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The Citadel of Cairo 211
their ancient nnosques, and afford glimpses of the desert,
the Nile, old Cairo, and the mounds of Fustat. The view
from the garden and from the windows on that side is
the same as that which all visitors go to see from the terrace
of the mosque of Mehemet Ali, for here at one's feet is
ancient Cairo, with its hundred minarets, severed by the
gleaming belt of the Nile from the golden hem of the
sunset, with the Pyramids rising up from it in royal purple.
And day after day the sunset is a pageant here.
Few visitors, as they stand upon the terrace apostrophising,
pay enough heed to the spectacle at their feet, for down
below the battlements on which they stand is the Meidan
Rumeleh, bounded by the vast fabric of the mosque of
Sultan Hassan and the mosque of the Rifai'ya sect and the
little old mosques on the shoulder of the Citadel hill. In
the forest of minarets beyond them it is easy to pick out
the old tower-like minarets of Ibn Tulun's mosque at one
end and El-Hakim at the other, the two oldest mosques in
the city, while in the centre are the lofty and fantastic
minarets which rise from the Bab-es-Zuweyla and El-Azhar,
the chief University of Islam. In between the minarets the
flat roofs of the old houses have their Biblical outline
broken by dark little gardens—mere courts filled with
cypress and palm, for the ladies of the harem, and away
on the left are the long-drawn arches of Saladin's aqueduct
looking like a work of Imperial Rome.
The Citadel of Cairo abounds in ancient remains. How
much of the ramparts may be ascribed to the famous and
knightly Saladin history has not yet established. If there
are no great remains of his actual masonry it is because,
for military reasons, the fortifications have had to be
repaired and strengthened. There are large portions of the
walls in the style of his day, which was the inspiration of
the Edwardian castles of England, but it is always difficult
to tell the age of Saracenic architecture, because its builders
were conservative in their ideas and admirable copyists.
Most authorities are willing to allow Saladin the honour of
giving its picturesque form to Joseph's Well. Joseph the son