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The Museums of Cairo 271
books rather like our missals, and some superlatively rich and
very fine Persian Korans. The Turkish manuscripts here are
remarkably interesting and gay ;
the Turkish Korans are the
most exquisite and delicate in the whole place. They look
like gems of beaten gold. In a Persian manuscript of the
fifteenth or sixteenth century there is a picture of polo
being played with clubs just like ours, and goal-posts only
differing in their tips. In case 47 is an interesting coloured
picture of the mamelukes as they rode to their death. There
are also collections of Plrmans, and autographs of the Sultans
of Turkey in the style of our illuminated addresses, but on
a bright scarlet ground ; and of early Arabic books printed
in Europe and elsewhere. The Arab bookbindings of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are like our seventeenth-
century bindings. In the Arab bindings from the sixteenth
to the nineteenth century there are some very rich specimens
of stamping in colour.
I have not attempted to give anything like a comprehensive
account of the Library, or either of the Museums, because it
would be overloading the book with a quantity of difficult
names, which to many of my readers would be quite un-
intelligible. I could not discover any catalogue to the
Arabic collections, but I supposed that most people who go
to look at the exquisite objects which are exhibited in them,
go to look at them as works of beauty ;
and even if the name
of the Caliph or Bey for whom they were executed were
attached, would either not read it at all, or promptly forget it.
It is exceedingly difficult to get the proper names and dates
of anything in Cairo ; you have to be satisfied with
impressions.