Chapter V: Cairo (2)

The Persian saw one of the great ceremonies of the Cairo year, the cutting of the dam of the canal at Misr by Mustansir in person. The caliph rode at the head of ten thousand horsemen, whose saddles and harness and horse-armour were adorned with gold and precious stones, with silken housings embroidered with the caliph’s name. Led camels bore litters richly decorated, and even the mules had their share of jewelled harness. Regiment after regiment the army defiled towards the mouth of the canal: Berbers of the Kitáma tribe, 20,000 strong, descended from the veterans of Mo‘izz; Maghrabis, 15,000; Masmúda, 20,000; Turks and Persians, called “the Easterns,” though born in Egypt, 10,000; Bedawis from the Higáz, 15,000; Sudány blacks, 30,000; slaves, chamberlains, officials of all ranks, poets and doctors, princes from Morocco, from the Yemen, from Nubia, Abyssinia, Asia Minor, Georgia, Turkistan, and even the sons of a sultan of Delhi, whose mother had settled at Cairo. The caliph himself, a handsome and amiable-looking young man, clean shaved, and dressed in a long robe of pure white, rode a mule without any ornaments. Three hundred Persians of Deylem on foot, dressed in Greek brocade, formed his escort, carrying axes and pikes. A great dignitary bore the parasol of state beside him, and eunuchs burned incense on either hand. All the people fell on their faces as the caliph passed to the silken tent at the mouth of the canal, and as soon as he cast a javelin at the dam they fell to with pick and shovel, and the Nile flowed in. Then all the world went sailing on the river in great joy, headed by a boatful of deaf and dumb for the sake of luck.

The Persian was fortunate in the time of his sojourn in Egypt. Very evil days were in store for it, in which Cairo suffered its first spoliation since its foundation a century before. For nine years (1050-8) an able vezír, el-Yazúry, kept the upper hand over the various factions. He did his best to deal with the ever-recurring menace of famine, and it is possible that the ruins of “Joseph’s granaries” near Masr-el-‘Atíka, which Benjamin of Tudela mentions as early as 1170, represent the storehouses for corn which he laid up against years of scarcity. In those days there was no Willcocks or Scott Moncrieff to plan barrages and dams, and make the great river the servant of the poorest felláh. If the Nile at the season of inundation did not rise above the lines on the Nilometer at Roda known by the ominous names of the degrees of Munkir and Nakír, the two angels of the grave, a famine inevitably ensued, and with the famine came too often plague, and misery and hunger led to disorder and crime. The cause and effect recurred with the regularity of a machine. Yazúry’s granaries staved off the danger for a while at the capital; but after he was poisoned in 1058, there was no one to control the warring factions. Forty changes of vezírs in nine years show the instability of the government. The caliph listened to the advice of anybody, and men of straw formed his council. The real rulers were the Turkish troops, who united with the Berbers and drove the hated Sudánis out of Cairo. The blacks established themselves in Upper Egypt, where their license terrified the people and prevented cultivation; the Berbers, expelled in turn, overran the Delta and deliberately destroyed the irrigation system in order to starve the fellahín. Meanwhile the Turks looted the capital, despoiled the beautiful palaces of the caliphs, dispersed their priceless collections[51] of works of art, precious stones and jewellery, and worst of all broke up their incomparable library of 100,000 manuscripts—some of them books which orientalists still search for in vain—and used these treasures of learning to mend their boots, to light their fires, or even threw them wantonly out on the rubbish heaps.

Upper and Lower Egypt being held by predatory bands of Sudánis and Berbers, the capital was cut off from supplies when the great famine began in 1066. Seven years it lasted without a sign of relief, and Egypt was nearly ruined. Terror of the disbanded troops in the provinces paralysed the fellahín, and nothing was done to mitigate the effects of the low Niles or to sow for the next season. Cairo and Misr, deprived of their usual supplies from the provinces, felt the scarcity most severely. We read of £8 being paid for a loaf of bread, of a house bartered for a quarter of flour, of ladies of quality throwing away their useless jewellery which no one would take in exchange for food, and of horses, asses, and even dogs and cats, bought at high prices and hungrily devoured. Soon there was not a beast to be killed, and the caliph’s stable was brought so low that his starved grooms could only muster three sorry nags. The people began to kidnap and eat each other. Human flesh was sold by the butchers. Then came the plague and mowed down every soul in house after house with its sudden secret scythe. Famine and plague are no respecters of persons. The great suffered alike with the poor. Proud noblemen tried to earn a crust of bread by serving in the public baths. The caliph himself, despoiled by the Turks and deserted by his household—even his wife and daughters fled to Baghdád to escape the pest—owed his daily rations of two loaves to the charity of a scholar’s daughter.

Those seven lean years of indescribable misery and crime had never before been approached in Egypt. At last they came to an end. The harvest of 1073 was bountiful, the leader of the Turks was “cut in pieces small,” and a great vezír came to the rescue of the tottering State (1074). This was Bedr el Gemály, for whom the caliph sent in his distress. Bedr was an Armenian, but not a Christian, and began his career as a slave. His marked ability had raised him to such high offices as the governorship of Damascus and afterwards of ‘Akka (Acre). He was the man for the crisis, and by a fortunate omen a Korán reader was actually reciting to the caliph the verse, “And God has helped you with Bedr——”[52] when Bedr entered the presence. “Had you read any more,” cried the delighted caliph, “your head would have been cut off.” The famous general made short work of the Turkish oligarchy. The leaders were all killed, by a treacherous but salutary trick, in a single night. The reign of terror in Cairo was over. Bedr was appointed commander-in- chief, vezír of the sword and pen, chief kády, and director of the Shí‘a propaganda—generalissimo, prime minister, cardinal, and lord chancellor in one. He first brought back order in the capital, and then marched through the provinces, defeating, slaughtering and subduing Berbers, Sudánis, and Arabs, till law reigned supreme from Alexandria to Aswán. The peasantry, restored to peace and security, laboured their lands again, the revenue rose by leaps and bounds, and for twenty years the country enjoyed plenteous prosperity.

Cairo benefited incalculably by the large and noble policy of the great Armenian. For a century since the days when ‘Azíz built the West Palace and the Pavilion of the Pearl, there had been few important additions to its architecture. Hákim, indeed, had finished his father’s mosque, and built the Hall of Science. Mustansir’s favourite residence was his country palace at Heliopolis, where he had a kiosk modelled after the holy but distinctly ugly Kaaba of Mekka, with a pool of wine to represent the well of Zemzem; and there he made merry, with exceedingly unorthodox sarcasms upon the black stone and bad water of the Arabian original. With the rule of Bedr, Cairo once more heard the sound of the trowel. In view of the recent invasion and spoliation of the city by insurgent troops the first necessity was to fortify it for defence. The old wall of sun-burnt brick had practically disappeared in the growth of the town which now spread outside the three gates built by Gawhar. These gates were now taken down and rebuilt of stone (1187-91) so as to enclose a larger area—the Greek Quarter at the south, for example, was now taken within the wall—and a new wall of brick was carried round the city. It was afterwards enlarged by Saladin, but some of the wall of Bedr still remains. On the north it still connects the Bab-en-Nasr with the Bab-el-Futúh, and extends to a bastion about 330 feet west of the latter, and to a re-entering angle some 200 feet east of the Bab-en- Nasr. There is also a piece of the wall among the houses near the Bab- Zuweyla on the south face of the enclosure, and as late as 1842 a portion of the west wall was still to be seen at the west side of the Ezbekíya.

The three great gates stand practically unchanged, though the towers of the Zuweyla gate were shortened to receive the minarets of the mosque of el-Muayyad in the fifteenth century. These gates are the most impressive monuments of the Fátimid period, but they are Byzantine, not Saracenic. According to the Armenian chronicler Abu-Sálih, a Copt, “John the Monk,” planned the walls and gates for the Armenian vezír; but whatever share he had in designing the lie of the walls, he could never have been the architect of these Norman-looking gates.[53] The Topographer is evidently right in stating that they were built by three brothers from Edessa—a city full of Armenians where Bedr, with his Syrian experience, would naturally seek his architects—each of whom built one gate. The statement is amply confirmed, not only by the style, which clearly belongs to the Syrian-Byzantine school, but also by various mason’s marks in Greek letters, Ζ̲, Η, Η’, etc. In short, as M. van Berchem has pointed out, the gates and enceinte of Cairo belong to what is called the Templars’ (as distinguished from the French) style of military architecture,—“the great Byzantine and Saracenic school of which the chief characteristics may be traced in various countries and at divers epochs, at Constantinople, Nicæa, Brusa, Adalia, and the Pamphylian cities, in the old Arab fortresses of northern Syria, in the style of the Templars and the military buildings of the post-crusade Saracens, such as the enceinte of Jerusalem,” etc. The leading features of the style are square bastions and square or round headed openings, contrasting with the Persian arches of the Fátimid mosques and the round bastions of Saladin’s wall. The curtains run to a thickness of eleven to thirteen feet, and contain archers’ chambers and other apparatus for defence. The gates consist of a vaulted passage, with round arch, between towers containing an ingenious arrangement of shooting floors and connected by a cross-passage above the arch, with a place for launching stones or grenades upon the enemy. A fine spiral staircase, admirable cornices, some sculptured shields, and a magnificent Kufic inscription[54] adorn the Bab-en-Nasr. The inscription (like another on the Bab-el-Futúh) expresses the Shí‘a creed, but has nevertheless sustained eight centuries of orthodox rule in Egypt unchanged. The three great gates are noble monuments of one of the greatest vezírs of mediæval Cairo.

For nearly sixty years Egypt enjoyed the inestimable benefits of Armenian rule. Bedr died in 1094, the year also of the caliph Mustánsir’s death, but the vezír’s son el-Afdal succeeded to his father’s power, and governed Egypt till 1121, when he was assassinated by order of the caliph Amir. Afdal’s son Abu-‘Aly held supreme power in 1131 in the name of “the expected Mahdy,”—thus reverting to the old Shí‘a theory of the hidden Imám and ignoring all claims of the Fátimid dynasty. When he in turn was murdered on his way to the polo field, Yanis, an Armenian slave of Afdal’s, became vezír, and after him Bahrám, an Armenian Christian, retained the office until 1137. By this time the growing influence of the Armenians had led to their holding every post worth having in all the government departments, and their excessive assumption of authority led to a natural reaction. Bahrám and 2000 of his fellow-countrymen were expelled, and the heyday of the Armenians was over. They deserved well of the country, and had ruled, on a whole, both wisely and large-mindedly. Firm and yet mild, the virtual sovereignty of Bedr and his son had rendered immense services to Egypt. If they accumulated vast wealth—Afdal is said to have left over £3,000,000 in gold, and the milk of his herds of cows was farmed in one year for £15,750—they earned their fortunes by hard and intelligent work; they were just and generous, and the Copts had much to thank them for. Even Abu-‘Aly, with his eccentric revival of the doctrine of the concealed Imám, who actually figured on the coinage, inherited the wise tradition of his father and grandfather, and showed himself tolerant and mild, a good friend to the Christians, and a patron of learning.

From the time of Bedr, Egypt, it will be realized, had become a country ruled no longer by caliphs but by vezírs. It was the old story of the Merovingian _major domo_ translated into Arabic. Indeed, since the terrible despotism of Hákim no caliph had exercised personal authority in the great affairs of state, except el-Amir, who tried for a few years to be his own prime-minister, with the help, however, of the monk Ibn- Kenna, but the experiment was not a success. The monk became too inflated, and was scourged to death. El-Ámir’s cruelty made him detested, and one day as he was riding back from the Hawdag, or “Litter,” the country-house on the island of Roda in which he consulted the desert tastes of his Bedawy bride, he was assassinated by some Isma‘ílian Assassins (1130). He had at least the virtue to found a mosque, the Gámi‘ el-Akmar (Grey Mosque), in Beyn-el-Kasreyn. After this the caliphs resigned themselves to a succession of vezírs, who were themselves the instruments of military factions. The spiritual sanctity and seclusion of the Fátimid pontiffs were still observed, as we have seen in the description of the embassy of the two knights, but one must believe that this reverence had degenerated into something like a farce. The murders of Ámir and Záfir; the early imprisonment of Háfiz, and his later thraldom to his drunken negro guards, who killed the gallant Rudwán, vezír, soldier, and poet, in front of the Grey Mosque, and who made the caliph poison his own son by the hands of his Christian physician; the awful scene of bloodshed in the very palace, amid which the baby Fáïz was exhibited to the trembling court as their spiritual Imám[55]—these do not point to any real reverence for the mystical caliphate of the Shí‘a. Fainéant caliphs had long been known at Baghdád, and their rivals on the Nile were equally shadows of a mighty name.

The last horror was too much even for the long-suffering people of Cairo. The murder of the caliph Záfir shortly after the murder of the Kurd vezír Ibn-es-Salár; the massacre in the palace; the peculiar unnaturalness of the crimes on the part of a kinsman and boonfellow; the atrocious brutality of exposing the child-caliph of four years to the terror of such a scene of blood and anguish, roused a storm of vengeance. The new vezír, ‘Abbás, the instigator, fled from a hail of stones, and was killed near the Dead Sea; the actual assassin, Nasr, was delivered up by the Templars of Palestine, for a blood-money of £30,000, to the women of the palace, who tortured him, and sent him through the streets of Cairo, maimed and blinded, to be crucified alive at the Bab- Zuweyla. In their desperate straits the women had sent locks of their hair to the governor of Ushmuneyn in Upper Egypt, and the emír Talái‘, son of Ruzzík, responded gallantly to the appeal (1154). Waving the eloquent tresses he rode into Cairo, followed by an Arab guard, and when he had assumed the vezirate in the Dar-el-Mamún,[56] the capital recovered its confidence. Talái‘, who followed the custom of recent vezírs and styled himself “king,” el-Melik es-Sálih, was the last buttress of the falling dynasty. He was a man of culture, a poet, accessible, generous, and politic. His mosque, still to be seen near the Bab-Zuweyla, bears witness to his pious munificence. He tried his best to turn aside from Egypt the storm that was threatening from the political complications in Syria and Palestine; but the palace women found that they had called to their rescue an austere moralist, and ungratefully put him to death. “His last words were a regret that he had not conquered Jerusalem and exterminated the Franks, and a warning to his son to beware of Sháwar, the Arab governor of Upper Egypt. The regret and the warning were well founded. Sháwar deposed and executed the vezír’s son Ruzzík at the beginning of 1163, and within the year the Christian king of Jerusalem was in Egypt.”

Before turning to the invasion of Cairo by the Crusaders, the conquest by Saladin, and the end of the Fátimids in the death of the last caliph el-‘Adid, a few words must be said on the remains of the city which the falling dynasty had created and maintained in exceptional splendour. Of all their buildings only the three great gates, part of the walls, and the remains of four[57] mosques, bear witness to the Fátimids. The palaces have utterly gone: they were not used by their successors, and gradually fell to ruin. “O censurer of my love for the sons of Fatima,” wrote Omára, the poet, before 1174, “join in my tears over the desolate halls of the twin Palaces.” The Hall of Science, the Dar-el-Mamún, the Palace of the Vezírs, and all the other mansions and pleasure houses of the Shí‘a caliphs and their court have disappeared. There was no wanton or general destruction: the buildings were simply deserted and neglected under the new orthodox régime, and neglected houses soon fall to ruin. Of the few remaining monuments, the oldest that can be regarded as authentic is the mosque of el-Hákim—for the Azhar retains little of its original architecture or decoration. The Akmar mosque in Beyn-el-Kasreyn built by the caliph Ámir is remarkable as the first mosque built of stone: the earlier mosques were all of brick. Only the façade, however, is of stone, well-shaped and joined, and finely sculptured. The interior arches are of brick on marble pillars. “Small and ruined as it is, it has the feature, unique among Fátimid mosques, of a fine façade (unfortunately hidden by a formless erection which the Monuments Commission has vainly sought to obtain power to remove), very unlike the ordinary plain exterior of the early mosques, and deserving special notice for the shell ornament of its fluted niche, the rosette of open tracery composed of inscriptions and ornaments, and the side niches, surmounted by a Kufic frieze.”[58] Two inscriptions giving the name of el-Amir and the date 519 A.H. (1125) belong to the foundation, and two others record the restoration of the mosque by the emír Yelbugha es- Sálimy in 799 (1396), but this restoration fortunately made but slight alterations in this interesting building. The mosque of the vezír Talái‘ ibn Ruzzík, near the Bab-Zuweyla (1160), though much dilapidated, shows a notable advance in decorative skill, and the rich detail of its arabesques is scarcely surpassed by any later work. Fátimid decoration is well illustrated by several important examples in the Museum of Arab Art. Especially to be studied are the panelled doors with fine foliate carving and inscriptions (of el-Hákim) from the Azhar mosque; and the three _mihrabs_ or prayer niches, two of which came from the Azhar (one bears an inscription recording its erection there by el-Ámir in 1125), and the third from the chapel of Seyyida Rukeyya of about 1135. The last is a marvel of intricate geometrical panel-work and arabesque and Kufic ornament.

Unhappily, if heterodox opinions encouraged artistic development, they also led to the destruction of its achievements. Had the Fátimids not been heretics, their beautiful palaces with their thousands of exquisite works of art might have been preserved by their successors. As it was, they all bore “the mark of the Beast,” and the pious folk of later times were only too eager to efface all memories of the schismatic caliphs who had lavished their fabulous wealth with admirable taste upon the embellishment of their city.