Chapter V: Cairo (1)

THE foundation of Cairo proper, as distinguished from the earlier city of Misr and its faubourgs, marks a revolution infinitely more profound than a mere change of dynasty or shifting of site. The Fátimid conquest, which created the new city, was a revolution in religion, in statecraft, and in culture. The theological differences that had turned the mosque of ‘Amr into a bear-garden in the time of the Ikhshíd were hair- splittings compared with the breach between the old orthodoxy and the heresy of the newcomers. In its inner essence, Shi‘ism, the religion of the Fátimids, is not Mohammedanism at all. It merely took advantage of an old schism in Islám to graft upon it a totally new and largely political movement. The schism arose out of the succession to the caliphate, and resolved itself into the old antagonism between the theories of popular election and divine right. The orthodox party (or Sunnis) held that the election of the first three caliphs, Abu-Bekr, ‘Omar and ‘Othmán, was constitutional in Islám; the Shí‘a maintained that the divine right of succession to the Prophet’s mantle rested with his own family, that is to say with his daughter Fátima’s husband ‘Aly and their offspring, the only surviving descendants of Mohammad. ‘Aly in turn became the fourth caliph, but he was bitterly opposed, and in the end murdered; his children, the Prophet’s grandsons, were ousted from the succession; one of them, Hoseyn, endeavouring to assert his rights, was defeated and slain, and the tragedy of the “martyrdom” at Kerbela has ever since excited the deepest passions of the Shí‘a at the annual representations of the Persian Passion Play in the month of Moharram.

The ruthless persecution of the “holy family” by the Omayyad caliphs stimulated an enthusiastic sympathy with their misfortunes, but since none of their descendants showed any political genius, the occasional risings in favour of the ‘Alids were scarcely more important than the last attempts in Scotland to revive the claims of the Pretender. The movement would probably have died out as an element in politics, and become a mere tradition or sentiment, but for the new development given to it in the ninth century by an obscure Persian, half conjurer, half eye-doctor, named ‘Abdallah, son of Meymún. This man, who abhorred the Arabs and their caliphs, devised a scheme by which the very religion of Islám should become the instrument of its own destruction, and the Persians should recover their power by the unconscious aid of their conquerors. His doctrine, whilst making use of the ‘Alid sentiment of divine right, was such that not only the enthusiasts who still wept over the tragedy of Kerbela, but all shades of dissenters from rigid Mohammedanism might embrace. He taught that God has always been incarnate in some spiritual leader or “Imám,” such as Adam, Abraham, and so on to ‘Aly. The world has never been without an Imám; but—and here came the stroke of genius—the Imám is not always visible in the flesh. The series of spiritual leaders descended in apostolic succession from ‘Aly was broken, but not the less was there a hidden Imám, who would reveal himself to mankind in his own good time. When he appeared all would recognize “the Mahdy,” and abandon the self-styled caliphs who usurped his authority. Meanwhile those who awaited his coming must strive to prepare men for it. Though the Imám be hidden, his doctrine must be zealously preached, and in the absence of the mysterious being in whom the secrets of the Most High are deposited, his missionaries must go forth and call men to the truth.

A widespread and admirably organized propaganda was instituted; a secret society, skilfully graduated in advancing degrees of initiation, worked underground throughout the Mohammedan world, but with special success in Arabia, Mesopotamia, and North Africa. The _dá‘is_ or missionaries were carefully chosen and trained to teach such doctrines as their converts could bear. To the rude and uneducated they would preach what seemed the plain lessons of the Korán, always coupled with the imminent approach of that mysterious and attractive personality, the Mahdy. To the philosophic they would use arguments suited to their special views, and leading them up through the progressive stages of initiation, would finally land them in a philosophy of complete negation. These missionaries had nothing in common with Muslims: they were atheists among themselves, and all things to all men. Their aims were political—to upset Islám through itself, to dispossess the Muslims, and to grasp their power. They made use of all forms of religion indifferently; all were equally false to them, and all were serviceable tools to their purpose. They cared not what means they used to secure proselytes, to whom they confided only so much of their system as they could safely assimilate. They employed the hallowed name of ‘Aly, and preached the immediate advent of a Messiah, not because they believed in either or in any caliphate or spiritual incarnation, but because if the multitude is to be made to dance one must harp on some string, and these strings happened to twang harmoniously in the ears of the people.

Three signal successes rewarded the brilliant propaganda of the Shí‘a (or Isma‘ílian) missionaries. The first was the Carmathian domination of Arabia, Mesopotamia and Syria, in the ninth and tenth centuries; the second was its offshoot, the Fátimid caliphate of North Africa and Egypt; the last was the dreaded Wehmgericht of the Isma‘ílians or “Assassins” in Persia and the Lebanon. Here we have chiefly to do with the second, though both the Carmathians and the Assassins had their influence upon Egypt.

The Fátimid caliphate, taking its name from ‘Aly’s wife, the daughter of the Prophet, was the most powerful and conspicuous result of Shí‘a proselytism. Among the credulous Berbers the missionary had an easy field of conquest, and when he produced a reputed descendant of ‘Aly and Fátima in the person of “the Mahdy” ‘Obeydallah at Kayrawán, the Arab capital of what is now called Tunisia, in 910, the revolution was triumphant. The whole of Barbary, from Fez in Morocco to the frontier of Egypt, which he twice invaded, bowed before the sway of the Mahdy. Inheriting by conquest the possessions of the Aghlabid dynasty of Tunis, who for more than a century had been the great naval power of the central Mediterranean and held Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and Malta, the Fátimid fleets ravaged the coasts of France and Italy, plundering, burning, and kidnapping wherever they went. The fourth caliph of the Mahdy’s line, el-Mo‘izz, the conqueror of Egypt, was a singularly able, upright, politic, and intelligent man, an orator, a linguist who knew Greek as well as Arabic and the Berber tongue, and to all appearance a just and honest Muslim of the Shí‘a sect.[34] There was so careful a distinction between esoteric and overt doctrine among the Shí‘a that it is impossible to be certain, but the probability is that Mo‘izz, like most of his successors, did not share the extreme views of the advanced degrees of the initiate, but held Koranic doctrines tempered by ‘Alid views and allegorical interpretation.

Such was the Fátimid caliph who, after a progress throughout his African dominions, and carrying his arms even to the shore of the Atlantic (959), at length resolved to achieve the conquest of Egypt, which his grandfather had vainly attempted, and which was the goal of his own ambition. The barren land and unruly tribes of Barbary were not to be compared with the fertile valley and splendid commerce of Egypt, and his plans were carefully laid for the invasion. The conquest was an easy triumph. Gawhar, his Roman slave from the Eastern empire, led his 100,000 men from Kayrawán in February 969. Alexandria capitulated on liberal terms. The Egyptians, exhausted by a distressing famine followed by plague (of which more than half a million people died in and around Misr), led by no competent chief, despoiled by a mutinous soldiery, and influenced by secret sympathizers with the Fátimids, made scarcely an effort to resist. There were a few skirmishes at Giza, and then Gawhar forced the passage of the Nile, the defenders fled, and the women of Misr implored mercy. A full amnesty rewarded submission, pillage was interdicted, and the Fátimid army rode into Misr on the 5th of August.

“That very night Gawhar laid the foundations of a new city, or rather fortified palace, destined for the reception of his sovereign. He was encamped on the sandy waste which stretched north-east of Fustát, on the road to Heliopolis, and there, at a distance of about a mile from the river, he marked out the boundaries of the new capital. There were no buildings, save the old ‘Convent of the Bones,’ nor any cultivation except the beautiful park called ‘Kafúr’s Garden,’ to obstruct his plans. A square [about 1200 yards each way] was pegged out with poles, and the Maghraby astrologers, in whom Mo‘izz reposed extravagant faith, consulted together to determine the auspicious moment for the opening ceremony. Bells were hung on ropes from pole to pole, and at the signal of the sages their ringing was to announce the precise moment when the labourers were to turn the first sod. The calculations of the astrologers were, however, anticipated by a raven, who perched on one of the ropes and set the bells jingling, upon which every mattock was struck into the earth, and the trenches were opened. It was an unlucky hour: the planet Mars (el-Káhir) was in the ascendant; but it could not be undone, and the place was accordingly named after the hostile planet, el-Káhira, ‘the martial’ or ‘triumphant,’ in the hope that the sinister omen might be turned to a triumphant issue. Cairo, as Káhira has come to be called, may fairly be said to have outlived all astrological prejudices. The name of the ‘Abbásid caliph was at once expunged from the Friday prayers at the old mosque of ‘Amr; the black ‘Abbásid robes were proscribed, and the preacher, in pure white, recited the _khutba_ for the Imám Mo‘izz, _emír el-muminín_, and invoked blessings on his ancestors, ‘Aly and Fátima and all their holy family. The call to prayer from the minarets was adapted to Shí‘a taste. The joyful news was sent to the Fátimid caliph on swift dromedaries, together with the heads of the slain. Coins were struck with the special formulas of the Fátimid creed—‘‘Aly is the noblest of [God’s] delegates, the vezír of the best of apostles’; ‘the Imám Ma‘add calls men to profess the Unity of the Eternal’—in addition to the usual dogmas of the Mohammedan faith. For two centuries the mosques and the mint proclaimed the shibboleth of the Shí‘a.”[35]

But the change was far more than a substitution of one creed for another: indeed, thanks no doubt to the politic tolerance of the conqueror and the discreet avoidance of extreme Shí‘a doctrines, the people accepted the new régime without any outburst of orthodox fanaticism, except when the new comers flaunted the Moharram festival in memory of the Kerbela “martyrs” in their very faces. The majority remained unconverted to the new formulas; at least they welcomed the restoration of orthodoxy two centuries later with equal phlegm. The real change was political. Cairo was no longer the capital of a province of the old caliphate, or even of a virtually independent principality connected with that caliphate: it was the capital of a rival Power, and that power a Mediterranean Empire. It is true the empire soon lost its outlying African provinces and European islands, and shrank to the dimensions of the principality of Ibn-Tulún; but the strength and the wealth and commerce of the Fátimid kingdom were something new. The rivalry between Cairo and Baghdád, between the vigorous young caliphate of the Shí‘a and the decaying hierarchy of the Sunnis, had far-reaching effects in politics and in civilization. The naval power and European connexions of the Fátimids introduced a new element into foreign policy, gave a stimulus to trade, and modified in various ways the civilization of Egypt and Syria.

On the other hand undoubtedly the isolation of Cairo tended to a development of a separate culture which was not to its advantage. Heresy cut it off from the great centres of intellectual life in the Arabian world, from Baghdád, Damascus and Cordova. The old intercourse, which brought students and professors of all parts of the Muslim empire together in the mosques of every great city, was impossible in a capital where the mosques were in the hands of heretics. Hence Cairo was out of intimate touch with the progress of Muslim studies in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and few of the leaders of Arabic thought or literature were found under Fátimid rule. In some branches, such as philosophy and physical and medical science, one would expect to find good results from the influence of Shí‘a free-thinking, and undoubtedly some progress was made, especially by Jewish and Christian physicians; but these exceptions do not outweigh the general loss entailed by isolation from the rest of the intellectual world. A little later the heretics of Cairo might have profited much by their intercourse with Europe, but in the tenth and eleventh centuries Europe had little to teach.

The class that gained most by the change of government was that of the Christian Copts. Hitherto they had had their ups and downs according to the disposition and rapacity of different Arab and Turkish governors; but with the advent of the Fátimid caliphs they entered upon a period of unusual toleration and even favour. The new rulers, with one notorious exception, were exceedingly well disposed towards their Christian subjects, and many churches were built or restored during their reigns.

The caliph el-‘Azíz, son of Mo‘izz, who reigned from 975 to 996, had a Christian wife, two of his brothers-in-law were Melekite patriarchs, and the Jacobite patriarch Ephraim and Severus bishop of Ushmuneyn were his particular friends. The bishop was encouraged to come to the palace and discuss theology with the chief kády, and the patriarch was allowed to restore the church of St Mercurius (Abu-s-Seyfeyn, “the two-sworded”) outside Misr. “In ancient times,” we are told by an Armenian writer, “there had been a church dedicated to Saint Mercurius, on the bank of the river, but it was ruined and turned into a storehouse for sugar- canes. Then, in the time of this patriarch, enquiries were made about the creed of the Christians, whether they believed in the truth or in a lie. So the Christians assembled and went out to the mountain, and the Muslims and Jews went out at the same time on account of a certain event. Many of the Muslim _sayyids_ came forward, and prayed, and cried _Allahu akbar_, and implored the assistance of God, but no sign appeared to them. Then the Jews followed them, and still no result followed. Then the patriarch came forward, and the tanner, for whom God had performed a miracle, followed him; and all the orthodox people followed them. They prayed to the most high God, and burnt incense, and cried _Kyrie eleison_ three times; and God showed his wonders, and the mountain moved: namely, that part of the Mukattam hills which is near the hill of Al-Kabsh, between Cairo and Misr. This miracle took place through the faith of the tanner, who had plucked out his eye in the presence of Al-‘Aziz and the chief men of his government and the kadis of the Muslims. When Al-‘Aziz had witnessed this great miracle, he said: ‘It is enough, O patriarch; we recognize what God has done for you’; and then he added: ‘Desire of me what thou choosest, and I will do it for thee.’ The patriarch, however, refused with thanks; but Al-‘Aziz begged him to ask for something, and did not cease until the patriarch had asked for a certain church which had fallen into ruin. So Al-‘Aziz commanded that this church should be restored for the patriarch, and it is said to have been the church of Saint Mercurius.”[36] The patriarch would not accept the offer of money for the restoration, but paid for it himself, and the work was carried out under a guard of the caliph’s troops to protect the Christians from the “common people of the Muslims,” who had no patience with such concessions to the “polytheists.”

One of the vezírs or prime-ministers of ‘Azíz was a converted Jew, another was the Christian Ibn-Nestorius. The Muslims naturally resented this unusual toleration, and lampooned the caliph, but the harím was on the side of the Christians, and as usual had its way. Even under the caliph Hákim, the exception referred to, who certainly at one time persecuted the Copts cruelly, the great posts of state were still held by Christians; and though there was much confiscation and extortion under the vezír Yazúry in the middle of the eleventh century, it seems to have arisen more from fiscal necessities than from religious antipathy. The great influence of the Armenian vezírs in the latter part of that century evidently promoted a good feeling, for in the twelfth we find the caliph Háfiz receiving lectures in history twice a week from the Armenian patriarch, and several of the later caliphs would visit the shaded gardens of Coptic monasteries, where they were hospitably welcomed by the monks and made suitable returns for their cheer. We read of handsome contributions for the support of convents and churches. The far from exemplary caliph Ámir even had a monk for his right-hand man, and used often to use a pavilion which he had built at a monastery near Giza as a hunting lodge, paying 1000 dirhems to the monks at every visit. He took pleasure in standing in the priest’s place in their church, but scrupulously entered backwards in order to avoid the appearance of bowing when passing through the low door. The last of the Fátimid caliphs, el-‘Ádid, had also his favourite monastic retreat in the convent of the Virgin some miles out of Cairo, where he would take the air and gaze upon the “blessed Nile.”[37]

If the churches were cared for, the mosques were not neglected; and though the Fátimid period is not rich in the multitude of mosques erected by private benefactors which distinguishes the later Mamlúk period, it boasts at least the two greatest congregational mosques (_gámi‘_) of Cairo proper, both of which were among the early preoccupations of the new dynasty. Gawhar’s first step, after beginning the walls of the palace-city of Káhira, was to lay the foundations of the mosque which stands to this day, known to all the world as el-Azhar, “the Resplendent.” The day of its foundation was Sunday the 3rd of April, 970, and it was finished on the 24th of June, 972. In 988 it was specially devoted to the use of the learned and became what it has been ever since, one of the chief Universities of Islám. Here to this day multitudes of students gather from all parts of the Muslim world, from the Gold Coast to the Malay States, each nation to the special _riwák_ or portico assigned to its use, and here they receive from learned sheykhs instruction in the various branches of the old Arabic curriculum—theology, exegesis, traditions, jurisprudence, grammar, prosody, logic, rhetoric, algebra, etc. Over nine thousand students still (1901) attend the lectures of 239 professors in the Azhar, and not one of them is called upon to pay a piastre in fees. The learned men of Cairo and many foreign cities willingly impart their knowledge without reward, and eke out a living by private tuition and copying manuscripts. The foreign students not only pay no fees but receive rations of food from certain bequests. One may regret the limited scope and fanatical tendency of the Azhar lectures, but at least it is a noble example of free education, open to the poorest, no matter what his race or language, and given to all without distinction of class. The knots of students sitting round their master in earnest attention, or swaying to and fro as they commit his dicta to memory, are a spectacle not easily forgotten. In every detail they carry us back to the Middle Ages of Arabic culture, and show us a zeal for learning, neither tainted by prize-hunting nor cramped by examinations, which may teach even Western universities something that they lack.

Very little of the Azhar represents the original building. It has been repeatedly restored, and was largely reconstructed in the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth century, and, though there are some fine Kufic friezes and keelform (Persian) arches characteristic of the Fátimid period, its present aspect is modern. The square court, however, covers the same ground as it did when in 973 the caliph Mo‘izz, after making his splendid entry, preceded by the coffins of his ancestors, into the new city built by his faithful general, and totally ignoring the old metropolis then _en fête_ for his reception, himself conducted the prayers on the festival following the fasting month, delivered the _Khutba_ or sermon with his wonted unction, and then headed the procession of his troops, escorted by his four sons in armour, and preceded by two elephants, back to the palace which Gawhar had prepared for him. The fortified enclosure which has given its name to Cairo, though sometimes called _el-Medína_, “the City,” was never intended to be an Egyptian metropolis. It was to be the residence of the caliph and his court, his slaves and officials, and his African troops. The public of Misr had no access to it; none might pass through the gates without a permit, and even ambassadors from foreign states were obliged to dismount and were led into the palace between guards after the Byzantine custom. Káhira was in fact a royal compound or enclosure, not a public city. Its high walls and guarded gates symbolized the seclusion and mystery in which the sacred person of the caliph was wrapped, and its familiar epithet “the Guarded City” (el-Káhira el-Mahrúsa) illustrates its privacy.

The original walls were built of large bricks, nearly two feet long and fifteen inches broad, and the thickness of the walls was such that two horsemen could ride abreast upon them. The Topographer in 1400 measured the last fragment of this first wall, and says that none of it afterwards remained to be seen.[38] The original enclosure was about 100 feet smaller every way than the later enclosure built in 1087, and we may easily realize the length of the city of Gawhar by remembering that the present Bab-el-Futúh (with the mosque of el-Hákim) and the Bab- Zuweyla (with the mosque of el-Muayyad) stand a little outside the original enclosure; whilst its breadth extended from the Bab-el- Ghureyyib beyond the Azhar on the east to the Khalíg or canal on the west. The western boundary running beside the canal is still recorded in the street called Beyn-es-Sureyn, “Between the walls,” at the top of the Musky. The enclosure was thus about 1200 yards each way, and formed an area of less than half a square mile.

About the centre was the square called Beyn-el-Kasreyn, “Between the Palaces,” a name still preserved in the original site in part of the street known as the Coppersmiths’ Market (Suk-en-Nahhasín), now flanked by several noble mosques of much later date. The name explains itself: the square, which was far broader than the present thoroughfare, and formed a parade ground on which ten thousand troops could be marshalled, separated the two palaces which faced it, and served as the meeting place of the city. The Great Palace of Mo‘izz lay on the east—the Khán- el-Khalíly stands on a corner of its vast ground, and the Hasaneyn at another corner—and the Lesser West Palace, built by ‘Azíz a little later, faced it on the other side (where the Máristán of Kalaún occupies a portion of its site), and on the back looked upon the spacious “Garden of Kafúr,” where the Ikhshíd once had his pleasure-house. Makrízy devotes nearly two hundred pages to the description of these wonderful palaces. “We read of four thousand chambers;—of the Golden Gate which opened to the Golden Hall, a gorgeous pavilion where the caliph, seated on his golden throne, surrounded by his chamberlains and gentlemen-in- waiting (generally Greeks or Sudánís), surveyed from behind a screen of golden filigree the festivals of Islám;—of the Emerald Hall with its beautiful pillars of marble;—the Great Diván, where he sat on Mondays and Thursdays at a window beneath a cupola;—and the Porch where he listened every evening while the oppressed and wronged came below and cried the _credo_ of the Shí‘a till he heard their griefs and gave redress.”

These various buildings composing the Great Palace were not the work of a single year or of one ruler. Gawhar began the palace on the same night that he marked out the foundations of the city, in July 969; two gates were finished in the following March, and a wall was carried round the palace in 970-1. Writing of the wall three-quarters of a century later, Násir-i-Khusrau says that from outside the city the palace of the caliphs looked like a mountain, by reason of its lofty mass of buildings; but when one drew near one could see nothing of it on account of its high wall.[39] This original palace was designed by the caliph Mo‘izz himself, but it did not comprise half the splendid halls described by the Topographer. The next caliph ‘Azíz built the “Golden Hall” and the “Great Diván,” as well as the smaller Western Palace and the Pearl Pavilion in Kafúr’s Garden. Later caliphs and vezírs added and altered, and the “Splendid Palaces” (el-Kusúr ez-Záhira), as they were collectively called, included numerous separate mansions or suites of rooms of various dates. The Great Palace alone had ten gates, besides a subterraneous passage by which the caliph could cross on his mule, led by slave girls, to the Western Palace, which was specially reserved for the harím. In the eleventh century there were twelve thousand servants in the Palaces, and including the women the inmates were reckoned at thirty thousand.

M. Ravaisse has reconstructed the Fátimid palaces, and even drawn plans of them from the Topographer’s descriptions, in two elaborate memoirs,[40] and though some of the details must be regarded as tentative and open to revision, the general results probably represent the actual arrangement of the Fátimid city. According to these interesting researches the Great East Palace comprised principally three large quadrangles of unequal sizes forming three quarters of a square, the fourth or N.E. quarter being occupied by the Court of the Festival, an open space between the Great Palace and the Palace of the Vezírs, where the people could make merry on the ‘Id days. This Great Palace, flanked by the Vezirate and the Azhar, covered the space from the present Khan-el-Khalíly and Hasaneyn to the Gemalíya street (where the monastic mosque of Beybars the Gashnekír stands). The various halls, apartments, and court offices were arranged about the quadrangles, and stables and stores formed outbuildings. On the other side of the Beyn- el-Kasreyn, the West Palace ran from where the Maristán now stands to the Hárat Bargawán, with two wings jutting forward at each end to enclose the Beyn-el-Kasreyn; whilst the space between the West Palace and the west wall was filled by the spacious Garden of Kafúr with its various kiosques looking on the canal. The rest of the city enclosure, outside the palaces, was occupied by the quarters (Hára) of the various divisions of the Fátimid army, such as the Gawdaris, the Deylemis, the Kitáma, the Barkis, the Utúfis, the Zawíla, and the north and south Greek quarters (Hárat-er-Rúm), and so forth. The gates of the city were the (old) Gates of Succour, Bab-en-Nasr, and of Conquests, Bab-el-Futúh, on the north; the Gate of the Bridge (B.-el-Kántara) leading to Gawhar’s bridge over the canal, the B.-el-Farag, also called the Gate of the Sha‘ríya (a Berber tribe), and the Gate of Sa‘áda, named after a general of el-Mo‘izz, and the Wicket Gate (Bab-el-Khawkha) on the west, opening to the canal; the old double Gate of Zuweyla[41] on the south; and on the east the Burnt Gate (B.-el-Mahrúk, so called because burnt down by some fugitive Mamlúks in the thirteenth century), the New Gate (B.-el- Gedíd, built by Hákim), and the Gate of the Barka troops (B.-el- Barkíya), now known as the B.-el-Ghureyyib.

Some of the modern superstitions connected with the Gate of Zuweyla have been mentioned before, but it has always been a haunted spot, and the fact that executions took place just outside did not improve its reputation. The Topographer records that the original gate, which stood beside the “oratory of Shem, the son of Noah,” consisted of two arches, one of which was known as the “Gate of the Arch.” This was the gate through which el-Mo‘izz entered when he made his state progress into the new city of Káhira, and all the people followed his example: but the other arch was considered unlucky and no one cared to go under it. “This [second] gate no longer remains,” says Makrízy, “nor is there any trace of it, but the place where it stood is called el-Haggarín, where musical instruments, as drums, lutes, and such-like are sold; and it is still notorious among the people that whoever passes that way will not accomplish his wishes. Some say that the reason of this saying is because it is the place of sale for musical instruments, which are held in disrepute, and the abode of musicians and male and female singers; but the case is not as they pretend, for the saying was current among the people of el-Káhira from the time when el-Mo‘izz entered, before this place was a market for musical instruments and the haunt of the disorderly.”[42]

Such topographical details are chiefly interesting to the antiquary. We must search the records of travellers for more graphic descriptions. Strangers unfortunately were rare in so jealously secluded a sanctum as the Fátimid palace, and there are consequently few travellers’ pictures to add to the researches of the Topographer. The Persian Násir-i-Khusrau was indeed admitted in 1047, but he is disappointingly discreet in his account, and we gain only a confused but gorgeous impression of the great throne-room with hunting-scenes carved on the gold throne, which was screened by gold lattice and approached by silver steps. The best description occurs in William of Tyre’s account of the mission of the Crusaders in 1167, when Amalric was posing as the protector of the caliph, though it may well be that the palace had greatly changed in the two centuries that had passed since its foundation. “The introduction of Christian ambassadors to the sacred presence, where few even of the most exalted Muslims were admitted, was unprecedented; but Amalric was in a position to dictate his own terms. Permission was granted, and Hugh of Cæsarea with Geoffrey Fulcher the Templar were selected for the unique embassy. The vezír himself conducted them with every detail of oriental ceremony and display to the Great Palace of the Fátimids. They were led by mysterious corridors and through guarded doors, where stalwart Sudánis saluted with naked swords. They reached a spacious court, open to the sky, and surrounded by arcades resting on marble pillars; the panelled ceilings were carved and inlaid in gold and colours; the pavement was rich mosaic. The unaccustomed eyes of the rude knights opened wide with wonder at the taste and refinement that met them at every step;—here they saw marble fountains, birds of many notes and wondrous plumage, strangers to the western world; there, in a further hall, more exquisite even than the first, ‘a variety of animals such as the ingenious hand of the painter might depict, or the license of the poet invent, or the mind of the sleeper conjure up in the visions of the night,—such, indeed, as the regions of the East and the South bring forth, but the West sees never, and scarcely hears of.’

“At last, after many turns and windings, they reached the throne room, where the multitude of the pages and their sumptuous dress proclaimed the splendour of their lord. Thrice did the vezír, ungirding his sword, prostrate himself to the ground, as though in humble supplication to his god; then, with a sudden rapid sweep, the heavy curtains broidered with gold and pearls were drawn aside, and on a golden throne, robed in more than regal state, the caliph sat revealed.

“The vezír humbly presented the foreign knights, and set forth in lowly words the urgent danger from without, and the great friendship of the king of Jerusalem. The caliph, a swarthy youth emerging from boyhood,—_fuscus, procerus corpore, facie venusta,_—replied with suave dignity. He was willing, he said, to confirm in the amplest way the engagements made with his beloved ally. But when asked to give his hand in pledge of faithfulness, he hesitated, and a thrill of indignation at the stranger’s presumption ran through the listening court. After a pause, however, the caliph offered his hand—gloved as it was—to Sir Hugh. The blunt knight spoke him straight: ‘My lord, troth has no covering: in the good faith of princes, all is naked and open.’ Then at last, very unwillingly, as though derogating from his dignity, the caliph, forcing a smile, drew off the glove and put his hand in Hugh’s, swearing word by word to keep the covenant truly and in all good faith.”[43]

There is no doubt that the Fátimid caliphs were the most sumptuous monarchs that ever ruled in Egypt. Mo‘izz himself was no sybarite. He attended personally and assiduously to the details of administration, looked to the justice of the law courts, managed the army upon which his power depended, and built a new dock at Maks, lower down the river than the former dockyards of Roda and Misr, and near the present Ezbekíya. Maks remained the dock and port of Cairo until the shifting of the Nile bed brought Bulák to the surface. Six hundred ships were soon afterwards built there, and some of Mo‘izz’s vessels were seen in 1047 by Násir-i- Khusrau beached at Maks, and were found to measure about 275 feet in length by 110 feet in the beam.[44] But hard-working and prudent as he was, he loved display. He would go in state to cut the dam of the canal, and spent large sums on the brocaded covering for the Kaaba at Mekka—the holy city now acknowledged his supremacy—which was exhibited to the people at the annual Feast of Sacrifice. The palace buildings were all planned by his own hands; Gawhar had only been his clerk of the works; and the profusion of the new city argued the luxurious taste and the prodigious resources of the caliph. The wealth of the Fátimids recorded by the historians seems almost incredible. We read of two daughters of Mo‘izz, one of whom left about a million and a half in gold (2,700,000 dinárs), whilst the other’s numerous jewel-rooms and coffers, containing, among others, five sacks of emeralds, 3000 silver vessels, and 30,000 Sicilian embroideries, exhausted forty pounds of wax in sealing them up for her executors. Mo‘izz himself bought a silk curtain from Persia for nearly £12,000, on which the countries of the world were depicted and their cities; and his wife spent much treasure in 966 on her mosque in the Karáfa, designed by el-Hasan the Persian and decorated by Basra painters.

One advantage of heresy was the toleration of artistic ideas that were abhorrent to the orthodox, and the Fátimids encouraged, if not portrait painting, at least the representation of human beings in art, which was held to be distinctly forbidden by the Prophet.[45] The mosque of the cemetery called the Karáfa, however, transcended anything ever attempted before in Egypt, if we except the stories of Khumáraweyh’s palace in “the Wards.” Its plan was the ordinary square quadrangle surrounded by cloisters, like the Azhar, but the decoration was remarkable. The fourteen square doors leading into the _liwán_ or sanctuary were surmounted by arches resting on triple marble columns, painted blue, red, and green; the ceilings were also painted in various colours by artists from Basra. Opposite the middle door was an arch on which a bridge was painted, with steps of various colours, which looked real. Painters used to come to see it, but they could not copy it. We read of two rival artists, el-Kasír and Ibn-‘Azíz of Chaldæa, protégés of the vezír el-Yazúry, who painted figures, the first of a dancing girl in a white dress, standing against the black background of an arch, seeming as though she stood inside it, and the second a similar girl in red who appeared to be standing out in front of a yellow arch. There was in a house in the Karáfa a picture by el-Kettámy, one of the decorators of this mosque, which represented Joseph in the pit so that he seemed to stand out in relief.[46]

The money to pay for the outgoings of the palace, with its twenty to thirty thousand inmates, and all the luxury it implied, was partly obtained by a more rigorous collection of the taxes and arrears than heretofore, and by the substitution of a central tax office in the old emírate house next to the mosque of Ibn-Tulún in place of the wasteful and corrupt system of local collectors and tax-farmers. In a single day the city of Misr (still in its prime) contributed from £26,000 to £62,000 in taxes, according to the season. All taxes had to be paid in the new Fátimid coinage, and the ‘Abbásid money was put out of currency.

The next caliph el-‘Azíz was noted for his judgment in gems, and set a number of new fashions in gold-thread turbans, jewelled harness scented with ambergris, and gold-inlaid armour for his horses, and luxuries for the table, such as truffles from Mukattam and fish fresh from the sea. Like Khumáraweyh he was fond of strange beasts, and imported birds and animals from the Sudán. But he shared with his father the statesmanlike qualities that no luxury could enfeeble. He built a fleet to fight the emperor Basil; personally waged a successful campaign in orthodox Syria, which never became reconciled to the Fátimid supremacy; and he gave Egypt an interval of unbroken peace. His name was commemorated in the Friday prayer in the mosques from Arabia to the Atlantic, and he never failed to stand before the people in the Azhar and conduct the service as their spiritual as well as temporal head.

The mosque known as el-Hákim’s owed its foundation at the close of 990 to el-‘Azíz and his vezír Ibn-Killis, who completed it sufficiently to hold the Friday prayers there a year later. The decoration, minarets, and other accessories were not finished till the reign of his son el- Hákim, who set the work in hand in 1003, and placed the final inscription on the pulpit in March 1013. Hence this second congregational mosque of Káhira, originally known as the “New Mosque” or “The Brilliant” (el-Anwar, in obvious imitation of the name of el- Azhar), took its most usual title from el-Hákim. In the course of its history it has suffered even worse indignities than the Old Mosque of ‘Amr. When the Crusaders occupied Cairo in 1167 they turned part of the mosque of el-Hákim into a church. Under the Ayyúbid restoration of orthodox Islam, the Azhar was disused for a time, as being the chief seat of heresy, and the mosque of el-Hákim became the official place of worship. Afterwards it seems to have been used for stables, and in the summer of 1303 it was terribly shattered by a great earthquake, and restored in the following year by Beybars the Taster. By the time that the Topographer wrote his account of it about 1420, the mosque was again in ruins, by fire and neglect, and its roof was crumbling piece by piece. Since then it has fallen on still more evil days. Its court has served in turn as a rope-walk, a drying ground, a common throughfare, a playground, which you entered through a café, a brewery, or a bead factory. The only honourable use it has been turned to is that of a Museum of Arab Art, which for the past twenty years has occupied part of the arcades of the east end, where the noble arches and Kufic inscriptions still preserve something of their ancient grandeur, and formed a fit shrine for many beautiful and curious works of Saracenic art.

Melancholy as this vast empty court surrounded by decayed walls and ruined arches appears in the present day, there are points of great interest in the mosque of el-Hákim. The arches are the only exceptions to the Persian shape (“keelform”—two arcs terminating in tangential lines _at each end_) which is otherwise universal in the architecture of the Fátimid period. This is doubtless due to its early date and obvious imitation of the mosque of Ibn-Tulún. Still more remarkable are its minarets, commonly called _mibkharas_ or censers from their peculiar shape. The heavy square bases, however, have nothing to do with the original minarets, the lower parts of which, built of carefully dressed stone, with traces of Fátimid inscriptions, may still be traced inside these ugly buttresses. A minute examination made by Herz Bey and M. van Berchem established beyond a doubt the fact that the brick minarets belong to the hasty restoration of 1304, after the earthquake. Beybars did not trouble to rebuild the minarets in their former style, but put brick tops, and probably shored up the old bases with the clumsy cubical casings which have puzzled so many archæologists and suggested strange theories of the early forms of minarets. The cubes may be later, however, and may have had some connexion with the military defences of the neighbouring city gate. The remains of the original stone minarets inside these casings are specially interesting since they are the only definite evidence we possess (save the small brick minaret of the mosque el-Guyúshy) as to the construction of minarets of the Fátimid epoch, of which Makrízy was evidently unaware when he wrote that no stone minarets were erected previously to that of Kalaún in 1284. They are precisely similar in construction to the later Mamlúk minarets, starting from a square base, changing to an octagon, resolved into a cylinder. A spiral staircase within led up to windows whence the muezzins chanted the call to prayer.[47]

The caliph Hákim is one of the best known characters in Egyptian history, yet a character so contradictory and bizarre that his biographers are inevitably reduced to the weak conclusion of explaining his conduct by the unsatisfactory solution of mania. He was the only son of the exemplary ‘Azíz and his Christian wife,—the sister of two patriarchs,—and is another witness to the truth of the saying that clergymen’s relations are no better than other folk. Emerging from the upper branches of a fig tree at the age of eleven to enter upon the dazzling lustre of the throne, the boy had an unfortunate training. His governor, the Slavonian eunuch Bargawán,—whose name is still to be read in one of the lanes off the Beyn-el-Kasreyn—amused himself in the Pearl Palace in the Garden of Kafúr, whilst the Berber and Turkish troops fought each other in the streets. One of Hákim’s early experiences was the presentation of the Berber general’s head by the victorious Turkish guard. It was but a short step to the murder of the regent, and after four years of very lax tutelage the youth of fifteen assumed full powers.

“As the young caliph came more before the public, the eccentricities of his character began to appear. His strange face, with its terrible blue eyes, made people shrink; his big voice made them tremble. His tutor had called him ‘a lizard,’ and he had a creepy slippery way of gliding among his subjects that explained the nickname. He had a passion for darkness, would summon his council to meet at night, and would ride about the streets on his grey ass night after night, spying into the ways and opinions of the people under pretence of inspecting the market weights and measures. Night was turned into day by his command. All business and catering was ordered to take place after sunset. The shops had to be opened and the houses illuminated to serve his whim, and when the poor people overdid the thing and began to frolic in the unwonted hours, repressive orders were issued; women forbidden to leave their homes, and men to sit in the booths. Shoemakers were ordered to make no outdoor boots for women, so that they might not have the wherewithal to stir abroad, and the ladies of Cairo were not only enjoined on no account to allow themselves to be seen at the lattice-windows, but might not even take the air on the flat roofs of their houses. Stringent regulations were issued about food and drink. Hákim was a zealous teetotaller, as all Muslims are expected to be. Beer was forbidden, wine was confiscated, vines cut down, even dried raisins were contraband; malukhíya (Jews’ mallow) was not to be eaten, and honey was seized and poured into the Nile. Games, such as the Egyptian chess, were prohibited, and the chessboards burnt. Dogs were to be killed wherever found in the streets, but the finest cattle could not be slaughtered save at the Feast of Sacrifice. Those who ventured to disobey these decrees were scourged and beheaded, or put to death by some of the novel forms of torture which the ingenious caliph delighted in inventing. A good many of these strange regulations were no doubt inspired by a genuine reforming spirit, but it was the spirit of a mad reformer. The lively ladies of Cairo have always needed a tight hand over them, but who could expect to restrain a woman by confiscating her boots? The prohibition of intoxicating liquors, gambling, and public amusements, was in keeping with the character of a sour and bitter puritan, and was doubtless intended as much to improve the morals as to vex the souls of his subjects. But the nightly wanderings, the needless restrictions and harassing regulations concerning immaterial details, were signs of an unbalanced mind. Hákim may have meant well according to his lights, but his lights were strangely prismatic.”

It is difficult to discover the method in this madness. At first Christians were tolerated; then, about 1005, began a course of contemptible persecution, petty annoyances, foolish badges and liveries, and other humiliations, followed by wholesale confiscations and destruction of churches. But the Muslims fared almost as ill. Vezírs, whether Christians or Muslims, were indiscriminately assassinated or executed. The great Gawhar’s son was treacherously murdered in the palace. Officials of all grades and all creeds were barbarously tortured and wantonly killed. A distinguished general, after putting down a rebellion which kept Egypt in a tumult for two years, happened to disturb Hákim when he was cutting up a murdered child, and paid for his indiscretion with his life. Yet at the very time when these horrors were being enacted, the young caliph was busily superintending the decoration of the mosque that bears his name,[48] and also founding the remarkable institution called the “Hall of Science” (Dar-el-‘Ilm), in the precincts of the Great Palace, where learned men of all shades of opinion met together and discussed everything under the sun with the resources of a well-appointed library. These meetings of a parliament of religions recall the debates of Akbar’s later “Hall of Worship” at Agra, nor is this the only point of resemblance between the two sovereigns, contrasted as they are in most respects. Akbar allowed himself to be worshipped as a deity, and Hákim came at last to a similar result, and both were led to it by Shí‘a influences.

No doubt those long lonely rides on his grey ass about the desolate Mukattam hills, those nights in the observatory on the slopes where he worked out his astrological chimeras, ministered to a mind deeply imbued with the mystical teaching of the Shí‘a. He was the Imám, through whom God revealed Himself to the ignorant world; he was the only possessor of the divine secrets; it was an easy step, and a logical, to argue that he was the incarnation of the deity—that he was God. It took more than twenty years to bring him to this point, but aided by the preaching of some Persian mystics he arrived there about 1018. It is true his preachers had poor success in their mission of proclaiming the divinity of Hákim. One was set upon and murdered to the joy of the orthodox; others desecrated the Old Mosque of ‘Amr with their blasphemy, and the people rose and slew them; Darazy, who afterwards gave his name to the strange sect of the Druzes in the Lebanon, was hunted to the palace and with difficulty saved by the caliph’s personal interposition and ready lie. Nobody accepted the new doctrine, monstrous to orthodox ears; and probably the bulk of the people were not even moderate Shí‘a but really Sunnis of the old school. Misr was in an uproar, and within an ace of a revolution; but the negro troops did their savage work, the old capital was looted, houses were burst open, young girls dragged away, and a reign of terror silenced the outcry. The tortured people gathered in the mosques and prayed for help.

Help came, but from an unexpected quarter. The black troops had gone too far, and their rivals, the Berbers and Turks, less out of humanity than mere jealousy of power, joined together in suppressing the common enemy. Even Hákim lost his control over the army. He also set a powerful influence against him in the harím. He slandered his sister’s chastity. The Princess Royal refused after this to stand between her brother and his fate. A conspiracy was formed and when, on the 13th of February 1021, Hákim took one of his accustomed rides to the hills, dauntless and unconcerned as ever, he never returned. His ass and his coat, slashed with dagger cuts, were found, but his body had disappeared. For a long time people fearfully expected his return, as the Druzes in the Lebanon do to this day.

After so horrible a nightmare Cairo stood in sore need of rest. It came, but not at once. Military tyranny was succeeded by the corrupt rule of a court clique; a terrible famine in 1025 drove the starving people to highway robbery; the treasury was exhausted, the very slaves of the palace mutinied, and Syria was in open revolt, whilst the new caliph, Hákim’s son, amused himself with singers and dancers and bricked up young girls to starve to death in the mosque. The luck of the Fátimids was not yet exhausted, however; and good Niles, a vigorous suppression of the Syrian rebellion by an energetic viceroy, and a temporary quieting down of the soldiers’ jealousies, gave Egypt a quarter of a century of comparative tranquillity. The valley of the Nile was now almost all that was left to the Fátimids. Their great Barbary dominions had completely fallen away by 1046, and the old Mediterranean supremacy had departed for ever. Syria was held with difficulty by force of arms, and though Arabia, from Medina to the Yemen and Hadramawt, yielded homage to the Egyptian caliphs, its Shí‘a emír was nothing less than an independent sovereign. The extraordinary fact that for forty weeks in 1058-9 the Fátimid caliph was prayed for in the mosques of orthodox Baghdád[49] testifies to political intrigues in the eastern caliphate rather than to any real access of power to the Fátimids.

In Egypt, however, they were still undisturbed. A new caliph, el- Mustánsir, a baby of eight months, succeeded to the throne in 1036, and kept it, by no special virtue or effort of his own, until 1094, and his long occupation—it can hardly be called reign—comprised alternations of surprising prosperity and desperate distress. In spite of the evil influence of his mother, a Sudány black, who imported many of her savage compatriots to overawe the capital, the country enjoyed exceptional tranquillity in the middle of the eleventh century. We have the evidence of Násir-i-Khusrau, in 1047-9, who states unconditionally that Egypt was then in affluence, and that he had never known such tranquillity and security as he saw there. The caliph Mustansir was exceedingly popular, and no one went in fear of violence or rapacity from his government. Order reigned supreme, and the very jewellers and moneychangers did not trouble to shut the doors of their shops against thieves. The shops in Cairo itself were reckoned at over twenty thousand, and all were the property of the caliph, and paid him from two to ten dinárs a month. He owned, it was said, 20,000 houses, five or six storeys high, let out in lodgings, at monthly rents averaging eleven dinárs (or £70 a year). The houses were well built of good stone, not brick, and were separated by delightful gardens. There were then no city walls (the first walls having fallen to ruin, and the second not built till forty years later), but the lofty houses themselves, says the traveller, were almost like fortifications, and each palace or mansion was a castle by itself.[50] There was a space of a mile between Cairo and Misr, covered with gardens and country-houses, but flooded at the time of the inundation so that it looked like a sea.