orientalcairocit00sladuoft

14 Oriental Cairo
drive along the fine Sharia El-Madabegh, and a drive down
the bottom part of the Sharia Kasr-el-Nil to see the Nile
bridge, the Kasr-el-Nil barracks (which generally have
soldiers drilling or playing on the parade ground), the
Museum of Egyptian Antiquities and the Maison Zogheb,
the finest modern private house in the city in the Arabic
style. The only two buildings in the whole quarter which
need be visited from the art point of view are the Museum
and the Maison de France, the house of the French Consul-
General, constructed out of the materials of old Arab houses
and mosques.
III. The Kasr-el-Dubara Quarter Sights
The second quarter to explore is not much more interesting.
The most important part of it, from the point of view of the
artist and the historian, is known as the Kasr-el-Dubara.
This contains the houses of the British Consul-General and
the British General Commanding the Army of Occupation ;
an English Church; the palace of the Imperial Ottoman
Commissioner and the Khedive's mother, near the river ; and
near them the offices of the Minister of Public Works, the
Minister of Justice, the Minister of Finance and the Interior,
and the War Office. On the other side of them, a little
farther off, is the Abdin Palace, the principal residence of
the Khedive, guarded by barracks.
This quarter may be said to begin at the Sharia Kasr-el-
Nil and to end at the great Kasr-el-Aini Hospital on the
Nile side, and the Mosque of Seyyida Zeynab on the inner
side. It is not much more interesting than the Ismailiya
quarter. More than half of the part of it on the river bank
consists of grubbed-up gardens and foundations, a memento
of the great land-boom, in which this was to have formed
the most fashionable residential part of Cairo. The new
Egyptian University is situated near the Ministry of War
and the Wakfs, a handsome building, in which the administration
of M(ihammedan charities and the repair of Mohammedan
monuments is vested. But none of the buildings arc