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The Mosques of Cairo 163
is to the unthinking so cumbered with ruins as to have no
meaning. But to those who stop to think it has a peculiar
fascination ; for here are the mighty remains of mosque and
mansion and Caliph's palace held together by the lowly line
of shops, which burrow into their ruined facades and are
tenanted by sellers of brass sherbet cups and Arab grocers,
with here and there a fat-tailed sheep, tethered against the
shop front to be fed up for the sacrifice.
At the end where the silk approaches the Turkish Bazar
are the vaults where the great brass water-vessels are sold,
noble in their forms but neglected by tourists as too large to
carry away ; at the far end are the pipe-sellers. The street is
always full of native hucksters and carters, biblically primitive
and the passing quick and dead.
You cannot spend a morning there without seeing a funeral
because the sfik lies on the way from certain crowded quarters
to the vast cemetery outside the Bab-en-Nasr.^
Mohammedan funerals were most impressive to me. Here
was the oldest form of procession, nearly primitive in its
simplicity. The body was still borne upon a wooden bier
covered only by a shawl. The bearers were often changed, so
that more might have merit. Its approach was heralded by
the wail of the hired mourners and the chanting of the Koran
by the jikees. The Koran was borne on a cushion before it
there might be a few Dervish banners ; the bereaved women
would have a film of blue muslin round their heads. The
men would have no sign of mourning but dejection or tears.
The Koran forbids all mourning for those who are freed from
the hardships and perils of life. But human nature in the
fourteen centuries since the coming of the Prophet has
established the prescriptive right to mourn where the heart
bleeds. As there was no dress of mourning, the processions
were not lacking in colour ; their tenderness and dignity
were remarkable, and they connected us with the ancient
world in the most ancient way, as we saw that high-horned
richly-palled bier carried on the shoulders of the mourners
to lay the dust of humanity in the dust of the desert.
• The mosque is En-Nasir, the gate is En-Nasr.
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