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A Drive Round Cairo 27
XXIX. Old Arab Mansions on the Way to the Armourers*
Suk ; and an old Arab Bath
From here drive to the Suk of the Armourers which
contains a number of typical old Arab mansions belonging
to very conservative people, who still keep their front doors
shut, a very rare thing in Cairo— I have no doubt that
some of them have splendid courtyards. One day I found
one of these doors, which was nearly always shut, open,
and went in. It opened on to a garden with a superb
teak-wood trellis pergola and a luxuriant garden. Lower
down there were at least two houses like the famous palace
in the Haret-el-Merdani, but not so good. Near them were
the famous baths of the Emir Beshtak, the handsomest in
Cairo, very old, with their pavements, and the panelling of
their walls and their octagonal fountains all in antique
white marble.
XXX. The Armourers* Suk; Sultan Hassan*s and the EI'
Rifai'ya Mosque; First View of the Citadel
Just beyond this you will find the Armourers' Suk commencing
in earnest. There is no armour to be found in
it nowadays, and very few weapons of romantic Arab patterns,
though there are a few of the long-barrelled Bedawin guns,
which have their stocks ornamented with almonds of bone or
mother-of-pearl. The Armourers' Suk lives by the sale of
what are described as Sheffield knives, but come from some
German Sheffield. The Armourers' Suk runs into the Sharia
Mehemet Ali at its finest point, where the great mosques
of Sultan Hassan and El-Rifai'ya tower up right and left,
and Saladin's Citadel, crowned by Mehemet All's Mosque,
faces them.
I have written of these two great mosques in my chapter
on mosques ; both are like mighty castles.
XXXI. The Drive from Sultan Hassan's Mosque to the
Citadel and back to El'Merdani's Mosque
Time yourself to arrive in the Place Rumeleh, in which
the Sharia Mohammed Ali terminates, at sunset, when the