be seen, when one
looks down upon the city from the battlements of the Citadel, has
brought about the not unnatural mistake of thinking that every mosque
must have a dome. Most mosques with tombs have domes, but no mosque that
was not intended to contain a tomb ever had one in the true sense. The
origin of the dome may be traced to the cupolas which surmount the
graves of Babylonia, many of which must have been familiar to the Arabs,
who preserved the essentially sepulchral character of the form, and
never used it, as did the Copts and Byzantines, to say nothing of
European architects, to roof a church or its apse. The form of the true
Cairo dome is not quite the same as that of Italy and St. Paul’s; like
most Saracenic designs it is based upon simple geometrical proportions.
To draw the outline of the ordinary type (fig. 6), to which, however,
there are exceptions, describe a circle A, draw tangents B B, to the
length of three-fourths of the radius, join the extremities, and from
each of the extremities draw a circle C, the radius of which shall equal
the whole diameter of the first circle plus an eighth; and where these
circles intersect erect the pinnacle. The whole can be done with
compasses and rule.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.—DIAGRAM SHOWING PROPORTIONS OF A DOME.]
Domes are generally built of brick, not moulded to fit the curve, but
simply laid each tier a little within the lower tier so as to form the
proper curve; the plaster which coats most domes inside and out conceals
the slight irregularity of the brickwork. Wooden frames are also
sometimes used to support the lighter plaster domes, as is shown in the
foreground of fig. 4. Some domes, however, are of stone, which is cut to
the shape of the curve, and carved with the desired pattern. As a rule I
have observed that plain and fluted domes are of plastered brick, whilst
those ornamented with zigzag, geometrical, and arabesque devices are
more commonly of carved stone. The surfaces of the domes are ornamented
in various ways. Sometimes they are covered with an intricate
geometrical design, with star centres, as the domes of Kāït Bey and Al-
Ashraf Bars-Bey in the eastern cemetery. A common decoration consists in
bands of zigzags, or chevrons close together, running horizontally round
the dome from base to apex, such as we see in the tomb-mosque of Barkūk
(1407). Many domes are fluted, and these would seem to belong to all
periods of Cairo architecture, for we find the fluted cupola surmounting
the _mibkharas_ or quasi-minarets of the mosque of El-Hākim (1012; but
these may belong to the restoration, in 1303, when it is known that the
mibkharas were shored up with massive bases), and also in domes in the
southern burial ground, which apparently belong to the end of the 15th
century. A rarer and late form of dome ornament consists in covering the
whole surface with arabesques arranged in large outlines, which form a
sort of diaper, with a much richer effect than mere geometrical
ornament. There are a few examples, which are probably of very early
date, with a lantern pierced with small windows, and roofed with a
little fluted cupola on the top of the larger dome. These are in the
southern burial-ground, but are in so ruined a condition that there
remains no evidence as to their date that can be regarded as positive.
Certain characteristics of the stalactites, however, lead to the belief
that they may belong to the Ayyuby period (1170-1250). Some of the more
elongated domes have a second and lower dome structure inside them, from
which spring walls to support the outer dome. “The dome,” as Franz Bey
remarks, “is blended with the quadrangular interior of the mausoleum by
means of pendentives [stalactites]; while externally the union of the
cube with the sphere is somewhat masked by the polygonal base of the
dome. In some cases the transition is effected by means of gradations
resembling steps, each of which is crowned with a half-pyramidal
excrescence of the height of the step. These excrescences might be
regarded as external prolongations of the pendentives of the interior,
but do not correspond with them in position. The architects, however,
doubtless, intended to suggest some such connection between the internal
and external ornamentation.” Sometimes the dome is set simply on the
cube of the building with no gradation at all. A row of windows commonly
surrounds its base.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.—PLAN OF THE MOSQUE OF SULTAN HASAN.]
We have digressed thus far in order to finish what had to be said on the
subject of domes, which form, with minarets, the most prominent features
of Cairo architecture. As has been remarked, they are not found in the
mosque of Ibn-Tūlūn, nor indeed in most of the cloistered mosques. That
of El-Hākim has no dome, nor have the Azhar, the mosque of En-Nāsir in
the Citadel, that of El-Māridāny, and several others, owing to the
absence of tomb-chapels. Barkūk and El-Muayyad are buried in their
mosques, and domes are therefore proper. There is a domed structure,
indeed, in the centre of the court of Ibn-Tūlūn, but the date of this is
much later than the mosque; and it is a question whether the original
dome built in this place by Ibn-Tūlūn was not intended to cover his own
tomb: when he died, and was buried in Syria, the domed edifice may have
been converted into its present use as a fountain for ablutions. There
is, however, a feature in the cloistered mosques, or in some of them,
which has a close resemblance to a dome; this is a small cupola, which
seems to have been not uncommonly erected over the niche. There is such
a cupola over the niche in Ibn-Tūlūn, and though this is probably of the
date of the restoration by Lāgīn, in 1296, to judge by the wooden
stalactites which are found in no other part of the mosque, yet it is
probable that the restorer only replaced an original cupola with one in
the style of his own time. The Azhar University mosque, a century later
than Ibn-Tūlūn, has a raised portion of the arcade over the _kibla_,
which once carried a small dome or cupola, and the same feature is
observed in the Citadel mosque of En-Nāsir Mohammad, where the cupola,
which stood on high columns, has also disappeared. There are probably
other examples with traces of this arrangement which have been
overlooked; but it was not necessary or universal. These cupolas over
the niche are not domes properly speaking, though they have the melon
form; they are smaller than the true dome, and correspond rather to the
lantern of a house.
The ornament of the cloistered mosque consists partly in the borders and
frieze which run round and above the arches, and beneath the crenellated
parapet; the capitals of the columns; and the geometrical grilles of the
windows, of which Ibn-Tūlūn and Edh-Dhāhir Beybars offer very fine
examples.[18] Some beautiful grilles were still standing in the ruins of
the mosque of Kūsūn in 1883, though the ex-Khedive had run a road
through the bulk of this splendid edifice. These ornaments are in stone
or plaster. In wood, the chief decorations are the Kūfy frieze, which
may also be of plaster; the ceiling, which is often exquisitely painted
and carved; the junction with the wall, masked by a cornice or
stalactite corbels; and the pulpit. Mosaics and tiles are chiefly, or
exclusively, used in and round the niche in the east end, and metal-work
and carving are employed for the massive doors. All these several modes
of decoration will be found described under their separate headings.
Of the principal examples of the cloistered mosque in Cairo, those of
Ibn-Tūlūn, El-Hākim, and Barkūk have the arches supported on piers, and
running at right angles to the side of the court; but the mosques of
‘Amr, the Azhar, of En-Nāsir in the Citadel, of Kūsūn, El-Māridāny, El-
Muayyad, and others, have columns instead of piers, and the arches
sometimes run parallel with the court. The marble columns employed in
mosques, which are often very numerous (the Azhar has 380 in the
sanctuary alone), were generally abstracted from Roman buildings or
Christian churches, with capitals of various orders, arranged with
little regard to symmetry, and prolonged in a quaint fashion, if too
short, by a pedestal or inverted capital used as a base. There is,
however, a Saracenic capital, derived from simple Ptolemaic models, of a
distinctive character. It is used both as a capital and as a base, and
is contained by four surfaces proceeding in curves from the square
abacus, and joining at the round of the column. Above the abacus of
this, and also of Roman or Corinthian columns, is placed a second abacus
of wood, joined from pillar to pillar by a wooden bar. The mosque of
Barkūk is not only surrounded by arches on piers, but instead of a
ceiling has a groined brick roof, which is very exceptional in mosques,
though frequent in other buildings—as in the great stone city gate, the
Bāb-en-Nasr.
The second style of mosque, with the _cruciform_ plan (fig. 7), cannot
better be exemplified than by the mosque of Sultan Hasan. This
magnificent edifice, the loftiest and in some respects the most imposing
in Cairo, was built during the years 1356-9, at the cost of 1,000 dīnārs
of gold a day, and the legend is related that the Sultan took the futile
precaution of cutting off the architect’s hand in order to prevent any
further efforts of his genius. The interior of the mosque consists of a
cross, of which transept on the east side, which may be compared to a
chancel, is larger than the three other arms, while the founder’s chapel
(over which is the dome) occupies the position of a lady-chapel behind
the chancel. The outline of the founder’s chapel is visible on the
outside, but the cross-shape is not; the spaces in the right angles,
between the four transepts or arms, are so filled with offices and
schools and other apartments (as is the case with most cruciform
mosques) that the exterior has the form of an irregular oblong, the
sloping outline of which is partly due to the line of the street which
runs past the mosque to the Citadel which it confronts. The exterior
walls from the base to the top of the cornice are about 113 feet high,
and are entirely built of finely-cut stone brought from the Pyramids.
The broad expanse of wall is slightly relieved by windows, of which the
most prominent—those of the founder’s chapel—consist of two horseshoe-
headed lights, surmounted by a single round window, placed in a tall
shallow recess, which is brought forward at the top to the face of the
wall by stalactite corbelling supporting a trefoil arch. The other
windows are plain rectangular grilles (sometimes as many as eight, one
above another), similarly placed in tall shallow recesses with
stalactite tops, or small circular windows set in square recesses. The
eastern corners of the main building resemble polygonal towers, and the
angles of the chapel are ornamented with graceful pilasters or engaged
columns, carved in a spiral or twisted design, with stalactite capitals,
reaching to nearly half the height of the wall. The cornice, which is
unusually prominent in this mosque and forms one of its most beautiful
features, consists of six tiers of stalactites, each overhanging the one
below it, till the top projects some six feet; the coping is plain,
without the usual crenellated parapet. The other external ornaments
are—(1) the dome, which was rebuilt in the last century, and though
large, is squat, and wholly unworthy of the mosque; (2) the two
minarets, of which that on the south-east angle of the mosque is the
tallest (280 ft.) in Cairo, a handsome structure, with two galleries,
and a cupola on the summit, resting on graceful pillars, erected on a
third gallery; another lofty minaret, over the portal, was thrown down
by an earthquake in 1361, soon after its completion, killing three
hundred children in the adjoining school; the other surviving minaret is
a puny erection, and gives the mosque a lop-sided aspect; and (3) last,
but by no means least, the splendid main portal. This gateway, which is
approached by some seventeen rather insignificant steps, laid sideways
along the face of the wall,[19] is the chief subject of external
decoration in the mosque. It consists of a square arched niche, or
recess, 66 feet high, open to the outside, and vaulted in a half sphere,
which is gradually approached by twelve tiers of stalactites,
ingeniously arranged so as to modulate the square recess into the semi-
domed summit. At each side of the portal, on the outer wall, are tall
borders of bold arabesques, with stalactite summits, and arabesque
medallions at the base, running up the whole height of the portal.
Beyond these on either side are geometrical panels, and then twisted
corner columns with stalactite capitals, which bound the slight
projection or buttress in which the portal is set. The inner angles of
the gateway are decorated with smaller columns (not twisted), with
stalactite capitals and borders of fine geometrical and arabesque (fig.
8) designs. On either side of the niche, inside, is an arched recess for
the doorkeepers, set between columns, and surmounted by stalactites and
patterns of coloured stone, and over the central bronze-plated door,
which leads into the mosque, is a window with similar side columns and
stalactites. The surfaces of the interior walls of the gateway are
variegated by alternate courses of black and white marble.[20]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.—ORNAMENT FROM THE PORTAL OF SULTAN HASAN.]
Passing into the mosque, through a handsome vaulted vestibule and some
bent passages, we find ourselves in the hypaethral court, or _sahn el-
gāmi‘_, which is 117 feet long by 105 feet wide. It is paved with marble
slabs and medallions arranged in various patterns. In many mosques
massive granite slabs taken from the ancient temples of Egypt, and
sometimes carved with hieroglyphics, are laid in the pavement,
especially at the threshold. In the centre is a _meyda‘_, or tank for
ablutions, crowned by a ruinous plastered wood cupola, resting on eight
marble columns, by the side of which stands a smaller octagonal
fountain, or _hanafīya_, with taps, for the use of the sect of the
Hanafis, who require running water for their washings preparatory to
prayer. Each of the four transepts, opening out of the court and raised
a step above its level, consists of a single deep arch, the arching
being continued throughout the whole depth of the transept. On either
side of the north, south, and west transepts is a door set in a
stalactite recess, with windows over it. The transept at the east end is
larger and loftier than the other three. It is ninety feet high, ninety
feet deep, and sixty-nine feet wide. The framework of this vast arch is
stated to have cost 100,000 francs. Like the rest of the mosque, the
interiors of the transepts are built of brick plastered over; but the
facing of the arches (where every third course is coloured red) is of
stone, and the walls which connect and surround the arches, forming the
square outline of the court, are also of stone, but are plastered over.
The coping of the court is formed by an embattled parapet. The smaller
transepts are almost plain, but the chancel or sanctuary at the east is
adorned with a marble dado, which runs round it to the height of about
four feet; and the east wall or back of this is richly decorated with
marble slabs, which rise to the height of thirty feet, and are arranged
in rectangular panels and borders of contrasted colours, black, white,
and yellow. In the centre of the east wall is the _mihrab_, or niche,
indicating the direction of prayer towards Mekka.[21] This consists in a
semicircular recess about six feet wide, the front edges of which are
composed of two marble columns, and the top of a pointed arch vaulted
like a shell inside. The interior of the niche is beautifully adorned
with three tiers of arches (the first pointed, the second round, and the
third trefoil) supported by dwarf columns, one above the other, and
divided by arabesque borders and bands of greenstone. The backgrounds of
the arches behind the dwarf columns are alternately of red and green
marble. The shell-like top of the niche is decorated with marbles
arranged in rays, and the facing of the arch itself is treated with the
common zigzag ornament, which is seen so frequently round arches and
over doors in Cairo. The effect of the whole is extremely rich, and the
details are finished with infinite care and skill. A Kūfy inscription
(fig. 9) of large bold characters within fine borders runs round the
sanctuary just above the marbles, and overlaps the edges of the arch.
Above this, in the east wall, are two windows, each of two lights with a
circular light above, and a central round aperture. In front of the
niche, a little on the left hand (as you face the court), stands the
pulpit, a staircase enclosed by high sides, and ending in a small
platform surmounted by a cupola supported by a column on either side.
Most pulpits are of carved and panelled wood, but that of Sultan Hasan
is of coloured marbles arranged in circular medallions. Further in
front, nearer the court, is the _dikka_, or tribune, which in most
mosques is a light structure of wood, but here is of stone and marble,
and rests upon solid piers and columns, with very graceful columns let
into the corners, and formed of alternate zigzag drums of white, black,
and yellow marble. From the top of the arch hang seventy-seven cords, to
which are fastened as many small glass lamps, and many more are
suspended from the simple gallows brackets which are ranged along the
side walls, about half-way between the dado and the Arabic inscription.
A large bronze chandelier hanging from the keystone of the great arch
completes the furniture of the sanctuary.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.—KUFIC FRIEZE IN MOSQUE OF SULTAN HASAN.
Fourteenth Century.]
By a beautiful bronze-plated door, on either side of the niche, we
obtain access to the sepulchral chapel of the Sultan who caused all this
wonderful building to be erected for the honour of his Creator and
himself. This is the portion of the mosque which underlies the dome. It
is sixty-nine feet square, and is surrounded on all sides with fine
tablets of coloured marbles, forming a dado of the height of twenty-five
feet or more, and broken by eleven arches, either blind or with doors
closing cupboards, and including a niche in the east wall resembling in
design the niche of the inner wall already described. Over the marbles
is the “Throne Verse” from the Koran (ch. ii. v. 256) carved in wood,
and forming a frieze all round, interrupted only by medallions
containing the name of the Sultan; the usual lamp brackets are fixed
above the frieze. Higher up still are the windows, which are badly
planned; most of the glass is gone, and what remains resembles common
bottle glass. Above are fine wooden stalactites, painted and gilt,
marking the transition from the square to the dome. The founder’s tomb
is a plain marble grave, enclosed in a simple wooden railing:—the whole
chapel is the true tomb. It should be noted that the tomb chapel is not
surrounded like the rest of the mosque by offices, schools, and chambers
of all sorts; it stands out clear from everything, and three of its
sides are outside walls, the fourth being the east wall of the
sanctuary.
Such is the great mosque of Sultan Hasan. It forms a typical example of
the cruciform mosque, although its materials are much more substantial
and costly than usual, and its size far transcends all other mosques of
this plan. In none other do we find the same noble span of arch, the
same lavish display of marbles; in a word, the same grandeur. But there
are many mosques in Cairo that are more pleasing than that of Sultan
Hasan, whose broad surfaces of unrelieved plaster find inadequate
compensation in the rich but heavy mosaics of the sanctuary wall. And in
spite of its imposing proportions, there is something ungainly about the
exterior of this big mosque; the stone walls, besides the defect of
being unparallel, seem heavy and insufficiently relieved; the dome,
being modern, is unsightly; and the minarets do not balance. For a very
different specimen of a mosque of the same cruciform plan, let us glance
at the illustration (frontispiece) of the mausoleum of Kāït Bey, another
Mamlūk Sultan, and the prince of Cairo builders. This mosque is situate
in that wonderful wilderness of exquisite domes and minarets known as
the great or eastern Karāfa or cemetery, and also as the Karāfa of Kāït
Bey _par excellence_. Here we see the dome and minaret in their utmost
perfection, and the proportions of the cruciform mosque most admirably
displayed. The exterior is fluted with shallow recesses like Sultan
Hasan’s, in which the windows are set, and is striped red and white, in
imitation, no doubt, of the ancient Roman buildings of Egypt, where
courses of red brick alternate with a row of white stone. The effect is
not so unpleasant as might be imagined; for when time has softened the
red ochre, the zebra-like walls seem suited to the character of the
architecture.[22] The door is set in a deep recess like that of Sultan
Hasan, but on a smaller scale; and the details of such doors may be
better seen in the engraving (fig. 10), which represents a gateway of
another mosque of the same Sultan within the city of Cairo. Kāït Bey’s
mosques, and those generally of a late period, are much more elaborately
decorated than early cloistered mosques like Ibn-Tūlūn. We have seen
that the ornament in the latter consists chiefly in bands and friezes
running round and above the arches, and in the mosaics in the sanctuary.
In Kāït Bey’s mosques the triangular spaces between the arches and the
square of the court are filled with arabesque scrolls carved in stone;
the keystone and every alternate stone in the arch is similarly
ornamented; the interior doors are surmounted by carved architraves, and
over these are little windows between pillars, and surmounted by
stalactites. Medallions occupy the centres of large expanses of
ornament, and are filled with the name and titles of the Sultan who
built the mosque, with a prayer,—“Send him victorious!” Marble inlay
covers the lower portions of the walls, and marble slabs are arranged in
the pavement. The whole interior surfaces wear the aspect of a
beautifully woven and embroidered carpet, and however much we may
criticise the structural vagueness of the edifice, it is impossible to
refuse our admiration to the details of the ornament. These complexly-
decorated mosques are naturally of the smaller cruciform shape, for the
large extent of wall in the cloistered style would not only demand an
almost impossible quantity of costly material and time, but would not
repay the artist in the effect.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.—DOORWAY OF SMALLER MOSQUE OF KAIT BEY.
Fifteenth Century.]
The two general types of mosque described above, with their usual styles
of decoration, will give a sufficient idea of the purposes to which the
arts of the Saracens are applied; but they do not by any means exhaust
either the architectural character or the modes of decoration of the
religious buildings of Cairo. It is not possible in a limited space to
enter into the varieties of Cairo mausoleums, dervish convents, and
other buildings; but a few examples will serve to show that, while the
majority of mosques fall under one or other of the categories above
described, there is infinite variety among those that depart from the
ordinary outline. Among these, one of the most remarkable is the
mausoleum of Kalaūn. This is attached to the northern side of the great
hospital or Māristān, built by that Sultan in the Beyn-el-Kasreyn, and
separated from it by a vaulted passage entered through a splendid black
and white marble portal.[23] The Māristān originally comprised an
infinity of chambers, lecture-rooms, theatres for operations, surgeons’
rooms, mortuary, professors’ lodgings, cells for the mad patients, a
mosque, and many other features, of all which little now remains. But
the tomb of the builder, which is entered from a gateway in the passage
opposite to that which admits one into what is still standing of the
once extensive Māristān, is in extremely fine preservation, and contains
many peculiar and beautiful features. It is built of stone, and consists
of a vestibule or antechapel, and a square chapel, covered originally by
a dome, but now only by a flat ceiling. The support of the dome is an
octagonal inner structure, resting upon eight arches, of an elongated
and slightly horse-shoe form, supported by four piers and four massive
granite monolithic columns. The arches are surrounded by a border of
very delicate and lace-like arabesque tracery, in plaster, which
terminates over each of the eight arches in a rose of arabesque open-
work. Above each arch is a window composed of two round-headed lights
and a circular light above. The niche is decorated with beautiful dwarf
arcades, the arches being delicately chiselled in a very graceful shell
form, and supported by little pillars. Bands of coloured marble separate
each tier from the next. The marble tomb is in the centre of the chapel,
enclosed with a wooden railing of coarse lattice work; but the
magnificent carvings on the doors of the Māristān (figs. 46-48) atone
for any shortcomings in the tomb itself.
The exterior of the mausoleum is coloured red and white in squares like
a draught-board, and is peculiar in other respects. At the base, half a
dozen dwarf columns, surmounted by tall piers or pilasters, support
lofty arched recesses, running nearly the full height of the wall. The
recesses are not of equal size; and the larger are occupied by a single
window between columns (divided into two lights by a column surmounted
by a round light, giving the effect of a trefoil), and the smaller by a
similar window over a small pointed window of a single arch. The windows
are filled with grilles of geometrical open-work, and the arched
portions of the recesses in which they are set are coloured in radiating
bands of red and white; and even the columns share in this zebra
decoration. Beneath the row of windows, running across pilasters and
recesses alike, is a fine Arabic frieze, painted red, and at the top of
the wall is an embattled parapet of remarkably fine zigzag teeth filled
with geometrical ornaments. The cornice is a mere double line. Over the
top are seen the windows, set in pointed arches, of the internal
octagonal structure, which ought to be crowned by a dome; and on the
right-hand side is a massive square minaret (of somewhat later date) in
three stories, each with its plain gallery supported by very simple
stalactite cornices, the first checkered red and white, the second in
red and white bands, the third cylindrical, ornamented with striped
columns surmounted by interlaced arched tracery.
The domestic architecture of Cairo, varied as are its details, possesses
certain general features common to all examples. The first and all-
important object of the Mohammadan architect was to screen the women of
the house from the view of strangers. Cairene building rests on the
principle that the inmates of the house must neither be seen of passers
by, nor see too much themselves of the outside world. Hence the prime
condition of domestic architecture was to build the rooms round an
interior court, into which the chief windows looked, and to make as few
windows as possible, and those few closely latticed. As a result, those
streets of Cairo which are lined with private houses exhibit a somewhat
monotonous aspect. The houses are generally two or three stories high—in
the old Mamlūk days they were of five stories—and are built of stone on
the ground floor (coloured in alternate red and white courses with red
ochre and limewash), and of brick tied with wood and coated with white
plaster on the upper stories. The doors are often very tastefully
ornamented (fig. 11); but there the external decoration generally ends,
for the windows on the ground floor are generally but small rectangular
apertures closed with lattice work, and set high above the reach of
curious eyes, and even those on the upper stories are commonly small and
plain, and arranged with no regard to symmetry, though there are still
some examples of streets where the higher floors of the houses are
furnished with richly-ornamented lattice windows (fig. 12). These
lattice windows are called _meshrebīyas_, “drinking places,” from the
semi-circular or semi-octagonal bow, which commonly juts out from their
centre, in which the porous water-bottles of the house are placed to
cool by evaporation in the air. Unlike the mosques, there are no friezes
of ornament or inscriptions on the outer walls of houses.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.—DOORWAY OF A PRIVATE HOUSE.
(From a Sketch by J. W. Wild.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.—A STREET IN CAIRO.]
The door generally opens flat against the side wall of the passage
inside, turning upon a pivot in the lintel and threshold, and is
confronted by the _mastaba_ or stone seat (sometimes replaced by a
_dikka_ or chair of lattice work) on which the door-keeper (_bawwāb_)
sits. Thence a passage, which makes one or two sharp bends, with the
intention of foiling any attempt of inquisitive eyes to see into the
interior through the door when it happens to be open, leads into a
square court, unpaved, and open to the sky, in which is a tree shading
the well, supplied by infiltration from the Nile with somewhat brackish
water. No eye should see into the court from any other house, still less
from any street. The four sides are lofty, and are composed of the rooms
of the house, with their beautiful meshrebīyas, or if only three sides
are thus occupied, the fourth consists of a plain partition wall,
dividing the house from its next-door neighbour, and pierced by no
aperture. The south side of the court is that on which the chief rooms
of the mansion are built, for here the cool northern breezes, so dear to
Cairenes in the hot season, can best be enjoyed. The rooms most
accessible from the court, on the ground floor, are those which belong
to the men of the household, and include the offices, stables,
storerooms, and men-servants’ rooms, besides the reception-rooms of the
master for his male guests. These last, in the best houses are three in
number: the _mandara_, the _mak‘ad_, and the _takhtabōsh_. The two last
are chiefly for summer use; the first is the general men’s saloon. The
takhtabōsh is nothing more than a recess in the corner of the court,
supported by a single column, paved with marble, and furnished with
divans; it is an alcove rather than a room. The mak‘ad is a belvedere or
open gallery, raised some eight or ten feet above the ground, on the
south or cool side of the court, into which it looks through three or
four arches, open to the northern breeze. It is plainly furnished like
the takhtabōsh, and is a pleasant lounge for the men in hot weather.
Sometimes this belvedere is latticed in front for the use of the women,
but, as a rule, it is a man’s apartment. The third room, the _mandara_,
is arranged, like all Cairene reception-rooms of the closed order, in
two levels. A paved walk or floor, leading from the door, and ornamented
with coloured marbles, is called the _durkā‘a_, and its use is to
receive the visitor’s shoes before he steps up to the carpeted portion
of the room. The durkā‘a has often a fountain playing in the centre, in
the midst of a tesselated marble border, and a sideboard or stand for
water-bottles occupies the extremity facing the door. On one side of
this narrow pathway is the room proper, to which the durkā‘a supplies
the place of a vestibule. There is no partition between the two, but the
room is raised a step higher. The general plan of a reception-room is
thus seen to consist in a low pavement and a daïs. The daïs, which is
not a mere recess, but a spacious room, is furnished with divans running
round the sides, raised from the floor by low stone slabs or palm-
frames. Above the divan is a dado of coloured marbles or tiles, broken
only by the cupboards, with little open arcades, filled with porcelain
and earthenware vessels, by recesses containing cushions for reclining,
and at the end by the _meshrebīya_ or lattice window, over which is
often a row of stained-glass windows forming the topmost panel of the
meshrebīya, or a few windows of the same character are set in the wall
above. The surface of the walls is simply lime-washed, or left of
uncoloured plaster, and a plain wooden shelf forms the principal relief.
The ceiling is constructed of beams, clearly displayed, and resting on
corbels or cornices, all of which are painted and gilt in arabesque
designs, while the spaces between the beams are coffered in little
compartments, each decorated with tasteful arabesque and floral
designs.[24]
[Illustration: FIG. 13.—PLAN OF A CAIRO HOUSE. GROUND FLOOR.
B B. Street; 1. Stable; 2. Bakehouse; 3. Kitchen; 4. Small mandara; 5.
Entrance; 6. Strangers’ room; 7. Chief mandara; 8. Mak‘ad; 9. Court; 10.
Servants’ room.]
A small and carefully-closed door conducts to the _harīm_ or women’s
apartments, which are on the upper floors, or in large houses occupy a
separate court to themselves. Of the _harīm_ rooms the chief is the
great _Kā‘a_ or reception-room. This resembles the _mandara_ in its
decoration, but has a _līwān_ or daïs on each side of the _durkā‘a_
instead of only on one side, and thus forms a double room.[25] It is
also loftier than the mandara, and often rises to the roof of the house,
while its durkā‘a (which seldom has a fountain) is surmounted by a sort
of clerestory, projecting above the rest of the ceiling, and crowned by
a lantern or cupola. There are also some smaller sitting-rooms; and
bedrooms, which are supplied with no furniture but the pallet-bed, which
is rolled up and thrust away into a closet in the morning. There is
often a small sitting-room on the top story, with a cupola, an example
of which is to be seen in the South Kensington Museum (No. 1193-1883),
and also some ventilating chambers, open to the flat roof, on which are
erected the sloping wooden screens or _malkafs_, so familiar to those
who have looked down upon Cairo from the Citadel, the object of which is
to guide the north winds down into the house. In the ventilating
chambers beneath the malkafs, or on the upper terrace of the roof, open
to the sky, the inhabitants are wont to sleep in the hot months.
[Illustration: FIG. 13A.—FIRST FLOOR.
1. Servants’ rooms; 2. Linen room; 3. Space over rooms; 4. Men’s rooms;
5. Mandara; 6. Space over chief mandara; 7. Courtyard; 8. Strangers’
rooms.]
[Illustration: FIG. 13B.—SECOND FLOOR.
1. Rooms; 2. Bath; 3. Harim; 4. Space over mandara; 5. Space over rooms;
6. Court; 7. Strangers’ rooms.]
The arrangement of the rooms is incapable of generalisation; they are
built on every variety of plan: that given in the accompanying diagrams
(from Prof. Ebers’ _Egypt_) is a fair example. Some, like the great
_kā‘as_ and _mandaras_, may rise to the whole height of the house;
others form mezzanine stories of the normal height of fourteen feet. You
frequently have to ascend or descend several steps in going from one
chamber to the next. Seclusion for the women, air from the north, and
subdued light, are the three essentials, and after these have been
attained the architect could exercise his ingenuity as he pleased. It
should be noticed that Cairo architecture is an internal art, for all
its best skill is spent on the interior of the house; and that the
decoration is architectural, since, as has been well said, the rooms are
furnished by the architect and not by the upholsterer. The general
effect of the courts surrounded by lattice-windows and arched belvedere,
and of the interior of the reception-rooms, with their soft light,
primitive colours, and obvious honesty of construction and decoration,
is strangely attractive. The honesty of the work impresses one
everywhere: “The beams which support the ceiling are plainly visible to
the eye, and are supported at the ends by elongated corbels ending in
perfect stalagmitic patterns. Nothing is hidden away; there is no
insincere work. One of the beauties of the rooms is the extensive use of
wood, and the rare use of stucco, which is indeed a testimonial to the
sterling value of the architect’s work, since he preferred to go out of
his way to employ wood for his purpose, when he might have got a far
easier but more perishable material at home.”[26]
The houses above described are those of ordinary gentlemen of fifty
years ago. In the great periods of Fātimy and Mamlūk splendour—to judge
from contemporary records and the scanty remains that have come down to
us—the palaces of the chief lords were much more splendid. Nāsir-i-
Khusrau, who travelled in Egypt in the 11th century, remarks that most
of the houses of Cairo had five or six stories, and were built with such
care that one might fancy they were constructed of precious stones
instead of mere plaster and brick and ordinary stone. Each house, he
adds, was isolated from its neighbour’s by gardens. Jehan Thénaud, who
accompanied André Le Roy, the ambassador of Louis XII. to the Mamlūk
Sultan El-Ghōry, at the opening of the 16th century, tells us that the
house assigned to the embassy contained six or seven beautiful halls,
paved with marble, porphyry, serpentine, and other rare stones, inlaid
with wonderful art; the walls were of similar mosaic, or painted with
azure and rich colours; the doors inlaid with ivory, ebony, and other
_singularitez_; yet the workmanship excelled the materials. Extensive
gardens, filled with fruit-trees, surrounded the mansion, and were
watered from the Nile night and morning by means of horses and oxen.
Such a house, he exclaims, might have cost 80,000 seraps of gold; yet it
was but one of a hundred thousand more beautiful still![27]
The chief buildings of Cairo, besides mosques and houses, are the street
fountains and schools, which are very numerous, and the _khāns_ or
_wekālas_ for merchants. These often go together, as in the wekāla of
Kāït Bey, of which a description is given in the next chapter (pp.
104-112). The khān or wekāla is a rectangular building enclosing an open
court, and consisting of numerous chambers, which are occupied by
merchants who come to the city for a few days’ or weeks’ trafficking; it
is, in fact, the commercial hotel of the East. Stables for the asses and
other beasts are on the ground floor inside, and the exterior is
commonly fringed with a row of small shops of the usual Eastern
pattern—namely, a recess in the wall, some six feet square, furnished
with shelves for the goods, and a divan for the seller and purchaser.
Similar shops fringe the ground floors of the houses in the principal
streets, the upper stories of which have no connection with the shops,
but are generally partitioned into lodgings. The shops open only on the
street, and, when the shopman goes home, are closed with wooden
shutters. The _sebīls_ or street fountains consist externally of a front
of semicircular form, with grated windows and a row of brass pipes, from
which water may be sucked by passers-by, or a row of apertures through
which they may thrust their arms with a brass cup (which is provided
outside) to the tank of water within. Over the fountain is a room, with
open arched windows, where a pedagogue instructs the youth of Cairo in
the art of reading the Koran, and not much else. These sebīls, with
their schools, are pious foundations, and are generally connected with
some mosque. The walls of the interior of some of the better style, such
as that of ‘Abd-er-Rahmān Kikhya or Ketkhuda (18th century), are
decorated with earthenware tiles of floral patterns, and often with a
bird’s-eye view of Mekka, with the Ka‘ba and other holy places,
represented on the tiles. Such fountains are among the most ornamental
features of the streets of Cairo, though most of them belong to the
Turkish period of decadence.[28]
In concluding this brief survey of the chief characteristics of Cairo
architecture, it cannot be concealed that the style fails to give
complete satisfaction to an eye trained in the contemplation of either
the Classical or the Gothic orders. The Saracen builders do not seem to
have been possessed with an architectural idea; the leading
consideration with them seems to have been not form but decoration. For
the details of the decoration it is impossible to feel too much
admiration; they are skilfully conceived and worked out with remarkable
patience, honesty, and artistic feeling. But the form, of which they are
the clothing, seems too often to want purpose; there is a curious
indefiniteness about the mosques, a want of crown and summit, which sets
them on a much lower level than the finest of our Gothic cathedrals. It
is perhaps unfair to judge of them in their more or less ruinous state;
yet their present picturesque decay is probably more effective than was
the sumptuous gorgeousness of their colours and ornament when new. The
want of bold relief in the ornament is one of the most salient defects
to us of the north; we find the surfaces of the mosque exteriors flat
and monotonous. The disregard of symmetry is another very trying defect
to eyes trained in other schools of architecture; the windows, minarets,
&c., are scattered with no sense of balance; and the dome, instead of
crowning the whole edifice covers a tomb at the side of the building,
and thus infallibly gives it a lopsided aspect. It is chiefly to the
grace of their minarets, the beauty of their internal decoration, and
the soft effects of the Egyptian atmosphere upon the yellowish stone of
which they are built, that the mosques of Cairo owe their peculiar and
indestructible charm. A charm they have undoubtedly, which is apparent
and fascinating to most beholders; but it is due, I believe, to tone and
air, to association, to delicacy and ingenuity of detail, and not to the
architectural form. Franz Pasha, the architect to the Khedive’s
Government, himself a fervent admirer of what is really excellent in
Saracenic art, has the following criticism on the architecture: “While
bestowing their full meed of praise on the wonderfully rich
ornamentation and other details of Arabian architecture, one cannot help
feeling that the style fails to give entire aesthetic satisfaction. Want
of symmetry of plan, poverty of articulation, insufficiency of plastic
decoration, and an incongruous mingling of wood and stone are the
imperfections which strike most northern critics. The architects, in
fact, bestowed the whole of their attention on the decoration of
surfaces; and down to the present day the Arabian artists have always
displayed far greater ability in designing the most complicated
ornaments and geometrical figures on plane surfaces than in the
treatment and proportioning of masses. Although we occasionally see
difficulties of construction well overcome, as in the case of the
interior of the Bāb-en-Nasr, these instances seem rather to be
successful experiments than the result of scientific workmanship. The
real excellence of the Arabian architects lay in their skill in masking
abrupt angles by the use of stalactites or brackets. If we inquire into
the causes of these defects in the developments of art, we shall find
that the climate is one of the principal; its remarkable mildness and
the rareness of rain have enabled architects to dispense with much that
appears essential to the inhabitants of more northern latitudes; and
hence the imperfect development and frequent absence of cornices. The
extraordinary durability of wood, again, in Egypt has led to its being
used in the construction of walls and in connection with stone, in a
manner that would never occur to northern architects. Another cause,
unfavourable to the development of native art, has doubtless been the
ease with which the architects obtained the pillars and capitals in
ancient buildings ready to their hand.”[29]
The architect goes on to point out how political changes, and the
respect for traditional forms, and the superstitious dread of the evil
eye, bearing upon external display, have combined to arrest the
development of Cairo architecture. There is much that is penetrating and
just in this criticism; but it is clearly the criticism of a northern
artist. We have come to regard certain architectural features, such as
cornices, as essential, which an eastern would regard as superfluous,
and our eye is biassed by what it has been accustomed to see in Europe.
The main criticism, however, stands good, that the beauty of the mosques
of Cairo is not so much architectural as decorative, and no prejudice
can be accounted a sufficient reason for disregarding this defect.
Nevertheless, when all has been said, the mosques and older houses of
Cairo possess a beauty of their own, which no architectural canons can
gainsay. The houses in particular, by their admirable suitableness in
all respects to the climate of Egypt, their shady, restful aspect, and
subdued light, must take a high place among the triumphs of domestic
architecture. We may detect a lack of meaning in this feature and in
that, but we are forced to admit that the whole effect is soft and
harmonious, sometimes stately, always graceful, and that the Saracenic
architecture of Cairo, whatever its technical faults, is among the most
characteristic and beautiful forms of building with which we are
acquainted.
The following list of the principal mosques of Cairo still existing will
be useful for reference. Considering that there are some three hundred
mosques in Cairo, to say nothing of _zāwiyas_ (or chapels), a complete
list would be somewhat cumbrous; but the majority of these edifices are
comparatively modern and of little pretension to architectural merit,
which forms the sole consideration from our present point of view. El-
Makrīzy, in his “Topography of Cairo” (_Khitat_), written about the year
1420, enumerates 86 _gāmi‘s_ (or congregational mosques, where the
Friday prayers were said), 75 _medresas_ (or collegiate mosques, where
lectures were delivered), 19 _mesgids_ (or small mosques), 22 _khāngāhs_
(or monasteries), 26 _zāwiyas_ (or chapels), 34 mausoleums in the
Karāfa, and 5 _māristāns_ (or hospitals); in all 279 mosques or mosque-
like edifices. But this is something of a cross division, for many of
the _medresas_ and _māristāns_ were attached to a _gāmi‘_, and really
formed one building with it. A large proportion of the mosques described
by El-Makrīzy still remain, but many of them are in advanced stage of
decay. The following comprise the best specimens of the different
periods, so far as they still present fairly preserved architectural
details.
PRINCIPAL MOSQUES STILL EXISTING IN CAIRO.
A.H. A.D.
20. 640. _‘Amr._ Frequently restored; _e.g._ in A.D. 1049,
by El-Mustansir; in 1172 by Saladin; after the
earthquake of 1302 by En-Nāsir. Little of the
original building is left.
265. 878. _Ibn-Tūlūn._ Restored by Lāgīn, 1296.
361. 971. _Azhar._ Injured by earthquake of 1302, and
restored by Salār and Suyurghatmish; again by
Sultan Hasan in 1360; by Kāït-Bey; and by Kikhya
in 1753. Little of the original building is left.
380-403. 990-1012. _El-Hākim._ Injured by earthquake, 1302; restored
in the next year by Beybars II.; again by Sultan
Hasan in 1359; and again in 1423.
608. 1211. _Esh-Shāfi‘y_ (mausoleum). Built by El-Kāmil;
restored by Kāït-Bey, El-Ghōry, &c.
647. 1249. _Es-Sālih_ (mausoleum). Injured by earthquake,
1302, and restored by En-Nāsir.
667. 1268. _Edh-Dhāhir Beybars_ I.
683. 1284. _Kalaūn_ (Māristān). Minaret destroyed by
earthquake, 1302, and rebuilt.
687. 1288. _Kalaūn_ (Kubba).
698. 1298. _En-Nāsir._
706. 1306. _Beybars II. Gāshenkīr._
718. 1318. _En-Nāsir, in the Citadel._
723. 1323. _Sengar El-Gāwaly_ and _Salār_, joined.
739. 1338. _El-Māridāny._ (Architect, El-Mu’allim Es-Suyūfy).
748. 1347. _Aksunkur._ Restored by Ibrāhīm Aghā in 1652.
756. 1355. _Sheykhū._
757. 1356. _Suyurghatmish._
760. 1358. _Sultan Hasan._
770. 1368. _Umm-Sha‘bān._
786. 1384. _Barkūk._ (Architect, Cherkis el-Haranbuly.)
808-813. 1405-1410. _Barkūk, in the Karāfa._ Built by ‘Abd-el-‘Azīz
and Farag, sons of Barkūk. (Architect, Lāgīn
Tarabay (?).)
823. 1420. _El-Muayyad._ In process of restoration.
827. 1423. _El-Ashraf Bars Bey._ Also _mausoleum_ in the
Karāfa.
860. 1456. _El-Ashraf Ināl, in the Karāfa._
877. 1472. _Kāït Bey, in the Karāfa._ Also mosque within
Cairo.
886. 1481. _Kigmās, Amīr Akhòr._
905. 1499. _Ezbek._
909. 1503. _El-Ghòry_ (two). Restored 1883.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.—ROSETTE IN MOSQUE OF SUYURGHATMISH.
Fourteenth Century.]