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198 Oriental Cairo
have washed the walls in the old times before, when Babylon
was the outwork of the City of the Sun.
Turning round, you have Saladin's aqueduct stealing
across the edge of the Arabian desert like the works of
Rome's first great emperors. And if you follow its line
round the troubled sea of sandhills which we call Fustat,
always with a background of desert, you have Cairo with
its long line of minarets and domes and its towering Citadel
crowned by Mehcmet All's soaring Turkish mosque, framed
in a glorious triptych which has for its unfolded wings the
Tombs of the Caliphs on the north and the Tombs of the
Mamelukes on the south, and the mosques and rugged
slopes of the Mokattams for its central screen. Choose
sunset for your time, and this whole pageant of Cairo lying
between the sandy sea and that background of fantasy
will be lit with an unearthly splendour of gold and crimson
and purple, hung over everything like a transparent garment
cast from heaven by invisible hands.
Here you will see best that Cairo is a city of the desert
which would be overwhelmed like an army cut off in an
enemy's country, if it were not for the Nile, an impregnable
line of communication.
It is best to explore the seven Coptic churches before
you go to the roof of the Greek cathedral for the view,
because Coptic churches are, in the nature of things, dark,
being buried from the sight of the oppressor in fortresses or
masses of private buildings. The only one that has an ex-
terior is the Mo'allaka, the famous Hanging Church of Babylon.
This is one of the most beautiful churches in Christendom. It
is not wrong to mention it in the same breath as the Cappella
Reale at Palermo, and St. Mark's at Venice itself. Its mosaics
are not extensive ; it has not their wealth of marbles, though
it is richly adorned with both, transfused with the mellow-
ness of antiquity, but it has the finest ancient woodwork in the
world ; it is lined throughout for several feet from the ground
with screens of dark polished wood inlaid with ivory and
ebony medallions chased with inimitable Byzantine carvings ;
the screens are broken by antique stilted arches of ivory.