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A Drive Round Cairo 31
XXXVIII. The Sharia El-Hilmiya and its Mosques
From here tell your cabman to drive back to the Sharia
Mohammed AH and proceed down it till you get to the street
called the Sharia El-Hilmiya, another of the best streets in
Cairo, for this contains two beautiful old tekkes or mosques of
dervishes ; the El-Mase Mosque, one of the most beautiful,
most perfect, and most reverend of the fourteenth century
mosques ; a school which has two very handsome loggias
and the magnificent fountain erected by the present Khedi-
vial family, before you reach the Sharia Chikhun, with its
continuations, the Sharia Es-Saliba, the Sharia El-Khederi,
and the Sharia El-Karasin, which divides it from the Ibn-
Tulun quarter.
XXXIX, The Sharia Es'Chikhun and its Mosques
On the other side of the Sharia Es-Chikhun are the north
and south Chikhun mosques, the latter being the best of all
the dervish tekkes in Cairo, and possessing a charming little
triangular leafy courtyard, and an exquisite and unrestored
old roof to its very fine Ihvan. Farther on there are two
other very picturesque mosques of no great size, and at the
end is the mosque of Seyyida Zeynab itself. This is large
and modern, with no pretensions whatever from the point of
view of art, and very difficult for a Christian to enter on
account of the fanaticism which it inspires. Nor is it worth
taking any trouble to try to enter it.
The southern half of this district contains a number of old
Arab mansions of a humbler class, besides the street of
splendid mameluke palaces which overlook the Tulun
Mosque, and some very beautiful old fountains and schools.
XL. The Mosque of Ibn'Tulun
Drive from the Chikhun Mosque down the Sharia Er-
Rukbiya, which contains some old buildings, to the Sharia
Ibn-Tulun, from which you gain admission to the great
mosque of the same name. The mosque of Ibn-Tulun in
;