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22 Oriental Cairo
the right into the Sharia El-Marguchi, and then the first to the
right again into the Sharia Birgwan, wiiich winds round until
it brings you to one of the most beautiful, most perfect, and
least-known mosques of Cairo, the Mosque of Abu-Bekr
Mazhar-el-Ansari, built in the best period of the fifteenth
century.
XX. Old Mosques and Mansions of the Suk-es-Zalat
Then tell the cabman to drive you back to where the
Sharia Emir-el-Gi)uchi meets the Suk-es-Zalat, where they
are cut by the tramway which runs over the dried-up canal.
The Suk-es-Zalat and its continuation towards the railway
station has some splendid old mosques and mameluke
houses and interesting shops of the humbler order, in which
natives are carpentering or brass-mending. Continue through
the typical and picturesque Sharia Bab-el-Bahr to where it
runs into the Sharia or Boulevard Clot Bey, close to the
railway station.
XXI. Clot Bey Avenue ; the Coptic Cathedral ; Little Sicily
and the Fishmarket
You will have wandered away from what I may call the
Bazar Quarter, but it is easy to get back to it, if you drive
down the Boulevard Clot Bey, and you will be able to make
some interesting excursions off the direct route. Just off the
Avenue, for instance, half way down, is the present Coptic
Cathedral (not, of course, to be compared with the old Coptic
churches, though it is the chief seat of this ancient religion)
and, as you get near the Esbekiya, you can make your cabman
drive you through Little Sicily and the Fishmarket, two of the
most disreputable, though they are not the least interesting
districts of Cairo. Little Sicily is almost like a Sicilian town
and full of the lowest-class Italians ; the Fishmarket is the
quarter of the houses of ill-fame patronised by the Arabs,
which at night are a blaze of Oriental vice, and by day have
the flamboyant denizens of the quarter, the strange women of
;