A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

MOSQUE OF SULTAN HASSAN. 69
and justify the preeminence which is ascribed to
it over the other mosques of Cairo.
The stains of Sultan Hassan's blood, murdered
within the sanctuary by his Memlooks, are shown
upon the beautifully tesselated marble pave-
ment ; his tomb occupies the centre of the
interior enclosure, and on the head of it is laid the
largest and most splendid copy of the Koran that
I have yet seen, magnificently illuminated, like
the Christian missals of the same epoch, in gold
and colours. But the embroidered covering over
the Sultan's tomb is faded and moth-eaten, the
pavement is broken and degraded in many places,
and here, as everywhere else in Cairo, a melan-
choly air of neglect and decay is visible, which
makes one long to organize a wholesale system
of restoration and purification, and to send forth
throughout the city masons, and painters, and
glaziers, to rescue from perdition so much that is
worthy of being preserved, but which, if things
remain in the state they now are, must inevitably
perish ere long.
Still more melancholy is the picture of desola-
tion exhibited at the mosque of the Caliph
Ahmed-ebn-e'-Tayloon, called by the Caireens
Gam a Tayloon, a structure which ought to be an
object of veneration to them, as it was the first