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The Mosques of Cairo 169
love its little palm-garden round the ancient fountain in the
centre. There is a pitiful something about this mosque : it is
so unrestored ;
it has such an air of semi-wild and gentle
decay. Next to it, quite in ruins, is a huge and splendid
mosque, the Kherbek, which has a picturesque washing-pool,
and, in the little bit saved from ruin for use as a mosque,
has an original window with soft old glass and a charming old
pulpit and dikka. The walls are panelled with tessellated
marbles like El-Bordeini, If it were restored judiciously
it would become an object of great beauty.
From here to the Bab-el-Wazir gate, and from thence
to where the Sharia el-Mager ends on the Citadel hill, the
whole street on its eastern side is a bewildering succession of
beautiful little mosques, with sculptured mameluke domes, and
other ancient buildings. There is no better bit in Cairo for
an artist v/ho seeks mediaeval Oriental effects. The reader
must understand that the Sharia Derb-el-Ahmah, the Sharia
el-Tabbana, the Sharia Bab-el-Wazir and the Sharia el-
Mager are practically one long winding street leading from
the Bab-es-Zuweyla to the Citadel.
The walk down the hill past the Mahmudiya and Emir
Akhor's mosque to the two vast mosques of Sultan Hassan
and the Rifai'ya sect, under the shadow of the mighty Citadel,
is quite as beautiful in another way. But though each of
these mosques is a gem of colour and form, you do not get
the melee of old Oriental domes and houses, the feast of
fantastic curves and mellow masonry, which surrounds the
Bab-el-Wazir.
The two grand mosques of the Place Rumeleh are in size
and magnificence almost unequalled in Cairo. The El-Rifai'ya
mosque, to which I devote a separate chapter in another
volume, is a remarkably successful imitation of antique
masonry. It is hard to imagine that its gigantic walls, with
their sunken matrix-headed panels and their dignified
windows, are not coeval with the Sultan Hassan .mosque
opposite, and an earthquake, by cracking the walls, has completed
the likeness. This mosque was to have been much
higher, for it was built to be the mausoleum of the reigning