orientalcairocit00sladuoft

The Bazars of Cairo 73
mediasval mansions, to be described in the chapter on Arab
houses, opens out of this bazar ; it is known as the Bcit-
el-Khalil. There are a good many leather-workers at the
beginning of the bazar, who make the gay saddle-bags and
pouches and purses that the foreigners love to buy. The
tentmakers are the most hopelessly vulgarised of all the
denizens of the bazar ; elsewhere I have inveighed against
them for prostituting their art by substituting coarse carica-
tures of the ancient Kgyptian tomb paintings for the beautiful
texts and arabesques which are on the awnings and tent
linings they make for Arabs. They talk incessantly to every
foreigner who passes :
" Look here, sir, you want to buy very nice. Come in
no sharge for examine "— and so on.
The Tentmakers' Bazar carries you up to the Bab-es-
Zuweyla—one of the old gates of Cairo. Most of the
bazars lie just inside it.
There are ten leading bazars at Cairo : the Tentmakers'
Bazar, the Silk Bazar, the Cotton Bazar, the Tunisian and
Algerian Bazar, the Scentmakers' Bazar, the Silversmiths
and Goldsmiths' Bazar, the Sudanese l^azar, the Brass Bazar,
the Shoemakers' Bazar ; and the Turkish Bazar or Khan-el-
Khalil. But the Sukkariya, which means Sugar Bazar,
though you do not see a single sugar shop in it, and the
Sliaria cl-Akkadin, which succeeds it, constitute practically
the bazar of cheap hosiery.
For the kodaker, the Tunis Bazar and the Scentmakers'
Bazar and the Silk Bazar are the best. They, at any rate, arc
as Oriental as the bazars of Tunis. Here the shops are
mere cupboards, and the owner squats on his counter and
fills the entire front. There arc benches for customers
running along the outside of the shops like a curbstone
covered with carpets. The Tunis Bazar is roofed over
like the bazars at Tunis, and is a blaze of colour, with
its festoons of red and yellow shoes, gaily striped blankets,
white shawls, embroidered saddle-bags and tasselled pra>'ing-
carpets. The shops themselves are lined with shelves
divided into squares. A fine note of colour is struck
—