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CHAPTER XXI
The Return of the Holy Carpet from Mecca,
and the Celebration of Bairam,
THE
two greatest processions of the year at Cairo are
those which celebrate the departure of the MaJimal
for Mecca and its return from Mecca, or, as it is generally
spoken of in the conversation of the foreigners, the departure
and return of the Holy Carpet. I shall not attempt to
be very precise in my definition of the MaJwial, because
authorities, good authorities, contradict each other flatly on
the subject. Lane, the greatest of all writers on the customs
of the Egyptians, saying that the Mahmal contains nothing,
while Mrs. Butcher, who has been in Egypt thirty years, says
that the Kisweh, or Holy Carpet, is packed and taken in
the Mahmal to salute the Khedive before starting on the
pilgrimage, and that the Mahmal is brought to salute him
again on the return of the pilgrims, when the carpet which
was taken to Mecca the year before is brought back to
Cairo. One of them must be wrong, and it hardly signifies
which to the tourist, because it is the Mahmal itself which,
full or empty, is the central feature of the procession. There
is one point about which there is no dispute—the Carpet
is not a carpet at all but a piece of tapestry made to go round
the Kaaba at Mecca," of the stiffest possible blacksilk—black
because that is the colour of the Abbasside dynasty
embroidered heavily with gold." The making of the Kisweh
is a hereditary privilege in a certain family, and Egyptians
estimate its value at eighty thousand pounds. The Khedive
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