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Oriental Cairo
one other human being in sight—or at the most two or
three figures from the " Arabian Nights " stealing silently
away in the shadows, has a simply magical effect. Never
do the hoary windows and minarets of the ancient Kalaun
Mosque look so like lace-work, threaded out of marble by
the hands of a Genie. Never does that procession, long
drawn-out, of mosque and palace and fountain, present to
the sky such a playful fancy of dome and minaret, balcony,
arch, and /neshrebiyad oriel. I felt as if they had fallen
asleep five hundred years ago, when Sultan Barkiik was
carried to his long rest here, and as if I were the magic
prince, privileged to look upon them for the last time before
they awoke to all the world. There is nothing more
romantic than a street purely mediaeval by the light of an
Egyptian moon.
From the Sharia el-Nahassin I used to drive up past the
fine soaring arches of the Beit-el-Kadi, once the palace
of the Fatimide Caliphs and under a mysterious archway to
the Gamaliya. There is no street in Cairo like the Gamaliya
at night. As you drive slowly down it to the old El-Nasr
Gate, you pass here a street full of overhanging harem
windows shuttered with mesJirebiya centuries old ; there a
media-val fountain with an arched Koran school above it,
and a little farther on a mosque of the great period of
Saracen building. Here you still find a gate to close the
end of the street, which leads down to the Palace of Sultan
Beibars ; the tall khans of merchants, and the okelle of
the poor are black and silent in the night. But the charm
of the Gamaliya lies in this, that instead of being deserted
it is apt, where the bright lights are streaming from a
basement, to have a popular restaurant. On the night of
the Ashura it is to the Gamaliya that the actors in that
grim tragedy repair for supper, while the blood of their self-
inflicted wounds is still pouring from their scalps. Even the
Sharia cl-Xahassin is hardly richer in old, forgotten buildings
of the fantastic Middle Ages.
The Mo/id-cn-Nebhi is the celebration of the birthday
of the Prophet. V\'e drove back to Abbasiya to a splendid