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2IO Oriental Cairo
gilt foolscap pulpit, is almost worse. This is Mehemet Ali's
punishment for massacring the Mamelukes just below, and
the punishment is almost more than he can bear.
But fortunately having seen the interior once, one never
enters it again, while the majestic outlines of its exterior on
the Citadel rock cheer the eye from Memphis to Gizeh and
Gizeh to HcliopoHs.
Around it is a scene of woe. First there is the En-Nasir
mosque, a shell whose stately courts, built by Ibn Kalaun's
prodigal son, have been stripped of their decorations for
museums, but whose architecture is so fine that Max Hertz
Bey could restore it into a noble monument with his sure
hand. Its antique courtyards, arched in the fourteenth
century, make a fine contrast against the minarets and
clustered domes of Mehcmct Ali's mosque. Its own minarets,
gleaming with old green tiles, are among the gems of the
Citadel—lovely old woodwork inscriptions are still left
where the fallen dome once sprang from the great Ikvdn.
The liivdn still has its graces, for some colour remains on
the coffers of the roof, and there are three rows of black-
and-white arches rising in tiers, though the miJirab and pulpit
have disappeared. The main court has its arches and its
clerestory and its zigzag Arab battlements complete ; very
noble are some of the columns of the royal mosque, which
only a century ago was the crown of the Citadel, as
Mehemet Ali's mosque is now.
On the other side of Mehemet Ali's mosque is the deserted
palace of the Khedives, in which the commander of the
British Artillery has his headquarters and could, if he
chose, have his residence ; but its vast and not unpleasing
rooms in the nineteenth-century Oriental-palace style would
cost so much to restore and so much to keep up.
Beyond arc the remains of the palace of Saladin, which
in their utter ruin show the nobility of his conception by
the tremendous masonry of the fragments. The views from
the garden and the office of the C.R.A. are the finest in
Cairo. The windows command a view of the fantastic
tombs of the Mamelukes and the Mokhattam hills, with