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1 66 Oriental Cairo
round the cornices. The stucco tracery of the windows
representing cypresses and arabesques is hardly to be
matched. The mosque may be a trifle too done up, but
it has more of the magnificence of a cathedral than any
mosque in Cairo.
As you mount up the winding street which leads from
the Bab-es-Zuweyla gate of El-Kahira to the main guard
of the Citadel your whole route is full of the colour of Egypt.
Right at the beginning of the street called here the Sharia
Derb-el-Ahmah is the entrance to the gay awninged Tentmakers'
Bazar, guarded by a tiny ruinous mosque of gay
masonry. Passing the brightly coloured wares of the
donkey-harness maker you soon come to a mosque built
across the street, Kismas-el-Ishaky. It is worth examining,
for it was built in the Egyptian Renaissance, the era of Kait
Bey, and its restorations are perfect though a little hard and
fresh. It is typical alike in its plan and its decorations,
a little gem of the fifteenth century. On its left as you
ascend the street it is connected with further buildings
by the most delightful open woodwork gallery in Cairo.
You pass on, and soon, where the street is renamed Sharia
el-Tabbana, you come to a delicious sebil of rather an unusual
pattern. It looks more like part of a mosque, but the voices
of the kutiab children intoning the Koran in the arched
upper chamber betray it. Its facade has charming old
arabesques and inscriptions on its dark masonry, and its
fountain chamber is lined with rich old blue tiles.
I used to halt and feast my eyes and meditate there
before I passed on to the wholly delectable Mcrdani mosque,
a little lower down the street on the right. The Merdani
mosque is one of the most precious relics of the fourteenth
century in Cairo. You can see it well ; from up or down
the street you get its long line of walls built in echelon,
surmounted with Saracen battlements, pierced with most
picturesque Saracenic window.s. Its stone is mellow, its
walls are bent with age.
El-Merdani has one special charm. Except El-Azhar
itself, it is almost the only mosque you can see into from the