orientalcairocit00sladuoft

194 Oriental Cairo
Amr, and monopolised, since its ruin, by the Copts. And
beyond that are the vast mounds which contain in their
bosoms all that was left of Fustat, when it had been burnt
in 1168 to prevent it falling into the hands of the Crusaders.
It is of Fustat and Babylon that I must write, for neither
receives its meed at the hands of the tourist.
Fustat began to lose its importance when the Caliph Ibn
Tulun built his mosque, which still survives, and his palace in
the quarter now called Katai. A new city sprang up round
them ; Fustat grew still further neglected.
When Gohar el-Kaid conquered Egypt for the Fatimite
Caliphs, and founded the new palace known as El-Kahira, or
the Splendid, in 969, it lay between the Citadel and the
Governorat, and the bazars and the native streets surround-
ing them stand upon its site. The noble old loggia of the
Beit-el-Kadi just above the Suk of the Coppersmiths is part
of the Palace of El-Kahira, though built long after the days of
Gohar.
When the Crusaders were sweeping down on Cairo, since
the Saracenic forces were not sufficient to hold so large an
area, Fustat was committed to the flames. The fire burnt
steadily for fifty-four days. Those who have seen, even the
day after, the debris of a great fire, can understand how the
dust-storms and the intermittent rain of seven or eight
centuries have turned the smouldering ruins of the city of
Amr into the fortress-like mounds of the Fustat of to-day.
These mounds of Fustat are extraordinary even in a land
of marvels. They areof vast extent, stretching from the Coptic
fastnesses and churches of Babylon almost to the mosque of
Tulun and the Tombs of the Mamelukes—they look like a bit
of the desert. Their sandhills are regular cliffs and valleys,
and you expect them to contain the tombs of the functionaries
of the Pharaohs. There is hardly one trace of a building to
be found in them, so deadly was that prototype of the burning
of Moscow in the face of French invaders. But where walls
and houses perished, the little things of household use survived.
Fustat is full of precious fragments of the early Middle
Ages.