Chapter VII: The Dome Builders (2)

Inside, the first impression again is of size rather than detail. The great span of the four arches—that at the east is 90 feet high and nearly 70 wide—is unmatched in Cairo, but the plaster coating of the interior of the transepts detracts from the general effect, nor are the mosaics and marbles, handsome as they are, equal in delicacy of design or harmony of colour to many others in the _mihrábs_ of earlier and later mosques. The black, white, and yellow panels are too garish, and so is the colouring of the pulpit; but the concave niche itself is singularly rich in decoration, and the tribune, instead of being as usual an unpretentious wood platform, stands upon graceful stone columns of alternate drums of coloured marbles. A fine Kufic inscription forms a frieze round the top of the walls. The tomb-chamber, entered from the sanctuary by a noble door plated with arabesques in bronze, is surrounded by a marble dado 25 feet high, above which is the Throne- Verse from the Korán carved in wood, whilst the angles are gradually worked up to the circle of the dome by stalactites also carved in wood and much decayed. In the centre is the plain marble grave of the founder. The dome itself is comparatively modern, and quite unworthy of the great mosque. The original great dome, admired by Pietro della Valle in 1616, collapsed in 1660. There were to have been four minarets, but scarcely was the third built when it fell (1360), crushing some three hundred children in the school below. Thirty-three days later Sultan Hasan was murdered. Of the two that then remained, one minaret became ruined and was rebuilt too short in 1659. The great bronze lanterns and many of the enamelled glass lamps are preserved in the Arab Museum; and the fine bronze-plated entrance door was removed by el-Muáyyad to his own mosque in 1410.

The mosque of Sultan Hasan suffered greatly from its position. Its wide terrace-roof was an excellent post of vantage for cannon and musketry during the constant émeutes of the Mamlúk period, and shots were frequently exchanged between it and the Citadel down to the time of Mohammad ‘Aly: some of the balls may still be seen in the masonry. Barkúk found the mosque so dangerous as a place of attack that he demolished its handsome steps and closed the great door. At one time it remained closed for half a century, and the students and worshippers had to slink in by a window or a side-door. The tall minaret was even used in the middle of the fifteenth century to support a tight-rope stretched to the Citadel on which a European gymnast disported himself to the tremulous delight of the populace. In a quieter situation the mosque might have escaped injury, but even as it is, scarred with bullets and lopped of its original dome and minarets, it remains the most superb if not the most beautiful monument of Saracenic art in the fourteenth century.

2. THE MAMLÚKS OF THE FORT.

When the feeble descendants of en-Násir, after enduring rather than enjoying a mock sovereignty for forty years under the tyranny of a series of powerful emírs—Kusún, Sheykhú, Sarghitmish, and the rest—gave way to the usurpation of the emír Barkúk in 1382, the change made little difference in the government of Egypt. The hereditary principle was gone, indeed, and was never reaffirmed until the latter part of the nineteenth century; and the new dynasty consisted of isolated emírs, who sometimes bequeathed their throne to a son until some other emír deposed him, but who never founded a royal house like that of Kalaún. The new line was known as the Burgy Mamlúks, or “slaves of the fort,” because they belonged to a brigade of troops which had been quartered in the Citadel ever since their original enrolment by Kalaún a century before. They are also called the “Circassian Sultans,” from their common race, for none of them were Turks, though two were Greeks. There was little to choose, however, in character, between the Circassians and their Turkish predecessors, and the change on the whole was for the worse. The sultans of the new line were even more at the mercy of the leaders of military factions than before. The mamlúk guard of each king formed a distinct party, calling itself after his throne-title—as Ashrafy, Muáyyady, Násiry—and after his death or deposition they remained a separate factor in politics and contributed to the bloodshed, confusion, and intrigues of the period. The sultans could scarcely restrain their own soldiery, much less these formidable relics of their predecessors, and the frequent changes of rulers show how unstable the royal authority had become. Six of the twenty-three Burgy sultans reigned for 103 out of the total of 134 years covered by the dynasty, leaving but thirty-one years for the remaining seventeen, or less than two years apiece.

The character of the rulers was much the same as before, but everything was on a meaner scale. There was hardly one warrior-king among them, and this accounts in a large degree for the lack of the prestige that had kept a soldier like Beybars or Kalaún on the throne. The Circassians were not soldiers but schemers; they relied less upon success in war or personal courage than on ruse, chicanery, and corruption, to retain their hold of power. The Greek Khushkadam excelled the rest in his adroit management of the contending factions and the heavy bribes he extorted in the sale of public offices. The governorship of Damascus cost its possessor 45,000 dinárs in fees to the sultan, and his previous post was sold to another man for 10,000. Ministers of state were put out of the way if their enemies made it worth the Greek’s while, and the ceremonious visits of this ingenious sultan were apt to be expensive to those he honoured with a call. Throughout the domination of the Circassian dynasty corruption reigned unchecked; justice was bought and sold; and even the Sheykh-el-Islám, the religious chief justice, stole trust-money. The soldiers, who were purchased white slaves, Greeks, Circassians, Turks and Mongols, ran riot in the streets, insomuch that decent women dared not leave their houses and the fellahín feared to bring their stock to market lest it should fall a prey to the mamlúks or the government. In the country the population diminished under the oppression of the troops; in the capital there was seldom peace or order, and sometimes rival factions pounded each other from the Citadel ramparts and the opposite roof of Sultan Hasan’s mosque, barricaded the streets, and made cockpits of the bazars, where processions of rebels nailed to camel-saddles till they died were no uncommon sights.

In spite of this corruption and violence the Burgy sultans contrived not only to preserve the power of Egypt but even to enlarge its dominions and greatly extend its trade. They withstood the invasion of Tamerlane boldly in 1399, though in the end they found it politic to accept his terms; but at least the great conqueror never ventured to attack Egypt. They fought several campaigns in Asia Minor, where for some time they secured the submission of Karaman, Cæsarea, Iconium, and Larenda. They even conquered Cyprus—a nest of the pirates who disturbed the Egyptian shipping—in 1426, with a fleet of galleys built at their port of Bulák, not long risen from the Nile; and King James of Lusignan, captured at the battle of Chierocitia, was brought in triumph to the Citadel of Cairo, with the crown of Cyprus and his disgraced standards, and made to kiss the ground before the Sultan Bars-Bey. He was ransomed by the Venetian consul and European merchants, and rode through the streets and bazars in great state, after becoming a vassal of the Egyptian king. Cyprus paid tribute until the end of the Circassian dynasty, but several attempts upon Rhodes in 1440-4 were successfully repelled by the knights. To the end of the dynasty the Egyptian frontier still extended north as far as the Pyramus and Euphrates.

Among the strange anomalies of Oriental history none perhaps is more surprising than the combination of extreme corruption and savage cruelty with exquisite refinement in material civilization and an admirable devotion to art which we see in the mamlúk sultans. The Circassians were not inferior to their Turkish forerunners as great architects. Personally some of the second line of sultans were men of considerable culture. Barkúk, Muáyyad, Gakmak, and Káit-Bey were fond of learned society and literary talents; Bars-Bey, though he knew little Arabic, liked to listen to Turkish histories read to him by el-‘Ayny; and Timurbugha the Greek was a philologist, historian, and theologian. They were also good Muslims, fasted regularly and even supererogatorily, abstained from wine, made pilgrimages, and insured their place in the next world by building mosques, colleges, hospitals, schools, and every kind of religious establishment, in this. El-Muáyyad, for example, though utterly unable to control the disorders of his time, “was personally a devout man and a learned, a good musician, poet, and orator, scrupulous in the observance of the rules of his religion, very simple and unpretentious in his dress and mode of life, bearing himself in all religious functions as a plain Muslim among fellow worshippers, and robing himself in common white wool in mourning for the pestilence that ravaged the land.” The eastern arcade of his splendid mosque (1415-21) is still preserved in the Sukkaríya street, and a number of boys may there be seen at their lessons under the brilliant gold inscriptions and frescoes of the sanctuary, which has been carefully restored by Herz Bey, who discovered traces of the original polychromy beneath the whitewash of ages. The minarets of the mosque are built on the flanking towers of the Zuweyla gate. There is also a ruined hospital (el-Maristán el-Muáyyady, 1418), near the Citadel, that commemorates his pious benefactions. Bars-Bey’s great mosque, the Ashrafiya (1423), is still a place where congregations meet, at the corner of the Musky, where one turns into the Ghuríya. Barkúk built (1386) an exquisite medresa in Beyn-el-Kasreyn, which has recently been restored by Herz Bey; and his tomb-mosque with the two domes, begun by himself but completed by his son, the Sultan Farag, in 1410, is one of the most picturesque features in that beautiful group of fawn-coloured domes and slender minarets, the eastern cemetery. But the gem of the group is the perfect tomb-mosque (1472) of Káit-Bey, which represents the highest achievement of the later mamlúk school. The admirable arabesques of its shapely dome, the skilfully graduated transitions of its stately minaret from square to octagon, and from octagon to circle, with every ingenuity of stalactite concealment of angles, and the fine inlaid marbles in the _liwán_, are treasures of indestructible beauty even after centuries of neglect and spoliation.

Káit-Bey, whose long reign of twenty-eight years (1468-96) was phenomenal in this quickly changing dynasty, had worked his way up from the usual humble beginning. Bought by Bars-Bey for twenty-five guineas, he had passed from master to master, and rank to rank, till he became commander-in-chief, under the Greek Timurbugha, of an army which cost the state nearly £300,000 a year—a very large military budget for the fifteenth century. “He was an expert swordsman, and an adept at the javelin play. His career had given him experience and knowledge of the world; he possessed courage, judgment, insight, energy, and decision. His strong character dominated his mamlúks, who were devoted to him, and overawed competitors. His physical energy was sometimes displayed in flogging the president of the council of state or other high officials with his own arm, with the object of extorting money for the treasury. Such contributions and extraordinary taxation were absolutely necessary for the wars in which he was obliged to engage. Not only was the land taxed to one-fifth of the produce, but an additional tenth (half-a- dirhem per ardebb of corn) was demanded. Rich Jews and Christians were remorselessly squeezed. There was much barbarous inhumanity, innocent people were scourged, even to the death, and the chemist ‘Aly ibn el- Marshúshy was blinded and deprived of his tongue, because he could not turn dross into gold.

“The Sultan had the reputation of miserliness, yet the list of his public works, not only in Egypt, but in Syria and Arabia, shows that he spent the revenue on admirable objects. His two mosques at Cairo—one outside among the so-called ‘Tombs of the Caliphs’ (1472), the other near Ibn-Tulún (1475)—and his wekálas or caravanserais are among the most exquisite examples of elaborate arabesque ornament applied to the purest Saracenic architecture. He diligently restored and repaired the crumbling monuments of his predecessors, as numerous inscriptions in the mosques, the schools, the Citadel, and other buildings of Cairo abundantly testify. He was a frequent traveller, and journeyed in Syria, to the Euphrates, in Upper and Lower Egypt, besides performing the pilgrimages to Mekka and Jerusalem; and wherever he went he left traces of his progress in good roads, bridges, mosques, schools, fortifications, or other pious or necessary works. No reign, save that of en-Násir ibn Kalaún, in the long list of mamlúk sultans, was more prolific in architectural construction or in the minor industries of art. The people suffered for the cost of his many buildings, but a later age has recognized their matchless beauty.”[72]

In the buildings of Káit-Bey and his contemporaries we see the perfection of the art of pure arabesque and elaborate geometrical ornament. In the early days of Saracenic architecture the ornament was worked in soft gypsum or plaster, and the use of a tool (never a mould) in the soft material gave extraordinary freedom and boldness to the lines—for example, in the scroll-work of the mosque of Ibn-Tulún. Plaster continued to be the base of decorative friezes and borders throughout the Fátimid period: it may be seen in the original arcades of the Azhar and in the eastern sanctuary of el-Hákim. The most exquisite specimen of plaster ornament, however, is seen in the tomb-mosque of Kalaún, where the borders of the arches that supported the original dome, and of the clerestory windows above, are formed of a delicate lace-like tracery in plaster foliate designs, broadly treated and worked into a pattern so continuous that it is almost impossible to break off at any middle point. After en-Násir, who also used stucco, however, it was generally abandoned in favour of stone, though we still see admirable examples of plaster decoration in the dome of Aksunkur and the beautiful designs in the cupola of el-Fadawíya. In the mosque of the Sultan Hasan all the sculpture except the Kufic frieze is in stone, and as the material is unyielding we find at once a certain hardness of treatment, a loss of freedom in the lines, and a tendency to substitute geometrical design for the pure arabesque of earlier work. The stone pulpit erected by Káit-Bey in 1483 in Barkúk’s tomb-mosque is one of the finest examples of geometrical chiselling in Cairo. Its side view is triangular, like the wooden pulpits of other mosques, but instead of carved or inlaid wooden panels making up the designs on each side, the whole is of stone slabs, admirably joined, and chiselled with geometrical figures produced outwards, so as to cover the whole surface with a network of interlacing lines forming a star-like pattern, the interstices of which are filled with floral arabesques. Similar carving enriches the walls of the staircase and the canopy of this unique pulpit.

Káit-Bey was the most scrupulous of all Cairo architects: he allowed no detail of his numerous edifices to be neglected, and the wealth of ornament which he lavished upon them was all cut in limestone or marble.[73] One may realize the richness of this decoration in his mosque within the city, near Ibn-Tulún’s, where the chief arch is formed of twenty-three blocks of stone on each side, alternately red and white, and every one of the white blocks is covered with arabesque or geometrical designs, no two of which appear to be alike. The arabesques consist of the usual trefoil surrounded by very beautifully intertwined foliage conventionally treated. The geometrical patterns, though at first sight composed of irregular pentagons and hexagons, are all symmetrically arranged, and form one elaborate design. On the spandrils of the arch will be noticed medallions—there are many such in Cairo—containing the name of the Sultan and a benediction upon him. A broad band of Koranic inscription, separated by arabesque patterns, runs as a frieze under the sculptured cornice. The general effect of the whole is wonderfully rich, and there is hardly a space that is not filled by some delicate design. Even in his wekálas, or inns, Káit-Bey was no less careful in details. Few buildings in Cairo are more fertile in varied designs than his wekála in the street on the south side of the Azhar. The interior, unhappily, is deserted and in decay, but once, no doubt, it was richly ornamented. The façade is still in good preservation, and deserves careful study by all who wish to understand arabesque and geometrical ornament at its best.[74] When we say at its best, some objection may be taken to the fact that certain designs are systematically repeated in reverse, in contrast to the honest way of the older artists who scorned to repeat themselves. But by the time of Káit- Bey the beauty of uniformity had been realized, and it was seen that a certain symmetry and recurrence of the designs really improved their effect. This change was part of the general tendency towards symmetrical finish and architectural proportion, which distinguishes the later from the earlier Mamlúk style. There is, however, abundant variety in the numerous panels of arabesque and geometrical ornament which form the borders above the thirteen shops of the inn front, in the superb arched gateway in the centre, and in the beautiful engaged column in the corner, next the sebíl or fountain, with its carved drums and stalactite capital. In its original state this wekála must have been a noble building: even as it is, one may call it almost a text-book of Saracenic decoration.

Indeed the epoch of Káit-Bey was almost a repetition of the great building epoch of en-Násir. The Circassian mosques are usually the favourites with architects as well as with the unprofessional sight- seer: their exquisite proportions, delicate minarets, beautifully sculptured domes, elaborate stalactites in portals, cornices, and wherever angles had to be masked, and their rich marble mosaics and incrustated kiblas, are perfect in taste and disposition. Besides the two exquisite mosques of Káit-Bey, those of the emírs Ezbek el-Yúsufy (1495), Kheyr Bek (1502), and the Master of the Horse (emír akhór) Kany Bek (1503), are full of fine work, whilst for a little gem of the best Circassian type nothing is better worth seeing than the Medresa of Kady Abu-Bekr ibn Muzhir or Mazhar (1480) which has been restored with exceptional skill by the Commission for the Preservation of the Arab Monuments, whose architect, Herz Bey, has devoted the greatest pains to tracing the original colours and designs and faithfully reproducing them. Another careful restoration is that of the mosque of the emír Kagmás el-Isháky (1481), and both show conspicuous improvement upon the earlier experiments in restoring the Barkukíya medresa.

It is to be noticed that, in the majority of the medresas of the fifteenth century, the original cruciform shape is considerably modified. The medresa, though still a college, gradually usurped the position of the gámi‘ or congregational mosque. Friday prayers were held in the medresa, since few new gámi‘s were erected—the most important were those of Muáyyad, Bars-Bey and Ezbek—and the court and the eastern transept (sanctuary or chancel) were enlarged, whilst the side transepts became smaller, and even dwindled to mere recesses. Probably the reduction of the side transepts was due in some measure to the fact that only two of the four orthodox schools, the Sháfi‘y and the Hánafy, had any great following in Egypt, and there was thus no necessity for the retention of the original plan of four separate lecture halls. The result is that we find under the Circassian Sultans that a compromise has been made between the gámi‘ and the medresa, and the form of the latter has been modified to suit the requirements of the former. This modified medresa form is almost universal in the Circassian period of architecture, and the salient features—the enlargement of the sanctuary and the diminishing of the side transepts—is particularly conspicuous in the medresa of Kagmás.[75]

Even to the end, when the Ottoman conquest was obviously at hand, the Circassian mamlúks retained much of their vigour and all their aesthetic powers. There are few more interesting figures in their line than the old sultan el-Ghúry, called to the throne in 1501, after four incompetent rulers in as many years had succeeded Káit-Bey. He was a man of bold decision and boundless energy. He restored order in the anarchy of Cairo, levied ten months’ taxes at a stroke to replenish his treasury; taxed water-wheels, boats, camels, Jews, Christians, servants, every possible source; increased the customs-dues, confiscated vast estates and levied enormous death-duties. Having restored the revenue, and earned an evil name for extortion, he proceeded to spend it on great public works. Canals, roads, fortifications on the coast, the strengthening of the Citadel of Cairo, the improvement of the pilgrims’ route to Mekka, these were among his good deeds. His college (1503) and tomb-mosque (where, however, he is not buried) still face each other at opposite sides of the street that bears his name, the Ghuríya, though badly mauled by the injudicious restoration of thirty years ago. He also built a minaret for the Azhar, the mosque of the Nilometer on the island of Roda, the Sebíl-el-Muminín or Fountain of the Faithful in the Rumeyla, the watermills at Masr-el-‘Atíka, and restored the aqueduct to the Citadel. He was sumptuous in his court, and generous to poets and musicians, whilst he mulcted the heirs of his nobles and robbed orphans of their dower. Fully alive to the importance of the Indian trade, then menaced by the Portuguese, he furnished a fleet in the Red Sea and sent it to India, where with the help of the governor of Diu it defeated the interloping senhors under the younger Almeida in an engagement off Chaul in 1508. Finally, but too late, he led his army into Syria to do battle with the advancing Ottomans, and fell fighting at the age of seventy-six on the fatal field of Marg Dábik, near Aleppo, where the desertion of the two wings under Kheyr Bek and el-Ghazzály left the old sultan alone with his bodyguard to be trampled under the horses of the troopers he vainly tried to rally (24th August, 1516). An engagement near Heliopolis to the north of Cairo completed the rout of the mamlúks. Tumán Bey tried to make a stand against the invaders at the Bab-en-Nasr, but Selím took him in the flank, and after hand to hand fighting in the streets, the Citadel was stormed, Tumán was crucified at the Gate of Zuweyla, and Egypt became a province of the Ottoman Empire.