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28 Oriental Cairo
glare of an indescribable colour between purple and orange
makes the rock of the Citadel and Mchemet All's Mosque,
with its soaring domes and minarets, shine with an un-
earthly radiance. Look at them long and well, and then
drive up the hill past the romantic-looking Mahmudiya and
Emir Akhor mosques, gay little things with arabesqued
mamelukc domes, to the principal gate of the Citadel, the
Bab-el-Gedid, and walk round the great mosque to stand on
the terrace beside it and see the Pyramids standing out
purple against the afterglow. Leave the Citadel, before
the darkness falls, to drive down the steep, winding street
called in its different parts the Sharia El-Magar, the Sharia
Bab-el-VVazir, and the Sharia El-Tabbana, till you get to
the Merdani Mosque again. You will then have completed
the round of the most notable streets and buildings of the
quarter between the Muski and the Sharia Mohammed Ali,
north and south, and the Citadel and the line of the filledup
canal east and west.
XXXn. The Mosques of the Sharia Bab-el-Wazir ; the
Kheirbek Mosque, the Blue Mosque, and Sultan Sha'ban's
Mosque
But before I dismiss this part of Cairo I must recapitulate
the glories of that hill-street from the Citadel to El-Merdani.
Nearly the whole of the Bab-el-Wazir portion of it is full of
ancient mosques and Arab mansions, and there is a curious
cemetery just outside the Bab-el-Wazir. Three of the
mosques in this street are large and magnificent, the Kheirbek
Mosque, which, when restored, would be worthy of a place
beside mosques like Fll-Bordeini ; the mosque of Ibrahim
Agha, famous as the Blue Mosque, which has its liwan lined
with magnificent old blue tiles, and one of the largest courtyards
in Cairo ; and the fourteenth-century mosque of Sultan
Sha'ban, which is now in the restorer's hands.
XXXIII. An Example of the Windows called Kamariya
Almost next to it, divided from it by a beautiful old
wooden arcaded gallery, is an old Arab mansion, which has