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The Bazars of Cairo 83
the broad Sharia Mohammed Ali till I come to the Sharia
Serugiya a little below the Kesun mosque. This is an un-
spoiled native street, natural enough for Japan. Its shops
are not old buildings, but they are low and the street is broad,
so you have good opportunities for kodaking. The shops
are quite uninteresting ; they cater for humble native wants.
But if there is nothing for the European to buy in the shops
there is plenty for him to photograph among the shoppers,
and the street is rich in picturesque small mosques, and
sawiyas^ tekkiyas or colleges of Dervishes, ancient baths,
vistas of old rows of dwellings, and a stranded city gate.
The Serugiya changes into the Sharia el-Magharbalin, and
the Sharia el-Magharbalin changes into the Sharia Kasabet
Radowan, which admits to the Tentmakers' Bazar. Only
the name is changed. As you draw near the bazar, the
street makes lovely lines of little old mosques with Mameluke
domes and ancient dwelling-houses with arabesqued
facades.
Here you enter one of the great old palaces of Cairo, the
Beit-el-Khalil. You can see how vast it was, though there is
little left now except the great gateway and the inak'ad, the
hall with an open front, whose majestic arches rise as high as
the roof. Here the beauty of these old streets culminates in
an unbroken succession of mosques and minarets and old
palaces, with vicshrebiya oriels, which nearly meet across the
road.
We must not Hnger here ; we must hurry through the
Tentmakers' Bazar, which is always cool and dark and
picturesque, just the right environment for the gay awnings
and saddle-cloths and leatherwork that are made in its shops,
though the enjoyment of it is spoiled by the incessant " No
sharge to look," " Sir, you want to buy— very nice," "Look
here, sir," " Come in," and so on. It ends between two
perishing mosques, sentimentally beautiful in their decay, at
the Bab-es-Zuweyla, the old city gate, the heart of that Cairo of
which I have written that it is still an Arab city of the Middle
Ages.
And here at the Bab-es-Zuweyla you will do well to re-