GIFT OF
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
AND THEIR FOUNDERS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
RAMBLES IN
CAIRO
With Illustrations. 6s. 6d. net.
" The author's selection of material is judicious and
her manner of using it is interesting. The accounts
of the mosques of El-Azhar and Edh-Dhaher are
particularly good. She has taken her audience to
the most noteworthy mosques of the city. . . . She
reveals the strength of her reserves in the valuable
chronological appendix. A discriminating biblio-
graphy is included, also an excellent plan made by
the Survey of Egypt." Athenceum.
"A popular guide to Cairo, to which is appended a
chronological table of the principal historical monu-
ments, a list of authorities, a glossary of terms ahd
an index. There are good photographic illustrations
and a large folding plan of the medieval monuments
of the city." Times Literary Supplement.
CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD
SEBII. OF SULTAN QAirsAv AT JERUSALEM.
SOME CAIRO
MOSQUES
AND THEIR FOUNDERS
BY
MRS. R. L. DEVONSHIRE
Author of " JR ambles in Cairo."
LONDON: CONSTABLE &
COMPANY LIMITED 1921
First Published 1921
DEDICATED
BY GRACIOUS PERMISSION
TO
HIS HIGHNESS FOUAD I
SULTAN OF EGYPT
INTRODUCTION
THOUGH the ten chapters which are
comprised in this volume have been
arranged in chronological order, they
by no means represent a continuous historical
series. They rather form a collection of histori-
cal essays concerning a few of those monuments
which interested me particularly among the rich
treasures of Moslem art to be found in Cairo.
I had begun to collect the materials for them
before special war circumstances induced me to
write Rambles in Cairo for the benefit of the
soldiers stationed here, and, in that work, I
purposely avoided a detailed mention of these
mosques, hoping that I might yet carry out my
previous intention. In the meanwhile, I utilised
some of the materials for a few articles in the
Cairo Sphinx, which will be found to be practically
embodied in the present volume.
As this is merely intended for ordinary readers
and not for specialists, I have thought it better
to abstain from too many notes of reference,
vii
INTRODUCTION
especially as I cannot claim to have discovered
any little-known Arab sources, but have practi-
cally confined myself to Maqrizy and Ibn lyas,
whilst I have been glad to make use of the works
of Western writers, such as Marcel, Van Berchem,
Franz, Herz, Lane-Poole, Margoliouth, Creswell,
and others. I have also to thank the last-named
for nearly all the photographs which serve to
illustrate this book. The chronological table
appended is taken from that of Rambles in Cairo,
but the latter appeared before Captain Creswell's
Brief Chronology of the Muhammadan Monuments
in Egypt, and, therefore, contained errors which
had, until then, been accepted and which have
now been corrected.
H. C. DEVONSHIRE.
CAIRO, 1920.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction vii
I. The Mosque of Es Saleh Talayeh . i
II. The College of Sultan Es Saleh
Negm ed Din Ayub . . .11
III. The Tomb of Sultan Es Saleh Negm
ed Din Ayub . . . .19
IV. The Tomb of Queen Shagarat ed
Durr 30
V. The Tomb of the Ummayad Sheykh
Zein ed Din Yussef ... 40
VI. The Khanqa of Sultan Beybars el
Gashenkir 49
VII. The Tombs of Sangar el Gawly and
Selar 59
VIII. The Epoch of Sultan Qaitbay . 70
IX. The Mosque of Khairbek . . 101
X. The Mosque of Malika Safiya . in
Index 129
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Sebilof Sultan Qaitbay at Jerusalem. . . Frontispiece
Facing page
Mosque of Saleh Talayeh. General view (in 1918) . - 2
Mosque of Saleh Talayeh. Detail of ornament . . 4
Stucco window from Mosque of Saleh Talayeh now in
Arab Museum, Cairo ..... 8
College of Saleh Negm ed Din Ayub. Ornament of
north-west facade . . . . . .12
College of Saleh Negm ed Din Ayub. Minaret, south-
east side ....... 16
Tomb of Saleh Negm ed Din Ayub. General view (in
1918) 18
Tomb of Saleh Negm ed Din Ayub. Remains of porch 26
Tomb of Shagarat ed Durr. Mihrab ... 32
Tomb of Shagarat ed Durr. South-east fa9ade (1918). 36
Tomb of Zein ed Din Yussef. Interior of Dome . 42
Tomb of Zein ed Din Yussef. South liwan . . 44
Tomb of Zein ed Din Yussef. Dome ... 46
Khanpa of Beybars el Gashenkir. Minaret . . 52
Khanpa of Beybars el Gashenkir. Porch ... 58
Tombs of Selar and Sangar el Gawly. North fa?ade . 60
Tombs of Selar and Sangar el Gawly. Interior of pray-
ing hall ........ 62
xi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Facing page
Tombs of Selar and Sangar el Gawly. Carved stone
screen 64
Tombs of Selar and Sangar el Gawly. Screens seen
from yard 66
Endowment house of Sultan Qaitbay ... 74
Mosque of Ezbek el Yussefy. Sebil facade . . 80
Dome el Fadawiya. Detail of ornament ... 82
Madrassa of Sultan Qaitbay at Qala'at el Kabsh. Detail
of interior ....... 86
Sebil-Kuttab of Sultan Qaitbay .... 96
Mosque of Sheykh Sultan Shah. Interior . . .98
Mosque of Khairbek. North-west fa9ade . . . 100
Mosque of Khairbek. Porch 102
Mosque of Khairbek. Interior .... 104
Mausoleum of Khairbek at Aleppo . . . .106
Mosque of Malika Safiya. Porch and steps . .no
Mosque of Malika Safiya. Minaret . . . .118
Mosque of Malika Safiya. Interior . . . .120
CHAPTER I
THE MOSQUE OF ES SALEH TALAYEH
MUCH interest is attached to this building
by the fact that it was practically the
last Fatimite monument erected in
Cairo, in the year 1160, just as the dynasty was
about to fall. It was already much enfeebled ;
one child khalife succeeded the other, ruling in
name only, as did the last Merovingian kings,
whilst a powerful wazir, like the Frank Mayor
of the Palace, was the actual autocrat whose
hands wielded royal authority.
The Wazir Talayeh ibn Ruzziq, founder of
this mosque, when he came into power, called
himself El Malek es Saleh, thus assuming a
royal title, as did the Ayubite and Mameluke
Sultans who came after him. According to
Maqrizy, he was a man not only of a strong
character, but of a remarkable intellect ; himself
a poet and the author of a religious tract concern-
ing the Shiite faith which he professed, he used
to hold at his palace gatherings of literary men
who came from all parts to honour him and hear
B
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
him repeat his poems ; his liberality and hospi-
tality were proverbial. His history is a very
romantic one : a very pious and fervent Shiite
already in his youth, he journeyed to Mesopo-
tamia in order to visit the shrine of the Imam
Aly b. Abu Taleb, in company with several other
pilgrims. The imam of the shrine was at that
time a certain Ibn Ma 'sun, who gave hospitality
to the pilgrims ; in the night, Ibn Abu Taleb
appeared to Ibn Ma'sun in a vision and said to
him : " Among the pilgrims whom thou hast
entertained, one man, whose name is Talayeh ibn
Ruzziq, is under my protection ; tell him to go
to Egypt, of which he will become Governor. "
In the morning the imam sent to ask if any of
the pilgrims bore this name, desiring that he
should come to speak with him. Talayeh came
forward and he told him of the dream he had
had concerning him. Acting upon this prophecy
the son of Ruzziq went to Egypt where he was
eventually made Governor of Ushmunein.
Egypt at that time (1149) was in great danger
from the Franks of Syria who had gradually come
nearer the frontier and who had just taken the
town of Ascalon, while Norman ships from
Sicily, landing near the town of Tennis on the
2
MOSQUE OF SALEH TALAYEH. GENERAL VIEW (IN 1918).
THE MOSQUE OF ES SALEH TALAYEH
Menzaleh Lake, had pillaged the town and
retired, carrying away many captives and valuable
goods. The reigning Khalife, Ez Zaher b'amr
Illah, was a debauched youth whose vices were
the indirect cause of his death ; he was murdered,
as well as his two brothers, by his own Wazir,
Abbas, amidst an appalling scene of horror.
Abbas, by the same opportunity, seized most
of the riches which the royal palace contained,
but did not attempt to appropriate the crown.
He fetched the murdered Ez Zaher's baby son,
El Faiz, and brought him on his shoulder upon
the scene of carnage ; the unhappy child was so
terrified that he fell into an epileptic fit and after-
wards remained subject to similar attacks until
the end of his short life. The revolution was not
well received by the negro Guard of the late
Khalife nor by the women of the Court, and the
latter sent an urgent appeal to Ushmunein, begging
Talayeh to come to the rescue ; they went so far
as to send him locks of their hair, " the strongest
possible sign of entreaty in a Muslima," l says
Lane-Poole, who borrows from Osama, an eye-
witness, a most dramatic account of this tragedy.
Talayeh made a triumphant entry into Cairo,
1 History of Egypt in the Middle Ages, Methuen, 1914, p. 173.
3
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
carrying a lance decorated by ladies 5 tresses and
followed by a numerous army of partisans, which
increased as he progressed. Abbas fled to Syria,
where he came to a tragic end at the hands of
the Franks, and Ibn Ruzziq, donning the robes
of the wazirate, installed himself in his place.
He had the murdered Khalife interred in the
royal mausoleum, ordered the execution of guilty
persons and proceeded to reorganise the realm.
The little Khalife's tender years left the Wazir
an absolutely free hand, and historians agree
in acknowledging that his rule was a wise and
beneficent one. When El Faiz died in 1160, at
the age of eleven, the Wazir sought to give him
a successor, and an aged prince was presented
to him as being the nearest relative of the deceased.
He was about to appoint him when one of his
confidants whispered in his ear : " Thy pre-
decessor was wiser when he chose as Khalife
a boy of five years." Struck by this remark,
Talayeh rejected the old man who had been
suggested to him, chose a boy named 'Abdallah,
a grandson of the Khalife El Hafez le-din Illah,
and had him proclaimed under the name of
El 'Aded le-din Illah. He gave the new Khalife
his daughter in marriage, with a superb dowry,
4
MOSQUE OF S^LEH TALAYEH. DETAIL OF ORNAMENT.
THE MOSQUE OF ES SALEH TALAYEH
and, thus having secured a royal figure-head who
owed absolutely everything to him, he resumed
the role of ruler de facto, which he so ably filled.
However, his stern and perhaps contemptuous
rule had made for him many enemies, and he
was assassinated in the following year. Maqrizy
relates the story of his death in one of his delight-
fully realistic pages, which help to form an idea
of the manners and customs of the time. He
says that Talayeh, who was about to start lor his
daily ride to the palace, remembered that the day
was the anniversary of the assassination of the
Imam 'Aly ; he therefore ordered a waterskin to
be brought for his ablutions, put on the special
costume of the Imamiya sect, and performed the
long prayer, prostrating himself one hundred and
twenty times. After this, as he went out to
mount his horse, probably feeling somewhat
giddy from the exertion, he lost his balance and
fell, dropping his turban, which became unrolled.
He sat down in the vestibule and a certain Ibn
ed Deif was sent for, who received a large salary
for making up the turbans of Khalifes and Wazirs.
As Ibn ed Deif began his work, one of his
assistants respectfully suggested to the Wazir
that this accident was a warning and that it
5
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
would be more prudent to give up riding out on
that day. Ibn Ruzziq replied that superstition
was of the Devil and that nothing would keep him
from his ride. He then rode to the Khalife 's
palace and was fatally stabbed as he entered it.
He did not die at once and, the Khalife having
hastened to his side, he asked him to punish the
supposed instigator of the crime, an aunt of
El 'Aded. This princess was executed then and
there, before the dying man's eyes ; some
historians seem to hint that she was a scapegoat
and that the Khalife himself had a hand in the
matter. Ibn Ruzziq also had time to see his son,
named Ruzziq, as Talayeh's father had been,
appointed Wazir in his place, and to express his
regrets, firstly, that he had not conquered Jerusa-
lem and exterminated the Franks ; secondly,
that he had appointed Shawar as Governor of
Upper Egypt (and, indeed, Shawar lived to
depose and murder Ruzziq ibn Talayeh, and
was instrumental in bringing about the fall of
the Fatimite Dynasty and the re-establishment
of the Sunnite instead of the Shiite doctrines) ;
and thirdly, that he had built his mosque close
to the city gates, which caused it to be utilised
in military operations.
6
THE MOSQUE OF ES SALEH TALAYEH
His purpose in building it had been to provide
a shrine for the remains of the martyr Hussein,
so deeply revered by the Shiites, which lay buried
at Ascalon. 1 Seeing the Franks coming nearer to
that town, Es Saleh had these remains transferred
to Cairo . However, when his mosque was finished,
the young Khalife El Faiz objected to the relics
of the saint being placed there, declaring that
only in a Khalife 's palace could they be suitably
interred. Talayeh, who was, no doubt, powerful
enough to have his own way, deferred to the
wishes of the epileptic child who died within
a few months and the Meshhed or sanctuary
called El Hassanein was built near the palace, on
the site of the present mosque of Sayedna Hussein,
to receive the holy relics. Meanwhile, he com-
pleted his mosque and provided it with a cistern fed
by a water wheel, which pumped up the Nile water
from the Khalig ; it was not preached in until the
reign of El Muezz Aybek, a hundred years later.
In 1302, the great earthquake which worked
such havoc in Cairo monuments, did not spare
1 A relic of the mausoleum at Ascalon in which the head
of Hussein had been enshrined still exists in the Haram
mosque at Hebron, in the form of a magnificent minbar
(pulpit) of geometrical woodwork. This minbar was made
for the mosque at Ascalon by order of Badr el Gamaly and
is dated 494 A.H.
7
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
the Fatimite mosque ; a popular legend attributes
the damage to the monument's own indignation
at being deprived of the honour of housing the
holy martyr's remains, but gives no explanation
of the falling in of other mosques. Whilst the
Emir Selar undertook to repair El Azhar and
Beybars el Gashenkir the mosque of El Hakim,
Seif ed Din Bektimur, Gukandar or polo-master
at the court of Mohammed en Nasser, took
charge of Saleh Talayeh's. He endowed it with
a very beautiful pulpit and took care to record
by an inscription that he had paid for it out
of his own pocket and in order to make him-
self agreeable to God. Like the older minbar at
Qus 1 and that which Lagin placed in the mosque
of Ibn Tulun, it is made up of small geometrical
panels, delicately carved, and is without the side
door which is to be found in later pulpits and
which somewhat breaks up the design.
The keel-shaped stilted arches, of the kind
commonly called Fatimite or Persian, are decorated
with very fine stucco inscriptions in late Kufic.
1 Qus, a town in the province of Miniya, Upper Egypt, of
which Saleh Talayeh was at one time Governor. An ancient
mosque, many times restored, in the centre of the town,
contains a very fine minbar, bearing the date 550 and the
name of El Malek es Saleh. It is a masterpiece of wood-
work in the Ayubite style.
8
STUCCO WINDOW FROM MOSQUE OF SALEH TALAYEH NOW IN ARAB
MUSEUM, CAIRO.
THE MOSQUE OF ES SALEH TALAYEH
This script, sometimes called Karmatic (though
without much justification), is here seen in its
most ornamental form, and is the more interesting
that the Naskhy form of Arabic writing was
introduced from Syria by Saladin in the next
few years and found its place in every monu-
ment later in date than Talayeh's mosque. The
arches are connected with each other by wooden
beams, as is usually the case, and this detail,
which to my mind often disfigures an arcade,
becomes in this case an additional ornament,
the wood being covered with delicate carving.
The centre arch is broader than the others, a
nave effect being produced. The outer wall
was pierced by beautiful open-work stucco win-
dows, of which important traces remain in the
south-east wall ; the finest specimen was removed
to the Arab museum, and I have been able to
obtain a photograph of it through the kindness of
the Curator, Aly Bey Bahgat. The general plan
of the mosque was evidently the usual one, with
a central court or sahn surrounded by four
porticoes, three of which are now destroyed.
The mosque has until lately been crowded and
suffocated with hovels which have invaded the
interior even; the Comite de Conservation des
9
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
Monuments Arabes has now begun clearing
these away with the result that a most interesting
discovery was made, viz: that the monument
originally stood on a basement of vaulted shops
and that access to it was obtained by a flight of
stone steps leading up from the street to the main
entrance. The level of the street had risen so
much that this very effective feature had entirely
disappeared. Apparently it must have existed,
though equally unsuspected, in other mosques, for
excavations round the mosque of Serghatmish,
below that of Ibn Tulun, led to a similar dis-
covery that of very steep stone steps leading up to
the base of the characteristic minaret of the latter.
It is probable that a great deal more original
work will be found in the course of cleaning
Es Saleh's monument ; already two doors with
scalloped edges have emerged, one of which can
be seen in the photograph. A fine band of
historical inscription which ran round the north
and west fa$ades and of which Professor Van
Berchem could only read a part, the rest being
hidden, will now appear in its entirety, perhaps
even continuing on the south side. The minaret
has been many times restored, and the upper part
of it, from the gallery, is Turkish and quite recent.
10
CHAPTER II
THE COLLEGE OF SULTAN ES SALEH NEGM
ED DlN AYtFB
VISITORS in Cairo who are interested
in Arab art and Mameluke architecture
seldom fail to become acquainted with
the principal monuments in the Suq en Nahassin ;
i.e. the tomb of Qalaun and the college of Barquq ;
they are not difficult to find, and their vicinity to
the entrance of the Khan Khalily gives them an
additional chance against being overlooked. The
madrassa or college of Es Saleh Negm ed Dm
Ayub, however, suffered so much from neglect
before it came under the supervision of the
Comite de Conservation des Monuments Arabes that
there is not much left of it to interest anyone
who has not made a special study of the subject.
Though intended to form an organic whole, it
consisted in reality of two colleges : the south
madrassa and the north madrassa ; and a corridor
divided the two, as is the case with the mosque
ii
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
and mausoleum of Qalaun, on the other side of
the road.
The principal door, surmounted by a handsome
minaret, formed the entrance of this corridor, and
the two are the least damaged part of the struc-
ture ; under the minaret, a portion remains of
a rich wooden ceiling in octagonal caissons, not
unlike the remains still to be found in the mosque
of En Nasser on the citadel and in the ruined
palace of Beshtak, in this very neighbourhood.
Absolutely nothing remains of the south ma-
drassa, save the lower part of the outer wall,
against which houses and shops have amassed
themselves, and now form part of the Shoe Bazaar.
Of the north college there remains the large
waggon vault of the west liwdn, still used for
worship, although uncared for, with that strange
mixture of piety and indifference which is charac-
teristic of Cairo Moslems. A very inadequate
ablution fountain has been cleared for use in the
centre of a yard almost blocked by debris and
refuse of all sorts, and, across this heaped-up space,
ruined portions of the east liwdn can be seen :
the springing of the great arch and three mihrdbs
(prayer-niches) now devoid of any ornament.
Outside, the fa9ade of the madrassa is still visible
12
COLLEGE OF SALEH NEGM ED DIN AYUB. ORNAMENT OF NORTH-WEST
FACADE.
COLLEGE OF ES SALEH NEGM ED DlN AYffB
and very interesting to students on account of
the link which it forms in the history of architec-
ture between Fatimite monuments such as the
charming little mosque of El Aqmar and the
great buildings of the fourteenth century. Some
beautiful decorative motifs still adorn that part
of the facade which touches the porch ; the other
extremity, where it joins the Sultan's mausoleum,
built some ten years later, is hidden by a very
graceful Turkish monument, the sebil kuttdb,
erected by Khosrow Pasha, who also superin-
tended the building of the pretty little Turkish
mosque on the Citadel, usually called Sidi Sariya.
Though there is so little architecture left of the
once grandiose college mosque of Saleh Negm ed
Din, the history of its founder and of his cele-
brated spouse, Queen Shagarat ed Durr, is one
of the most interesting in the mediaeval chronicles
of Egypt. A son of the great El Kamel (and per-
haps a grandson of Saladin, for El Kamel had
married Saladin's only daughter, Munissa, though
I do not know whether she was Es Saleh 's mother),
so well known in European history by his wars
and negotiations with the Crusaders, Saleh 's
youth was entirely overshadowed by the struggle
between Moslems and Christians ; at the age
13
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
of fifteen, he was handed over to the Franks by
his father as a hostage, in exchange for the
Pope's legate, to guarantee the execution of the
treaty according to which Damietta was evacuated
by the Crusaders. El Kamel's death left him in
possession of some parts of Mesopotamia, whilst
his elder brother, El 'Adel II, was master of
Egypt, and the Emir Yunis, who assumed the
royal title of "El Guad " became prince of
Syria. Negm ed Dm immediately formed the
intention of supplanting his brother, and, as a
preliminary manoeuvre began by persuading
Yunis to exchange his Syrian principality for
Es Saleh's Mesopotamian inheritance, the object
of the latter being to find himself sufficiently
near to entertain some intrigues in Egypt. In
this he succeeded so fully that, when El 'Adel
marched against him in 1237, it was to find him-
self surrounded with traitors who arrested and
deposed him, and then called upon Saleh to come
and take possession of the throne. Whatever
promises the new Sultan may have made to the
treacherous Emirs, he certainly did not keep
them, for, no sooner was he firmly established on
the throne than he had every one of them arrested
and deprived of his rank and power.
COLLEGE OF ES SALEH NEGM ED DlN AYtfB
He created on this occasion an entirely new
corps of Mamelukes or white slaves, strong,
handsome young men from the territory of
Kipchak, and gave this new bodyguard the
name of halqa or " belt " ; he did not lodge
them near his predecessor's palace on the
Citadel, but built for them a castle or barracks
on the island of Roda ; hence the name of
Baharites (from the river) given to these Mame-
lukes.
The Emir Yiinis, who seems to have been
innocent of any treachery towards either of the
Ayubite princes, was deprived by Saleh of the
Mesopotamian provinces which he had been
persuaded to accept, and forbidden access to
Egypt. The unhappy man sought refuge with
the Franks at Acca ; the latter, after charging
him with a heavy price for their protection, sold
him to Ismail, Prince of Damascus, who put him
to death.
Further negotiations ensued between the Cru-
saders and the Prince of Damascus, and a coalition
was formed between them and other members
of Negm ed Din's family which would probably
have overcome the latter if he had not called in
to his aid a nomad horde from Inner Asia, the
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
Kharizmians, who turned the balance in his
favour. With their assistance he conquered
Ghazza, Jerusalem, which had been handed over
to the Franks by their Syrian allies, and all the
fortified places on the seashore ; he sent many
prisoners to Cairo and a collection of Christian
heads with which to decorate the gates of the
city. This victory, though great, was not decisive,
and three years later, in 1247, Saleh was at
Damascus at the head of his troops, when he
was recalled to Cairo by the news that the French,
under St. Louis, had undertaken the ninth
Crusade and landed in Egypt. The Sultan, very
ill at the time, was unable to ride ; he had to be
carried all the way from Damascus to Cairo in a
litter. He seems to have been suffering from
tuberculosis and from a malignant ulcer on one
leg, and he bore the wearying pain which this
must have caused with admirable fortitude. A
weaker man would have remained in his capital
and sent another commander to lead an army
against the invaders, but he had himself carried
to a camp on the Ashmun canal, from which he
organised the defence. A renowned tribe of
Bedawin, the Beni Kananeh, were chosen to
garrison Damietta, and an advanced guard, under
16
?
COLLEGE OF SALEH NEGM ED DIN AYUB. MINARET, SOUTH-EAST SIDE.
COLLEGE OF ES SALEH NEGM ED DlN AY&B
the Emir Fakhr ed Din, waited on the shore.
This advanced guard must have presented a very
fine appearance, for the French chronicler Join-
ville, whose account of the ninth Crusade makes
such fascinating reading, declares that " we found
the Soldan's whole army on the shore ; they were
very fine people to look at, for the Soldan wore a
golden armour on which the sun shone resplen-
dently."
Joinville evidently took the Emir Fakhr ed
Din for the Sultan, who was lying ill in his tent
near the Ashmun Canal ; the Mameluke historian,
Gamal ed Din Abul Mohassen, writes that " ex-
treme insubordination prevailed in the army on
account of the king's illness and nobody could
control the soldiers." Both Joinville and Abul
Mohassen agree that the Saracens offered little
or no resistance and turned tail after a very few
moments. Fakhr ed Din led his army back in
the night to the Sultan's camp, making no attempt
to defend Damietta, in fact passing the town
without stopping ; the Beni Kenaneh, seeing
themselves abandoned, were seized with panic
and fled, followed by the inhabitants of Damietta,
who had only too much cause to remember a
former invasion of the town by the Crusaders,
c 17
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
St. Louis and his army entered the town without
striking a blow, taking possession of all that Saleh
had gathered there to prepare the town for a
protracted siege.
It was a terrible disappointment for the dying
Sultan, and he hastened to visit it on the white-
livered garrison, after having salved his con-
science by obtaining from the Sheykhs, who were
his advisers in religious law, a unanimous opinion
that a soldier who deserted his post deserved to
lose his life. Every one of the Beni Kenaneh
chiefs was hanged, and Maqrizy even relates that
one of them, who had with him a beloved son,
was not allowed to die first but forced to witness
the boy's execution.
Negm ed Din did not live more than a few
months after that, but succumbed to the illness
which had caused him so much suffering. Shortly
before his death he desired to see every man who
considered that he had some grievance against
him and gave orders that the wrongs of each be
redressed. He died at the age of forty, in Novem-
ber, 1247, under the walls of El Mansura, where
he had encamped after the Damietta disaster.
This city had been built by his father, El Kamel,
and he himself had endowed it with a mosque of
which nothing now remains.
18
TOMB OF SALEH NEGM ED DIN AYUB. GENERAL VIEW (IN 1918).
CHAPTER III
THE TOMB OF SULTAN ES SALEH NEGM
ED DlN AYUB
THE death of Sultan Negm ed Din left
his army, and, in fact, the whole of
Egypt, in the greatest danger, and it is
probable that St. Louis and his Crusaders would
have conquered the country with little difficulty
if they had realised their opportunity and pushed
their advantage farther instead of lingering
foolishly and only reaching El Mansura two whole
months after their victory at Damietta.
Though the Franks did not know it, Saleh's
turbulent Mamelukes were without a leader ; he
had named no successor, and his natural heir,
his son Turin Shah, was at that time in the far
distant town of Hisn Kayfa, on the River Tigris ;
his second son, Khalil, was only a baby. How-
ever, the Emirs themselves were as ignorant as
the enemy of the true state of things. Although
Es Saleh had left no son on the spot to rule over
them, he had left a widow, Princess Shagarat 1 ed
1 See A. de Merionec, Chagaratt-Ouddour, in the Bulletin
de rinstitut Egyptien, 1888.
19
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
Durr (tree, or spray of pearls) , and she, by her
amazing intelligence and strength of will, saved
the situation. Assisted by the Emir Fakhr ed Din,
who commanded the army, the eunuch Gamal ed
Din Mohsen, and a slave called Suheyl, she
decided to keep the Sultan's death a secret until
the arrival of Turan Shah, to whom she had
hastened to send a messenger. It was no new
thing for her to wield sovereign authority ; her
husband, who had the greatest confidence in her
judgment, referred to her in everything, and she
had been left in Cairo as Regent during most of
his campaigns.
It is not the least attractive point in the charac-
ter of this extraordinary woman that she was
always perfectly content with the actual power she
possessed, and seemed to have no desire for the
appearance of it. Originally a slave of Turcoman
origin, like Saleh's halqa or body-guard of Mame-
lukes, her singular beauty and intelligence had
induced the Sultan to marry her, and she had
given him one son, little Khalil. She had followed
her husband on this campaign, probably on
account of his severe illness, and it is obvious
that she had been holding the reins of authority
for some time before his death.
20
THE TOMB OF ES SALEH NEGM ED DlN AY&B
According to Maqrizy, largely quoted by the
modern European historians who have yielded to
the desire to repeat this romantic tale, Shagarat
ed Durr had the body of the Sultan secretly
washed, probably embalmed, and placed in a
coffin, and she herself, with her little boy and a
few trusty retainers, sailed up the Nile with it in
a small boat and laid it in a vault of the Castle
of Roda. It remained there until the year 1250,
when she transferred it to the mausoleum, which
she built for him next to his madrassa in the Suq
el Nahassin.
In the meanwhile, she concealed his death very
successfully ; she called an assembly of the princi-
pal Emirs, and announced to them that the Sultan
was very seriously ill and wished to delegate his
authority to his son on his return, with the
assistance of the Emir Fakhr ed Din as Atabek,
i.e. Generalissimo and Viceroy. The Emirs
willingly swore an oath of fealty, as did the
Governor of Cairo and all persons in authority ;
decrees were promulgated as emanating from the
sick Sultan and bearing his signature, a clever
forgery by Suheyl, the slave, who also signed all
the current correspondence dictated by the
princess herself. Food was carefully prepared
21
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
for the royal patient, and taken to his tent ;
people who wished to see him were asked to
postpone their visit for a few days, when he would
no doubt be better able to receive them. Not
content with managing the ordinary affairs of the
State, Shagarat ed Durr seems even to have
directed the military operations, and it was under
her guidance that the Emir Fakhr ed Din called
up reinforcements and the fleet from Cairo,
so that when the Franks reached the north-east
bank of the Ashmun Canal, a large Moslem force
was waiting for them on the other side.
For a few days the two armies, separated
by the narrow waterway, limited themselves to
skirmishes, a few prisoners being made every
day. But, on the Qth February, 1249, a Bedawy
traitor revealed a ford to the Crusaders who
crossed the canal so rapidly that the Moslems,
taken unawares, were unable to oppose them.
If the Franks had kept together and made the
attack in force, the battle would have been
theirs, and Egypt with it ; but Count Robert of
Artois, St. Louis' younger brother, who com-
manded the second column, refused to keep his
place or to wait for the rest and dashed on heed-
lessly right through the Egyptian camp. The
22
THE TOMB OF ES SALEH NEGM ED DlN AYfiB
Moslems were surprised in their own tents.
Fakhr ed Din, who was enjoying a bath at the
time, hastened to mount his horse, but was
killed in the battle, and many of the Egyptian
foot-soldiers disbanded and fled. Saleh's highly
trained halqa of mamelukes, however, rallied
after the first shock, and, led by the Emir Beybars
el Bundoqdary, who later became Sultan, charged
at full gallop on the attacking Franks and broke
their columns ; a furious battle ensued, in which
fifteen hundred Crusaders lost their lives and
which only ceased when the night came.
Everything went badly for the French after
that : their army was practically surrounded by
enemies, and misfortune followed upon mis-
fortune. The place reeked with dead bodies ;
St. Louis had hired a hundred natives to clear
them out, and the work lasted a whole week ;
the labourers threw the bodies of Moslems into
the Nile, and buried Christian corpses in one
huge pit.
Presently an epidemic fell upon the army,
already ravaged by scurvy caused by eating
corpse-fed fish during Lent.
Joinville, always picturesque in his descrip-
tions, tells us how, being himself ill in bed, his
23
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
chaplain was celebrating a private Mass for him
when the poor priest was seized with an attack
of the malady and looked as if about to faint. The
seneschal rose from his bed and went to support
him, and thus he finished his Mass, " but he never
chanted again, for he died."
In the Moslem camp, circumstances had
changed owing to the arrival of Turan Shah, who
was met by several emirs, his father's death now
being officially announced . His stepmother grace-
fully handed to him the authority that she had
wielded with so much success, and the Mame-
lukes acknowledged him without any difficulty.
He seems, however, to have been selfish and
violent, and after a very few days, he became
hated of the Emirs, who regretted the rule of
their master's capable and ingratiating widow.
Turan Shah was, nevertheless, an efficient general,
and, after further operations, the French were
completely defeated and the King made prisoner,
as well as his principal knights.
A house still exists at Mansura which is said
by legend to have been the prison of the saintly
monarch. Turan Shah afterwards brought his
prisoners with him to Faraskur, on the Nile, and
negotiations began, in the course of which the
24
THE TOMB OF ES SALEH NEGM ED DlN
amount of St. Louis' ransom was fixed. But
Turan Shah's violence and debaucheries had
finally disgusted the Mamelukes, and he sealed
his own fate by his insolence to his stepmother,
whom he accused of having squandered the
treasury of the State. Shagarat ed Durr, rightly
indignant, complained to the Emirs, who immedi-
ately decided to slaughter him.
His murder was attended by horrible circum-
stances, and the chroniclers gloat over the grue-
some details of the wretched young man's death.
Beybars el Bundoqdary, the gallant Emir who
had led the victorious charge of the Mamelukes
at El Mansura, dealt him the first blow as he was
swimming in the Nile, where he had tried to escape
from his enemies.
The devout King of France, a prisoner in a
wooden tower overhanging the river, witnessed
the whole tragedy, and must have felt thoroughly
nauseated when one of the murderers, the Emir
Fares Aqtay, burst into the room where he was
sitting and offered him the bleeding heart of the
victim. It has been said that the Mamelukes,
rather than choose a Sultan from among them-
selves, invited St. Louis to occupy the empty
throne and that he refused it, but this seems
25
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
a very unlikely story, and as Marcel, who
repeats it, does not quote his authority, I have
no means of investigating the matter.
The course that they adopted was nearly as
astonishing ; they decided to enthrone a woman,
an almost unparalled episode in Moslem history, 1
and Shagarat ed Durr, who had ruled them so
cleverly and wisely in fact, was asked to assume
the royal authority also in name. They were
even so desirous to please her that they chose as
atabek, or viceroy, one of themselves, the Emir
Aybek Ezz ed Din, who was known to be her
lover. Marcel goes so far as to state that she
loved him before the death of Es Saleh. We do
1 A Moslem Princess, of Tartar origin, Balqish Jehan
Raziya, reigned in Delhi in the same century (1236-1239).
A daughter of the conqueror Shams ed Din, she was chosen
as his heir by her father, who pleaded her courage, intelligence,
and literary attainments to justify his choice. One of her
brothers, Firuz Shah, happened to be in Delhi when Shams
ed Din died, and seized upon the throne, but was soon
deposed by the emirs, who were disgusted by his cowardly
conduct, and, remembering her father's wish, proclaimed
Raziya as Sultana. She used to don male attire and to ride
in person at the head of her troops. In 1239 sne was van "
quished and assassinated by another brother, Moezz ed
Din Bahrain Shah. (See E. Blochet : Histoire des Sultans
Mamelouks, de Moufazzalibn AbilFazdil, Patrologia Orientalis,
Vol. XII.)
26
TOMB OF SAI.EH NEGM ED DIN AYUB. REMAINS OF PORCH.
THE TOMB OF ES SALEH NEGM ED DlN AYUB
not know whether her little son, Khalil, was still
living at the time ; no mention is made of him
afterwards, and he probably died in his infancy ;
but it is to be supposed that that was only after
the Queen had struck some coins (one of them is
still at the British Museum), on which she styles
herself Mother of Khalil, the Victorious King,
an epithet given to sovereigns in their lifetime
only. Although the Mamelukes made much of
their new " Sultan, " and her name was men-
tioned at the Friday prayers in all the mosques,
Shagarat ed Durr seems to have taken her exalted
position very calmly and to have applied her-
self diligently to her duties. First of all, she
hastened to complete the negotiations with the
Crusaders, by which a ransom was paid for
the King of France, Damietta handed over to the
Moslems, and the remaining prisoners set free.
She also pushed forward the building of the
mausoleum of her late husband, which monument
forms the subject of this chapter.
It stands at the north end of Es Saleh's college,
and Maqrizy relates that the hall reserved for
the Sheykh of the Malakites was pulled down
in order to make sufficient room for it. Much
more of it remains than of the adjoining college,
27
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
and it is a very interesting and attractive little
monument.
The upper part of the porch is gone, and the
vestibule has been rebuilt, but the funeral
chamber still shows some notable features and
the dome is intact ; there even remains a good
deal of the original pierced plaster windows, with
a few fragments of glass. The mihrdb (prayer-
niche) is unfortunately denuded of its decoration,
but it is still flanked by two columns of which the
remarkable marble always excites curiosity. It is
a breccia, or compound of a variety of minerals,
granite, green slate, verde antico marbles, welded
together by a natural process, with a beautiful
polished surface. Two other columns, exactly
like these, frame the wonderful stucco mihrdb of
Mohammed en Nasser's madrassa on the opposite
side of the street, built fifty years later.
A well-known geological expert tells me that
this is the kind of marble that is found in the
quarries of Wady el Hamamat, in Upper Egypt,
and their similarity leads me to think that they
must have a common origin. Perhaps they all
four came from the great Fatimite palace on the
site of which Es Saleh's college was built ; the
Fatimites, not having so many Mediterranean
28
THE TOMB OF ES SALEH NEGM ED DlN AYtfB
communications as did their successors, who
imported marble columns and other materials
from Syria and from the Greek islands, probably
made more use of Egyptian products ; the name
of Emerald Palace, given to one of their royal
dwellings now entirely disappeared would sug-
gest that the emerald mines were made to con-
tribute to its embellishment, and Wady el
Hamamat is on the way to those mines.
The Sultan's cenotaph is cased in beautiful
carved wood in Ayubite style, each small panel
bearing a charming motif in strong relief, and the
encircling inscription standing boldly out against
an arabesque background.
29
CHAPTER IV
THE TOMB OF QUEEN SHAGARAT
ED DURR
THOUGH the widow of Sultan Saleh
Negm ed Din Ayub seems in no wise
to have had her beautiful head turned
by her elevation to the throne after the murder
of her brutal stepson, Turan Shah, she neverthe-
less took steps to justify and consolidate her
position. She assumed on official documents,
inscriptions and coins, the name of Umm
Khalil, to which she was entitled, having borne a
son to the late Sultan, followed by the adjectives
Salehiya, an allusion to her having belonged to
Saleh, and Mostassemiya, the latter intended as
a delicate flattery to the Abbasside khalife at
Baghdad, Mostassem b'lllah.
It was important that she should conciliate
him ; for, according to custom, the rulers of
Egypt and other Moslem countries had to
receive the sanction of Islam's spiritual head
before their rule was considered as being
30
THE TOMB OF QUEEN SHAGARAT ED DURR
legitimate, and one of the first acts of the Emirs,
when they placed their queen upon the Sultan's
throne, was to send dispatches to the Khalife,
asking for his blessing. Mostassem b'lllah,
however, indignantly refused to countenance
this feminist innovation, and replied to the
Emirs' letter in the following scathing terms :
:< Since no man among you is worthy of being
Sultan I will come in person and bring you one.
Know you not that the prophet may he be
exalted has said : * Woe unto nations governed
by woman ? '
On receipt of this epistle, Shagarat ed Durr,
much too wise to manifest any rebellious feeling,
abdicated in favour of the Regent, Aybek, who
was proclaimed in great pomp, under the title
of El Malek el Moezz. Her partisans among
the Emirs, however, caused him to marry her
solemnly, and the business of the State continued
as before, for Shagarat ed Durr's new husband
was quite content to leave the reins of administra-
tion in her hands while he enjoyed the honours
and prerogatives of a reigning Sultan. His
kingship, however, was not accepted so unanim-
ously by the Emirs as had been that of his con-
sort, and the Salehy mamelukes (i.e. those who
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
had belonged to Sultan Saleh) compelled him
to share the throne with a child of eight, named
Mussa Muzaffar ed Din, a great-grandson of
El Kamel, whom they brought from the Yemen
for that purpose and who was crowned under
the name of El Malek el Ashraf . As time went
on, however, the position of El Moezz became
stronger ; he rid himself by assassination of his
most powerful rival, the Emir Fares ed Din
Aqtay; his own personal bravery and capable
generalship, displayed in Syrian wars, earned
him the devotion of a considerable party of
Mamelukes, and, finding the royal descent of
his young partner no longer necessary to support
his own rule, he deposed the poor little boy and
shut him up in a prison, where he died.
He neglected, however, to cultivate the good-
will of the clever woman whom he had married,
and to whom he owed his present exalted position.
Shagarat ed Durr, so philosophically indifferent
to the visible apparel of power which she had
twice gracefully surrendered, first to her un-
worthy stepson, Turan Shah, and then into
Aybek's own hands, seems to have been a prey
to fierce jealousy where her wifely prerogatives
were concerned ; whether from a sensitive regret
32
TOMB OF SHAGARAT ED DURR. MIHRAB.
THE TOMB OF QUEEN SHAGARAT ED DURR
of her waning beauty or whether from a fear of
losing influence, it is impossible to say. She had
already caused Aybek to divorce the mother of
his only son, Aly, a boy of fifteen, and generally
opposed the idea of political alliances by marriages
with foreign princesses. Aybek by this time was
tired of her domination over him and was think-
ing of having her assassinated, having moreover
been told by a Court astrologer that he would
die by the hand of a woman. Maqrizy's account
of the way in which she discovered that her
husband was intriguing against her is very
picturesque. According to him, Aybek, who was
away at Umm el Barid, sent to the Citadel a group
of Baharite mamelukes, whom he had arrested
and who were to be imprisoned there.
As these men were standing waiting under the
closed balcony where the Queen often sat, one of
them, named Idekin, who had held a charge at
Court, and was acquainted with her habits,
guessed that she was there ; he bowed his head
(his hands were probably tied) and said in the
Turkish language, which was her mother tongue
as well as his own : " I am the Mameluke
Idekin, the bashmakdar ; by Allah, Princess,
we are quite ignorant of the cause of our arrest.
D 33
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
Still, when El Moezz sent to ask for the hand
of the Princess of Mausul, we expressed our
disapproval on your account. For we owe
everything to your kindness and that of your late
husband. El Moezz, vexed with our reproaches,
has conceived hatred against us and treated us
as you perceive. "
Shagarat ed Durr signed to him, with her
handkerchief, that she had heard his words,
and later, when they were all together in the prison,
Idekin said to his companions : " El Moezz
has imprisoned us, but we have prepared his
death."
From Shagarat ed Burr's action after this
episode, we may conclude that this was the first
news she had of her husband's intention to marry
the princess of Mausul, for her jealous fury
caused this hitherto prudent and diplomatic
woman to commit herself irreparably. She wrote
to one of Aybek's Syrian enemies, El Malek en
Nasser Yussef : " I intend, after putting El
Moezz to death, to marry you and place you in
possession of the throne of Egypt."
En Nasser thought this was some deeply laid
trap and made no answer, but informed Aybek's
intended father-in-law, Prince Lulu, of Mausul,
34
THE TOMB OF QUEEN SHAGARAT ED DURR
who warned him to beware of Shagarat ed Durr,
as she was intriguing with El Malek en Nasser.
A violent quarrel ensued between husband and
wife, followed by Aybek's departure from the
palace at the Citadel for the pleasure-house or
belvedere of El Luq, which had been erected
near the polo ground or midan, and where he
often stayed. After a few days, however, he
received a messenger from the Queen bearing
oaths of love and submission, and he allowed
himself to be persuaded.
He left the polo ground of Luq late in the
afternoon, apparently having been playing, and,
reaching the Citadel towards nightfall, repaired
at once to the bath. As he entered the bath-hall he
was seized by five assassins whom his wife had
placed there to await him. She evidently was
hiding near by, for when the unfortunate man
called her loudly to his assistance, she appeared,
and, her anger melting, ordered the murderers to
desist ; it was too late, however, and one of them,
called Mohsen, said to her : " If we spare him
now, he will spare neither you nor us."
Faced with the possible consequences of her
crime, Shagarat ed Durr seems to have tried to
avert them. She sent one of Aybek's fingers,
35
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
with the ring still on it, to the Great Emir, Ezz
ed Din el Haleby, with a message offering him
the throne, but, as Maqrizy writes, " he did not
dare to take so bold a step." She ordered it
to be published that the Sultan had died suddenly
during the night, and some professional weeping
women were brought into the palace, but El
Moezz's own Mamelukes refused to believe this
story, seized some slave women, and extracted
the truth from them by means of torture. There-
upon they arrested the Queen and would have
slain her but for the interference of the Salehy
Mamelukes, her former companions, who, how-
ever, could not prevent her being imprisoned in
the Red Tower. Seeing herself thus fallen into
the hands of her enemies, she destroyed all she
could of her pearls and other jewels, by pounding
them in a mortar.
The Moezzy Mamelukes placed Prince 'Aly on
the throne, and his mother, whom Shagarat ed
Durr had caused Aybek to divorce and who was
living in retirement, came back to the palace
in great pomp. The young Sultan handed her
former rival to her to do what she liked with.
After striking the deposed Queen and insulting
her, she had her stripped by her women and
36
THE TOMB OF QUEEN SHAGARAT ED DURR
beaten to death with wooden clogs such as are
still worn in women's baths.
The dead body was flung over the walls of the
citadel a prey to pariah dogs ; as Lane-Poole
remarks, the end of this woman, who had
saved Egypt from the Franks, was like that of
Jezebel. 1
After a few days her remains were picked up
in a basket and buried in a small mausoleum
which she had built for herself during her short
undivided reign (1250), near the shrine of Sitta
Nefissa.
Though this curious little chapel was neglected
for centuries, it is now being carefully cleared,
and the common mosque which had been built
against it is being pulled down to be replaced by
a more artistic monument in appropriate style.
The work of clearing has brought to light some
very interesting and unusual ornamental devices
on the south and east fa$ades of the chapel ; the
dome has a very archaic outline, only to be met
with in one or two specimens of Ayubite domes in
Cairo. Inside there is some beautiful plaster work
with Kufic inscriptions from the Quran over the
mihrdb and three shallower niches, one at least
1 History of Egypt in the Middle Ages. Methuen, 1914.
37
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
of which must have been a door originally. The
mihrdb is lined in its upper part with rich
Byzantine mosaic in gold and dark colours, and
constitutes the oldest example in Cairo of that kind
of decoration ; the others, i.e. in the mosques of
Qalaun, Ibn Tulun, Taibars and Aqbogha, all
dating from the fourteenth century.
The remains of the murdered Queen seem to
have been placed by her enemies, not in the central
vault prepared by herself, but under one of the
niches ; the centre was afterwards used for one
of the Abbasside khalifes.
Some damage seems also to have been done
purposely to the little edifice, inscriptions erased,
etc., evidently in hatred of the defunct.
After a long lapse of years traces still remain in
Egypt of the short but efficient rule of this peer-
less " Queen of the Moslems." The mahmdl
or palanquin which accompanies the sacred
kiswa to Mecca every year is said to be a prototype
of one in which she accomplished the holy pil-
grimage. In the chronicles of the Citadel, we
find references to a kind of nightly military
concert, called the nauba of the Princess, which
the learned French archaeologist, Casanova,
understands to have been instituted by the mother
38
THE TOMB OF QUEEN SHAGARAT ED DURR
of Khalil, a special musical instrument being
used which bore the name of khaliliya.
A certain seat in the Hall of Columns was
called the Princess' mastaba, and apparently it
was there that she sat, behind a curtain, and held
levees in connection with the affairs of the king-
dom, even after she had surrendered the throne
to her second husband and contented herself
with reigning under his name instead of her own.
39
CHAPTER V
THE TOMB OF THE UMMAYAD SHEYKH
ZEIN ED DlN YOSSEF
SAVE for a charming legend, very little but
his name and the date of his death
(A.H. 697 A.D. 1297) is known about the
founder of this beautiful tomb, but his genealogy
is given by his funeral inscription, and that is
sufficiently suggestive to enable one's imagination
to form a fancy picture of this holy man.
A Sufy, as M. van Berchem can tell us from the
titles and qualifications of himself and his ancestors,
he belonged to the Prophet's own tribe of the
Quraishy and, moreover, was a descendant of the
Ummayad khalifes, but it is evident that, far
from trying to gather any advantage from his
royal pedigree, he lived a quiet and saintly life,
thinking more of the joys of Paradise than of
political preferment in this world.
This family, descended from Ummaya, a notable
Quraishy and a relative of the Prophet, produced
40
VMM AY AD SHEYKH ZEIN ED DlN YtiSSEF
no fewer than fourteen khalifes, between the time
when the ambitious Mu'awiya was elected in the
place of the murdered 'Aly (A.D. 66 1) and the
massacre of almost the entire family by Es
Saffa (the butcher), first Abbasside khalife, in
750. One of these khalifes, El Walid, is looked
upon as the builder of the great mosque at
Damascus, built upon the site of a ruined Byzan-
tine church of which some material, such as
columns, etc., were again used for the Moslem
edifice.
When the descendants of the Prophet's uncle,
1 Abbas, overthrew the Ummayad khalife Marwan,
they attempted to exterminate the whole family
and very nearly succeeded. According to histo-
rians, only two escaped. One, to a remote
corner of Arabia, where his descendants were
acknowledged as khalifes until the sixteenth
century ; our holy Sheykh may have descended
from him. The other, named 'Abd er Rahman,
had a brilliant destiny.
" Most of his relations were exterminated by
the ruthless 'Abbassides ; they were hunted
down in all parts of the world and slain without
mercy. 'Abd er Rahman fled like the rest, but
with better fortune, for he reached the banks
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
of the Euphrates in safety. One day, as he sat
in his tent watching his little boy playing outside,
the child ran to him in a fright, and, going out to
discover the cause, 'Abd er Rahman saw the
village in confusion and the black standards of
the 'Abbassides on the horizon. Hastily seizing
up his child, the young prince rushed out of the
village and reached the river. Here the enemy
almost came up with them and called out that
they need have no fear, for no injury would be
done to them. A young brother who had
accompanied him, and who was exhausted with
swimming, turned back, and his head was
immediately severed from his body ; but 'Abd
er Rahman held on until he reached the other
side, bearing his child and followed by his servant
Bedr. Once more on firm earth they journeyed
night and day until they reached Africa, where
the rest of his family joined them and the sole
survivor of the Ummayad princes had leisure
to think of his future. . . . His first thoughts
turned to Africa, for he clearly perceived that the
success of the 'Abbassides had left him no
chance in the East ! But after five years of
wandering about the Barbary coast, he realised
that the . . . Berbers in the West would not
42
\
mm
H
TOMB OF ZEIN ED DIN YUSSEF. INTERIOR OF DOME.
VMM AY AD SHEYKH ZEIN ED DlN YffSSEF
willingly surrender their newly-won independence
for the empty glory of being ruled by an
Ummayad. His glance was therefore directed
towards Andalusia ... he sailed for Spain in
September, 755. The coming of the survivor of
the Ummayads was like a page of romance,
like the arrival of the Young Pretender in Scotland
in 1745. The news spread like a conflagration
through the land ; the old adherents of the royal
family hurried to pay him homage ; the
descendants of the Ummayah freedmen put
themselves under his orders. . . . Before the year
was out he was master of all the Mohammedan
part of Spain and the dynasty of the Ummayads
of Cordova, destined to endure for nearly three
centuries, was established." 1
Very different from that of his illustrious
kinsman was the life of Sheykh Zein ed Dm ;
the inscriptions in his mausoleum, which reveal
his royal genealogy, end by an invocation supposed
by Professor van Berchem to be a quotation from
the holy man's dying words : " My sins are too
numerous to be counted, but Thy forgiveness,
O my Lord, is immense. What are my sins
1 Stanley Lane-Poole, The Moors in Spain. " Story of the
Nations " Series : London, Fisher Unwin.
43
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
and why should I fear them since Thou art my
God? . . ."
M. Patricolo, the head architect of the
Comite de Conservation des Monuments Arabes,
who has kindly allowed me to see notes, not
yet published, on this interesting mausoleum,
quotes the following legend from Es Suyuty's
'Kawkab es Sayyara :
" One day that Zein ed Din was travelling in a
far country, he found himself much incommoded
by thirst and, on looking round, perceived a
water bottle hanging in a window and fanned
by the breeze. He therefore sat himself down to
watch until some one should come out of the house
whom he could ask for water, and, being tired
out, he slept and had a dream. He saw a beautiful
houri coming towards him. Seized with admira-
tion for her perfect form, he asked who was her
possessor and she answered : ' I belong to him
who has enough self-control to abstain from
taking water from the water-bottle. 5 He assured
her that the desire to do so had gone from him,
and the houri thereupon struck the bottle with
her sleeve and broke it. The good Sheykh,
awakened by the shock, thanked God who had
vouchsafed to quench his thirst by the sight of
44
A
TOMB OF ZEIN ED Dix YUSSEF. SOUTH LIWAN
VMM AY AD SHEYKH ZEIN ED DlN YttSSEF
a lovely houri instead of a cupful of cold water.
After that dream Zein ed Dm was given the name
of ' the Houri's Friend.' "
The author speaks with much respect of the
fervent piety of the Sheykh, who seems to have
travelled a great deal, and to have been, in fact,
a sort of missionary. His grandfather, the
Sheykh Uday a Sufy like himself appears also
to have had a great renown for sanctity, and
his name, slightly disfigured, has been given by
popular tradition to the tomb, long known as
" Sidi Ulay." The mausoleum is to be found on
the right hand or west side of the tramline lead-
ing from the Midan er Rumeyla to the Mosque
of the Imam Shafey ; it stands on a much lower
level than the road, and an iron paling has been
put up to protect it. A remarkable feature, which
always excites curiosity, is that a monumental
porch, on a line with the entrance of the
mausoleum, stands alone, like a triumphal arch,
disconnected from any building. M. Patricolo
explains that this porch is all that remains of a
zawiya, or chapel, which was built against the
mausoleum forty years later on the poorest
foundations ; he adds that the survival of the
porch was nothing less than miraculous.
45
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
Zein ed Din's own madrassa consists of a sahn
with four liwdns ; the domed tomb-chamber
adjoins it in the south-west corner. Around
the four ttwdns runs one of the most beautiful
stucco inscriptions in Cairo ; it has been carefully
cleansed from the accumulated dust of centuries
by a miraculously skilful old Egyptian artisan
whose work in other monuments I have often
had occasion to admire. The same charming
lace work is to be seen in the mihrdb, and it is not
surprising to hear that photographs of the detail
are being used as models by the lace workers
of H.H. Sultan Fouad's School of Feminine
Industries in Alexandria.
On entering the exquisite dome, the unpre-
pared visitor is shocked to see traces of destruction
by fire, and the feelings of regret and indignation
become all the greater on hearing the explanation.
Before the year 1907, this monument was not
included in the list of those which are in the hands
of the Ministry of Waqfs, but was supposed to
be kept up by a private endowment, and the
man who was in charge of it, an ignorant brute,
found the supervision of the Comite extremely
irksome. Thinking to rid himself of it once and
for all, he deliberately set fire to the building ! . . .
TOMB OF ZEIN ED DIN YOssEF. DOME.
VMM AY AD SHEYKH ZEIN ED DlN Y&SSEF
The chapel formerly contained a specimen of
the rare and incomparable Ayubite wood-carving,
a tabut or wooden cenotaph in the style of that
of the Imam Shafey. A description of it, with
a copy of the inscription, had fortunately been
recorded by Yussef Effendi Ahmed, the learned
epigraphist ot the Comite, but that only increases
our sense of loss.
A fine wooden frieze, perhaps painted, was
also completely burnt, and much damage was
done to the coloured glass windows, stucco
decorations and marble mosaics. Fortunately
the dome itself is intact, and the accompanying
photograph gives some idea of its graceful
proportions and the superb inscription which
encircles its base. The interior of it is much
more highly decorated than is usual. 1
A large rose in the centre forms the starting
point of rays in relief, separated from each other
by deep angular grooves. These ribs may be an
imitation in brickwork of earlier or contempor-
aneous wooden domes, such as that of the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre as completed by Modestus
1 A picture of it, wrongly labelled " Dome of the chapel of
the Imam Shafey," is to be found in M. Saladin's Architecture
(Manuel de FArt Musulman), p. 101.
47
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
and afterwards destroyed by Chosroes that
of the Qubbet es Sakhra at Jerusalem (built by
Abd el Malek in 691) the original dome of the
Imam Shafey's mausoleum, afterwards renewed
by Qaitbay, and later, that ot the Mosque of
Mohammed en Nasser at the Citadel (735 A.D.) and
that of the hanafiya in Sultan Hassan's mosque.
The whole surface, the frames of the twenty
windows, the three courses of stalactites, etc., all
is decorated in the most finished and intricate
geometrical designs from which curves are
practically absent, intermixed with Coranic
inscriptions ; the general effect is at the same
time subdued and wonderfully rich.
While deploring the barbarous and idiotic
damage done, we cannot be too thankful that so
much remains of this little work of art, and much
credit is due to the Comite's workmen for the
admirable way in which the repairs have been
carried out.
CHAPTER VI
THE KHANQA OF SULTAN BEYBARS EL
GASHENKIR
THE old chroniclers to whom we owe
all we know of the history of the Middle
Ages in Egypt abound in striking human
details which make their descriptions delightfully
real. It is true that many of them are only known
to a restricted circle of readers on account of the
difficulties of the Arabic language, but Maqrizy,
perhaps the most graphic of them all, has been
in part translated and much pleasure can be
derived from reading him under the guise of
Quatremere's Histoire des Sultans Mamelouks.
His account of the court of Cairo during the second
reign of Mohammed en Nasser (1298-1308)
contains many horrible stories of murder and
torture, but it is only when we turn to equally
blood-curdling tales of what was going on in
France under Philippe le Bel and in England
under Edward I, that we realise the necessity
of making allowances for mediaeval darkness,
E 49
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
so modern does Saracen civilisation appear to
us as pictured by its historians.
Among the many lifelike figures taking part
in the dramatic events of that time which are
presented to us by Maqrizy, and afterwards by
Ibn lyas, who takes up the thread of the narrative,
the two great emirs, Selar the Viceroy and
Beybars el Gashenkir (i.e. Taster, afterwards
Ostadar or Master of the Royal Household), hold
the first rank.
We are even given a description of their
personal appearance : Selar, of Tartar origin,
dark-skinned, with black piercing eyes, a tuft of
beard on his chin, short and somewhat heavily
built ; Beybars, a Circassian, fair-skinned and
blue-eyed, tall and graceful, " a worthy Sultan "
says the Arab writer, after enumerating many
cruelties and acts of treachery. They were both
promoted to high places on the very day when
the young Mohammed returned from exile.
He was only fourteen at the time (A.D. 1298),
and it is perhaps not surprising that he should
have been kept from exercising any real authority.
Beybars and Selar directed everything, not only
at first, when the young Sultan was little more
than a child, but later, after he had victoriously
SO
THE KHANQA OF BEY BARS EL GASHENKIR
commanded troops in Syrian wars. They kept
him in such subjection and had so little considera-
tion for his personal comfort that he could not
even procure delicacies for his own table, a fact
which seems to have rankled bitterly in his mind.
Both men appear to have been cruel and
unscrupulous, and we find on many pages stories
of tortured slaves and wholesale executions.
Beybars showed " very laudable zeal and firm
resolution " in carrying out edicts against Jews
and Christians (1301), according to which they
were to wear coloured turbans and, in the baths,
a bell hanging round their necks ; to abstain from
riding horses, carrying arms, walking in the centre
of the road, possessing Moslem slaves, marrying
Moslem women, etc. etc.
These edicts were enforced throughout Egypt
and Syria, save in the towns of Karak and Shubak,
where the great majority of the population were
Christians. Beybars also abolished a Christian
feast, called the Martyr's feast, which used to
take place at Shubak every year, and, though his
decision caused much sorrow among the Chris-
tians, it is impossible not to applaud it, if we are
to believe Maqrizy's description of the orgies
to which it gave occasion. It is evident that
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
disreputable scenes were but too frequent at that
time, for, speaking of the rejoicings which took
place in Cairo to celebrate the Sultan's return
after a victorious campaign against the Mongols,
Maqrizy avers that : " scenes of profligacy and
drunkenness were carried to a point past de-
scription."
These unholy revels were interrupted very
dramatically by one of the most terrible earth-
quakes on record (1302). To quote Lane-Poole's
(abridged) rendering :
" The oscillation, the cracking of walls, the fall
of houses and mosques, caused a frantic panic.
Women rushed about unveiled and gave birth to
premature infants. Men saw their houses
crumbling to the ground and everything they
possessed lost ; or, flying in amazement, left their
homes to be rifled by thieves. The Nile threw
its boats a bow-shot on the land. The population
encamped outside the city, trembling for the fall
of the heavens and the end of the world. The
earthquake was felt all through Egypt, and
injured Alexandria as well as Qus ; Damascus
and Akka experienced the shock. Cairo, after
the earthquake, looked like a city that had been
wrecked by a conquering army."
52
("""I'J- *v^
KHANQA OF BEYBARS EL GASHENKIR. MINARET.
THE KHANQA OF BEY BARS EL GASHENKIR
The great mosques suffered severe damage,
and the principal Emirs vied with each other in
restoring them at their own expense. Beybars
undertook the restoration of the Fatimite mosque
of El Hakim ; we are told that he visited it
immediately after the earthquake and showed
much concern at the destruction which had
taken place.
His restorations have been recorded else-
where ; l it is interesting to note the similarity
of the new summits which he placed on El
Hakim's minarets and that of his own khanqa
or convent, in the Gamaliya Street. A few
minarets of this design still remain in Cairo and
they all date from the same period, one of the
most interesting being that of the tomb mosque
of the Emirs Selar and Sangar el Gawly, de-
scribed in the next chapter. Beybar's khanqa
was the second monastery built in Cairo and is
now the oldest, the first founded by Saladin
having disappeared. This one was saved from
utter ruin by the care of the Comite de Conserva-
tion des Monuments de VArt Arabe, about twenty-
five years ago. It was intended for Sufy monks,
and their cells took up a good deal of the space.
1 See Rambles in Cairo, p. 19.
53
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
Beybars endowed the foundation with an unalien-
able waqf in favour of the Sufy community, of
whom no fewer than four hundred religious
were to be accommodated.
His own tomb was under an adjoining cupola ;
it is, in my opinion, the most impressively
beautiful of the domed mausoleums in Cairo.
Perhaps the way in which the light falls from above
on the solitary marble cenotaph and makes it
stand out amid the darkness of the funeral
chamber is really the explanation of this almost
supernatural beauty ; I sincerely hope that no
side windows will be cleared in order to bring in
more light. But, apart from any theatrical
lighting effects, the chapel presents some very
fine features ; the marble facings and mosaics
are unusually bold in design and the dome rests
on a very perfect system of stalactites framing
pierced plaster windows of a remarkably delicate
tracery.
The porch of the monument is unlike almost
any other in Cairo, though similar torus mould-
ings framing a rounded arch are to be found in
many Crusaders' buildings in Syria. The in-
scription offers a special historical interest which
is explained by the end of the Gashenkir's story.
54
THE KHANQA OF BEY BARS EL GASHENKIR
In the year 1307, the young Sultan, sick to
death of the fetters in which he was kept,
announced his intention of accompanying the
holy pilgrimage with his family. He imparted
this design to Beybars and Selar, who approved
the idea, as also did Beybars' numerous partisans,
for reasons of their own. All the Emirs hastened
to offer magnificent presents for the journey,
and letters were sent to the various halting places
on the way, ordering all preparations to be made.
As the Prince, escorted by his suite, left Cairo,
he was accompanied by weeping crowds who
followed him as far as Birket el Hag. Beybars and
Selar did likewise, but their pride and arrogance
had reached such a point that they bade farewell
to the Sultan without dismounting from their
horses, after which they turned back towards
Cairo.
The Sultan with his suite arrived as far as
Karak, where the Governor, the Emir Akush,
gave him the best reception he could. En
Nasser settled down comfortably in this very
strongly fortified town and then announced to the
Emirs who had accompanied him that he intended
to remain quietly there and give up his throne,
" which," he added, " Beybars el Gashenkir has
55
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
already usurped. " He then exchanged somewhat
bitter letters with Beybars and Selar, who, though
violently jealous of each other, were united in
wishing him to confirm his abdication. Selar,
recognising that Beybars' adherents were more
numerous than his own, proposed his rival as
Sultan, and, after some show of reluctance, the
latter accepted, Selar himself remaining Viceroy
as before. . . .
But the Gashenkir was not destined to remain
long on the throne ; he was hated by the people,
who clung to the son of Qalaun, hoping he might
return to them. Some popular poet having
composed a comic and slightly disrespectful
topical song with a play on the new Sultan's name,
he flew into a violent rage and had about three
hundred persons arrested for singing this song,
and their tongues cut out. He also arrested and
imprisoned several Emirs on the charge of writing
conspiring letters to the late Sultan at Karak.
Meanwhile, Mohammed began to regret having
left his people to such a man and to intrigue to
recover his throne. Soon a general revolt arose
in Syria, and Beybars found he must defend his
position. Aided by Selar, who remained faithful
to him, he attempted to organise resistance,
56
THE KHANQA OF BEY BARS EL GASHENKIR
but defections met him at every step, and the
Emirs advised him to write to En Nasser and to
solicit from him a post in some distant province.
Beybars, " boiling with rage," followed this
counsel and abdicated, sending two Emirs with a
letter to Mohammed en Nasser. He took with
him most of the royal treasure and three squadrons
of cavalry, and prepared to leave the town.
So much was he hated of the people that they
assembled at the city gate when they heard of his
impending departure and tried to stone him ;
he only saved his life by flinging money among
them.
He fled towards Assuan. As he reached the
neighbourhood of Akhmim he was rejoined by
two Emirs, sent by the Sultan, who succeeded
by wiles in detaching from him the mamelukes
who had accompanied him, and also in taking
from him the treasure and the fine horses which
he had appropriated. They then ordered him
to retire to Karak, promising to send his children
to join him, and, although he obeyed all these
orders, another envoy from En Nasser arrested
him near Suez and brought him back by night to
Cairo, where he was imprisoned in the Citadel.
Mohammed himself went into his prison when the
57
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
morning came, and, after reproaching him
bitterly, had him strangled in his presence.
When he was dead, the Sultan sent to inform his
wife and ordered that he be buried in the cemetery.
This was done, but, a short time later, some of
the Emirs obtained from the Sultan permission
to bury him in his own khanqa.
In his bitter hatred against the usurper, En
Nasser ordered his royal title " El Muzaffar " to
be hammered out of the inscription which runs
along the beautiful and unique porch of the
edifice.
After a few years (1326), the monastery, which
had been closed at the fall of its founder, was
re-opened by En Nasser and a great many Sufy
monks w r ere harboured therein.
KHANQA OF BEYBARS EL GASHENKIR. PORCH.
CHAPTER VII
THE TOMBS OF SANGAR EL GAWLY
AND SELAR
IN the midst of the turmoil of foreign wars,
private quarrels and wholesale executions
which make up the history of Mohammed
En Nasser's second reign, the Mosque el Gawliya
stands as a record of a long and faithful human
friendship. The twin domes of the two Emirs
buried there and its unusual position on the side
of a hill make its outlines quite different from
any other, and it is full of special interest for the
architect as well as the historian.
The Emir Selar, whose remains occupy the
tomb lying under the higher of the two domes,
was the man whose history is closely interwoven
with that of Beybars el Gashenkir and who has
therefore been the subject of various references
in the preceding chapter.
Historians frequently draw a parallel between
the two men and, even apart from the pleasant
picture offered by his friendship with Sangar el
59
SOME CAIRO MOSOUES
Gawly, Selar's seems to have been, on the whole,
a less unsympathetic personality than his rival's.
He was of Tartar blood and had amassed, by un-
certain and somewhat doubtful means, an enor-
mous private fortune, which enabled him to
satisfy his tastes for barbaric splendour and which
makes the manner of his death all the more
pathetic.
Such was his taste for dress that he originated
fashions in clothes, and Ibn lyas, writing in the
sixteenth century, averred that a certain kind of
vest was still called silariya after him. He also
seems to have had a vast hareem, for the same
chronicler states that he was rich in children
beyond counting ; one of his daughters, being
given in marriage to a nephew of the Sultan, a
grandson of Qalaun, received a dowry of one
hundred and sixty thousand gold dinars.
Though so wealthy, he was no miser, but gave
much away in charities and was very much pre-
ferred to Beybars by the people ; En Nasser
himself hated them both equally, neither of them
having apparently troubled to try to obtain his
goodwill. Selar, however, was jealous enough
of outside influence over the young Sultan for,
having ascertained that the Wazir Esh Sheykhy
60
TOMBS OF SELAR AND SANGAR EL GAWLY. NORTH FACADE.
THE TOMBS OF SANGAR EL GAWLY AND SELAR
an upstart whose promotion had taken place
against Selar's wishes had been advising En
Nasser to shake off his tutelage, he had him
cruelly put to death. He and his devoted friend,
Sangar el Gawly, procured a clever Copt who
trumped up a charge of embezzlement against
the unhappy wazir. Beybars, approached by
some of his own relations, who were friends of
Esh Sheykhy, interceded in his favour, but
seeing that Selar was bent on his destruction,
went away on the pilgrimage for the second time.
Immediately after his departure, Selar had the
wretched wazir flogged until he died under the
whip.
Other actions recorded by Maqrizy show
Selar in a more favourable light. On the occasion
of his pilgrimage to Mecca, it is said that he
performed many honourable acts in the province
of the Hedjaz. For instance, he had a list drawn
up of the pilgrims who were in retirement at
Mecca and paid off all the debts they had incurred ;
he distributed among the poor the whole cargo
of several ships which he had equipped and sent
to Jeddah, and he treated the poor of Medina
with equal munificence. At the same time, some
nomad Arabs having robbed pilgrims of their
61
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
camels, he pursued the robbers, made fifty of
them prisoners and had their hands and feet
cut off.
Among other pious works, Selar's share of the
rebuilding of mosques after the great earthquake
was an important one ; he restored both the
ancient mosque of 'Amr ibn el Aas at Fostat and
the holy university of El Azhar.
According to Maqrizy, it was in the year 1307
that dissensions began to occur between Beybars
and Selar, and it was the latter 's affection for
Sangar el Gawly which was the initial cause, for,
Sangar having had a violent dispute with a protege
of Beybars, each of the two great Emirs sided
with his own partisan and personal animosity
soon arose between them. Selar seems to have
done his best to smooth matters over ; he per-
suaded El Gawly to wait upon Beybars and to
endeavour to appease him with soft words, but
when this failed, and Beybars only received Sangar
with insults and vituperation, Selar was deeply
offended. He and Beybars had been in the habit
of riding out together every day, but this was
now discontinued and each went out separately,
accompanied by his adherents. " Every one,"
says Maqrizy, " was expecting trouble."
62
if
THE TOMBS OF SANGAR EL GAWLY AND SELAR
However, Selar made one more effort to con-
ciliate Beybars, reminding him that he and
Sangar el Gawly were such close friends that each
had chosen the other to care for his children
should he predecease him. Beybars would hear
nothing and declared that if Sangar could not
repay the moneys that he was falsely accused
of appropriating, he would have him die the same
death as Esh Sheykhy. Sangar proceeded to sell
his possessions horses, clothes, furniture, etc.,
near the Qulla gate, and many Emirs, professing
to be grieved at his misfortune and really desirous
of obtaining the powerful Selar's favour, bought
these at prices far above their real value, intending
to return them to the owner when the latter would
be reinstated in Beybars' good graces.
Things remained tense for some time ; Beybars
and Selar did not speak to each other and most
of the Mameluke Emirs wore hidden weapons
under their clothing in case of a sudden outbreak
of hostilities.
At last Beybars relented, up to a certain point.
El Gawly was released, but exiled to Syria, where
he was given a military post. A great recon-
ciliation took place after his departure between
Beybars and Selar, and they were brought
63
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
nearer to each other by the discovery of a plot
prepared by the Sultan to get rid of them both.
It was Selar, however, who brought it to nought
by exercising wonderful diplomacy and adroit-
ness, to that extent that peace was apparently
restored between the Sultan and the two Emirs,
another man being sacrificed and disowned by
both parties.
When Mohammed took refuge in Karak by a
trick and sent letters of abdication to Cairo.
Selar, seeing that Beybars' Mameluke partisans
were in greater number than his own, made a
virtue of necessity and urged the election of his
rival to the Sultanate. And it must be added that,
when the tide turned, and it seemed that the son
of Qalaun would be restored to the throne,
Selar remained faithful to Beybars, until the
latter fled towards Assuan, as related in the last
chapter. Then Selar's prudence overruled his
loyalty to one who had ever been a rival rather
than a friend, and he took measures intended to
secure Mohammed's good- will. He sealed up
the Treasure House, liberated the Emirs whom
Beybars had imprisoned in the Citadel, and
wrote a letter of submission to En Nasser, whose
name he ordered to be mentioned in the Friday
TOMBS OF SELAR AND SANGAR EL GAWLY. CARVED STONE SCREEN.
THE TOMBS OF SANGAR EL GAWLY AND SELAR
services, as was the custom for the reigning
Sultan. As Mohammed en Nasser approached
Cairo, he was met by Selar, accompanied by a
large party of Emirs ; all kissed the earth before
him.
When the son of Qalaun's third accession to
the throne was celebrated, Selar took the oppor-
tunity to ask to be relieved of the Viceroyalty
which he had held for eleven years and to be
allowed to retire to Shubak. Mohammed, with
the duplicity which characterised him and which
he had perhaps acquired through years of re-
pression and restraint, accorded this with a
gracious show of reluctance and presented his late
Viceroy with travelling robes, whereupon Selar
departed.
Shortly afterwards, however, some intrigues
were discovered in which a brother of Selar
was concerned, and the Sultan sent a letter to
Selar, inviting him to come to Cairo and prove
his innocence. As uie prudent Emir preferred to
remain where he was, Mohammed then sent his
friend, Sangar el Gawly, whom he appears to
have persuaded that it would be to Selar's
advantage to return. His coming reassured the
latter, who consented to accompany him, but,
F 65
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
when the two with their suite came to the gates
of Cairo, Selar was arrested and thrown into
the Citadel prison. In his disappointment and
indignation, he refused with angry words some
food that the Sultan had sent him, and the latter
therefore ordered that nothing else should be
given him. After some days had elapsed, the
wretched man tried to eat his boots in his prison
and, this being reported to the Sultan, Mohammed
relented and sent him some food with a message of
forgiveness. But it was too late ; the prisoner
rose to his feet on hearing the good news, only
to fall down, dead.
I do not know what Sangar's feelings may
have been when he found that he had been made
an instrument in betraying Selar : at any rate, he
had him suitably buried in his own madrassa,
where the two friends had prepared their tombs
next to each other. If, as seems likely, Sangar
supervised the completion of the edifice, it is
rather touching to notice that his friend's mau-
soleum is far more elaborately adorned than his
own and, in fact, forms the most important
portion of the whole building. The Gawliya, as
it was called by Arab writers, is one of the most
interesting mosques in Cairo and quite unique
66
THE TOMBS OF SANGAR EL GAWLY AND SELAR
in style ; it is built against the rock on which Ibn
Tulun's army quarters once stood, and the archi-
tect has very cleverly taken advantage of the
unusual site. The north faade, with its twin
domes and characteristic minaret, is extremely
striking. Modern steps lead to the entrance
vestibule, a vaulted chamber partly cut out of the
rock and suggestive rather of a mediaeval fortress
than a mosque. To reach the prayer-hall and
the tombs another staircase has to be ascended,
a most picturesque flight of stone steps under a
massive vault, only lighted above by an opening
in the roof.
At the top of the stairs, a square landing has
three doors, that at the bottom of the minaret,
one opening into the sanctuary, and the third
leading into the corridor, again solidly vaulted,
at the end of which is a small dome above an
obscure Sheykh's tomb. On the left, or south
side, this corridor is lighted by large bays, screened
with the most wonderful carved stone-work in
Cairo ; delicate open-work arabesques about
an inch thick, in a different design for each bay.
These alone would justify a visit to this little-
known monument.
On the right of the passage, one door opens
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
into the tomb-chamber of Selar, and another
into that of Sangar ; there are also doors of
communication between the two. They are
very like each other in the general plan and
harmony of their proportions, but the decoration
of that of Selar is much more elaborate. Large
windows look over the street below, but it is
better to keep them closed so as to enjoy the sub-
dued and melancholy light thrown by the charm-
ing glass windows of the dome ; these qamariydt
retain the original glass, with an attractive
design of a chalice in moonlight blue, and tone
very harmoniously with the general soft and
rather cold effect.
There is nothing interesting in the Sanctuary,
which has had to be partly rebuilt, save its very
uncommon plan. The covered sahn shows
remains of a fine inscription and some odd little
square windows in carved stone- work, similar, on
a much smaller scale, to that of the bays in the
corridor.
In the yard, full of rubbish and debris, which
can be entered through a side door from the
corridor, a magnificent stucco inscription runs
along a wall ; it is Quranic, as are also the
beautiful inscriptions on the drums of the two
68
THE TOMBS OF SANGAR EL GAWLY AND SELAR
domes, sadly damaged, unfortunately, and the
inscriptions on the minaret. The latter, with its
square base and octagonal upper story, is not
unlike that of Qalaun ; it is crowned by a kind
of ribbed bonnet like others of the same period,
approximately, for instance, that of Beybars el
Gashenkir, the restorations to those of El
Hakim, etc. etc.
Sangar lived for many years after burying his
unhappy friend and was for a long time Governor
of Palestine. He built a number of monuments
at Ghazza and Hebron, of which a few remains
still exist.
CHAPTER VIII
THE EPOCH OF SULTAN QAlTBAY
THE name of El-Malek el-Ashraf Abul
Nasr Qaitbay has become identified
with that of a whole epoch to which
Cairo owes a great number of graceful monu-
ments. Built either by the Sultan himself or by
the rich Emirs of his court who wished to imitate
him whilst glorifying themselves, these monu-
ments, of which the mausoleum in the eastern
cemetery is the prototype, 1 are fairly homo-
geneous in style, and that style has accordingly
become known by the name of Qaitbay : their
number and charm certainly bear witness to the
Mameluke Sultan's refined taste and energetic
enterprise.
1 See, for a detailed description of this masterpiece,
" Die Grab-Moschee des Sultans Raid Bey " by Franz
Pasha, in Die Baukunst.
It is also described in most books dealing with Cairo
architecture, such as Lane-Poole's Cairo (Mediaeval Towns) ;
Gayet's Art Arabe ; Margoliouth's Cairo, Jerusalem, and
Damascus ; Saladin's Architecture Musulmane, etc. etc.
70
THE EPOCH OF SULTAN QAlTBAY
Gayet, whose imaginative Art Arabe contains
such attractive descriptions, tainted, alas, by so
many inaccuracies, fancies that an approaching
decadence is perceptible in the architecture of the
fifteenth century. He sees in it " the frail languor
and subtle delicacy of that which has received
its death-blow."
After a very detailed account of the chief points
to be observed in the exterior and interior
aspects of a fifteenth century mosque built by a
Circassian or Bordjite mameluke as compared to
one dating from the so-called Baharite dynasty
(thirteenth to fourteenth centuries), Gayet thus
speaks of the minaret and the dome.
" The minaret and the dome were particularly
adapted to personify the spirit of the times and,
on them, the builder's talent became chiefly
concentrated. Already under Qalaun and Bey-
bars, the minaret began to soar in order to follow
the aspirations of the soul : the Bordjites raised
it still higher to enable it to support psychic
hallucinations. . . .
But, accustomed as they were to handle
polygons, they had again to resort to polygony
in order to conquer difficulties. The minarets
SOME CAIRO MOSOUES
of Qalaun and Sultan Hassan had had square
towers of which each story was narrower than
the last, and each story was surrounded by a
corbelled balcony. The Bordjite builders in-
scribed within the square of the first tower a
second octagonal tower, and again, within that,
a round shaft, crowning the whole by a baldaquin-
shaped lantern. And, in order to emphasise
the upward fling, they suppressed the terrace
which separated the first from the second tower.
. . . Thus the minaret becomes more slender
as it soars ... it is adorned with chevrons and
garlands . . . the dome of the lantern is now
a bronze cupola decorated with arabesques
against which metal poles carry lamps which
are lighted on festal evenings. . . . The dome of
the tomb becomes covered with interlacing
arabesques ... it would seem draped in lace
richly wrought. ... In short, the Bordjite
period has merely refined the conceptions left
to it by the preceding period : it has created
nothing new. ... It has had but one object :
extreme grace, and in that we may say that it
has been perfectly successful. "
Very little attention is usually accorded to the
72
THE EPOCH OF SULTAN QAlTBAY
life and reign of the great inspirer of these
architectural masterpieces, and yet the story
of his reign is very interesting, particularly from
the point of view of foreign history.
Those epochs in which the history of the
Sultans of Egypt happens to touch that of
Europe help us to conceive its chronology and to
escape from a tendency to look upon it as a
series of Oriental fairy tales, disconnected from
our own civilisation. And, in effect, Qaitbay
was a contemporary of one of the most critical
convulsions in European history, Sultan Gaqmaq,
who gave him his freedom, having died in 1453,
the year in which Constantinople was taken by
Sultan Mohammed II. This event is unanimously
considered as marking the end of the Middle
Ages, and it certainly presaged for Egypt the
approaching end of the artistic period which
flourished under the rule of her warlike Mameluke
sovereigns.
Moreover, the chronicles of the fifteenth century,
the Italian quattro cento, abound in dramatic
episodes and picturesque characters, and it came
about that the destiny of two of these romantic
figures, Prince Djem and Queen Catherine
Cornaro, crossed that of Sultan Qaitbay. The
73
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
fate of the first mentioned was a tragic one and
Lane-Poole 1 who recounts his sad tale, justly
remarks that it throws a lurid light on the honour
and chivalry of the Christian knights, princes
and popes of the time. But, before bringing
the unhappy prince before my readers, it is
necessary to go back to the history of the Cir-
cassian mameluke, Qaitbay.
He was already fifty-five and grey-headed
when he was placed, protesting, on the throne of
Egypt, but the Arab historians retrace his
previous career. He seems to have been brought
to Egypt in his youth by a slave trader named
Mahmud, who sold him and several others for
fifty gold dinars each, to Sultan El-Malek El-
Ashraf Barsbay. Barsbay's successor, Seyf ed-Din
Gaqmaq, freed him, presented him with horses and
robes of honour, and promoted him to the rank
of Gamddr (master of the wardrobe), afterwards
of Khasky (page), then of First Dawadar escritoire
(bearer). The several short-reigned Sultans who
succeeded Gaqmaq, viz. El Malek el Mansour
Fakhr ed Din Othman, El Malek el Ashraf Abul
Nasr Inal, El Malek el Muayyad Shehab ed
Din Ahmed, El Malek ez Zaher Seif ed Din
1 Turkey, " Story of the Nations " Series, p. 1404.
74
ENDOWMENT HOUSE OF SULTAN QAITBAY.
THE EPOCH OF SULTAN QAITBAY
Khoshqadam, El Malek ez Zaher Abu Said
Timurbugha, continued to load him with favours,
and, the last mentioned having been deposed
after a revolution to which Qaitbay was not
altogether a stranger, the latter was chosen by
the Emirs to take his place.
It must be added that he treated the deposed
Sultan, a scholarly man of his own age who had
been his friend, and had made him Atabek or
Generalissimo, with much honour and con-
sideration, and enabled him to live comfortably
and in perfect freedom at Damietta. Timur-
bugha had only accepted the Sultanate with
much repugnance, and there is no reason to
believe that he regretted his deposition.
After Qaitbay had reigned in peace for six
years, during which he indulged in his passion
for building, his beautiful mausoleum in the
eastern cemetery dating from that time, he
was forced to turn his attention to the wars
which afterwards rilled so many years of his
reign. Mohammed II had fought and defeated
Uzun Hassan, the Turcoman ruler of Persia,
who was the ally and so-called vassal of Egypt,
and it was obvious that Ibn Othman, as the
Arab chroniclers call the successive Turkish
75
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
Sultans, would look upon Egypt next with
covetous eyes. Qaitbay therefore busied himself
with the protection of his Syrian frontiers,
garrisoning them with his best troops and con-
solidating the fortifications ; his characteristic
cartouche (see PL) is to be found on the ancient
walls of remote Syrian cities, at Birejik, for
instance, where it is seen decorating the walls
of the citadel. The south-east gateway bears
an inscription recording the Sultan's works of
restoration, and the repairs he caused to be made
to the walls are quite visible. Much of this work
of consolidation is also to be seen at Aleppo. 1
Fearing perhaps for his own person in spite of
all these precautions, Qaitbay attempted to
abdicate, invoking his age and desire for rest, but
the Emirs refused to allow him to do so and
insisted on his remaining their liege lord. He
consented against his will, at the very moment
when Mohammed II was preparing to invade
Syria, an intention frustrated by his own death
in A.H. 885. It is then that Prince Djem first
appears upon the scene. Known as Zizim by
European historians, his name was really Djem-
1 See van Berchem, Inschrifte aus Syrien, in Beitrdge zur
Assyriologie, VII, i.
7 6
THE EPOCH OF SULTAN QAlTBAY
shid, and he was a son of Mohammed II, from
whom, according to Lane-Poole, he had inherited
a vigorous and ambitious disposition and also
marked intellectual gifts. His brother Bayazid
(Bajazet) having been first to hear of their
father's death, hastened to Constantinople and,
bribing the janissaries, seized the throne for
himself. War ensued between the two brothers,
and Qaitbay, reassured, left the frontiers of
Syria and returned to Cairo. It would seem that
he had had previous relations with Prince Djem,
for the latter, having been defeated by his brother
in the battle of Yeni Sheher, fled to Egypt with
his wife and children and begged for refuge.
Sultan Qaitbay not only received him but furn-
ished him with the means of a fresh attack upon
his brother, this time in Qaramania. Beaten
once more and reduced to flight, Prince Djem
placed himself under the protection of the
Knights of Rhodes, of whom the Grand Master
was at that time Cardinal Pierre d'Aubusson.
From this moment, the unhappy Turkish
Prince became the object and the victim of
infamous intrigues and shameful calculations.
Lane-Poole has made the history of Djem's
thirteen years' captivity the subject of one of the
77
SOME CAIRO MOSOUES
most interesting chapters of his Turkey, 1 and
points out the disgraceful part played in the
affair by the sovereigns and princes of his time.
Even his former protector, Qaitbay, ultimately
abandoned him to his fate in his efforts to induce
Bayazid to forget the part which he had taken
in the conflict between the two brothers.
As soon as he had Djem in his power, d'Aubus-
son made him sign a secret treaty promising
great privileges for the Knights of St. John
should he reach the Ottoman throne ; at the
same time, he opened negotiations with Bayazid.
The Sultan desired to become reconciled with
his brother, but the latter refused all offers, and
Bayazid then agreed to pay forty-five thousand
ducats annually to the Order as long as they
could detain Djem. The ill-fated prisoner,
who, not having yet understood that the
possession of his person had become a valuable
asset, still believed himself to be the guest of
his gaolers, was taken to France. During his
sojourn in one of the commanderies where he
was detained by the Knights of St. John, he
loved a beautiful girl who returned his affections.
The thought of the mother of his children, whom
1 " Story of the Nations " Series.
7 8
THE EPOCH OF SULTAN QAlTBAY
he had left in Egypt, was probably no burden on
the Moslem's conscience. The Princess, on the
other hand, was making strenuous efforts to
ransom her husband, and the disloyal Grand-
Master was infamous enough to accept twenty
thousand ducats from her without releasing the
captive.
For thirteen long years he remained imprisoned
in Europe ; during that time the hope was held
out to him that he might obtain his father's
throne through the assistance of Mathias Corvinus,
the Hungarian King who had proved himself the
bulwark of Europe against the Ottomans. Fer-
dinand of Naples, Charles VIII of France, and
Pope Innocent VIII were each to have a part in
this. The Pontiff, however, having succeeded
in obtaining the custody of the Ottoman Prince,
demanded from Bayazid the annual sum of
forty thousand ducats to make this secure.
His successor, the notorious Alexander Borgia,
evidently thought this arrangement unsatisfactory
and offered the Sultan to rid him altogether from
an inconvenient Pretender for the total sum of
three hundred thousand ducats.
At that moment, Charles VIII, having invaded
Italy, dictated to Alexander VI the terms of a
79
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
treaty which included, among other things,
the surrender of the princely hostage into the
French King's hands. The treacherous Borgia
executed this clause but earned at the same time
the premium promised by the Sultan. Djem
was handed over to the French in a dying
condition, having previously been poisoned, by
means, it is said, of a barber's razor.
Turkish literature is the richer by several
poems composed by our melancholy hero. Lane-
Poole quotes one or two from E. J. N. Gibb's
Ottoman Poems. Truly his chequered life, its
medley of ambition, love, captivity and death,
provided him with sufficient subjects on which
to exercise the poetic talent with which Nature
had gifted him.
During the years which followed the final
defeat of Prince Djem, war raged continually
between Bayazid and Qaitbay, the advantage
resting sometimes with one, sometimes with the
other. In the written accounts of these battles
we frequently come across the names of Mameluke
Emirs who not only distinguished themselves
as soldiers or diplomats, but also, following their
sovereign's example, enriched the city of Cairo
with exquisite monuments.
80
MOSQUE OF EZBEK EL YUSSEFY. SEBIL FACADE.
THE EPOCH OF SULTAN QAlTBAY
The most important of them all, the Emir
Ezbek, General-in-Chief of Qaitbay, was several
times victorious over the Turks and accorded
triumphal honours when he returned bringing
distinguished prisoners. On one of those
occasions he built a splendid mosque, giving to a
whole quarter of Cairo a name which it still
bears, though the mosque itself has disappeared.
That neighbourhood was entirely transformed
by the Emir Ezbek, who dug in it a lake, easily
filled by the waters of the Nile and quickly
surrounded by sumptuous dwellings ; his mosque,
the Ezbekiya, stood, approximately, where the
Opera House now is ; it was demolished in 1869
by Ismail Pasha. According to contemporaries,
it must have been very fine. No traces of it are
left, save some bronze bands with inscriptions,
probably from the doors, and preserved in the
Arab Museum. It is also very probable that the
lovely house, built by M. de St. Maurice, which
is now used for the French Agency, was enriched
by some of the materials of Ezbek J s mosque.
It seems that this Emir's tastes for building
coincided with those of the Sultan, for his name
is mentioned as Director of Works, notably in
the description of the construction of the arches
G 81
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
of the Giza Embankment. He must not be con-
fused with his namesake, the Emir Ezbek el
Yussefy, who, in 1495, built in the Sharia Es
Saliba, a graceful mosque of which the plan is
cleverly adapted to a very irregular piece of
ground. The minaret contains a double staircase.
The interior is quite characteristic of what is
known as the Qaitbay style ; unfortunately the
carved surfaces have been disfigured by red
paint, probably in Turkish times.
The mosque known under the name of Abu
Horiba 1 was also built by one of Qaitbay's
generals, the Emir Qichmas el Ishaky. Of
General Yashbak el Mahdy, one of the most
important in this reign, we have the dome
called el Fadawiya, near el Abbassiya, in the old
Husseiniya quarter. It is an isolated mausoleum,
consisting of a cube from which the dome rises
without any transition ; the result of this is that
the exterior lacks grace, in spite of the harmonious
outline of the cupola itself. Inside, the incom-
parable decoration which lines the interior of
the dome and the pendentives sufficiently
accounts, even in the absence of the marble
mosaic panelling which has now disappeared
1 See Rambles in Cairo, p. 75.
82
DOME EL FADAWIYA. DETAIL OF ORNAMENT.
THE EPOCH OF SULTAN QAlTBAY
from the walls and from the mihrdb for the great
reputation of beauty which made a visit to this
monument a favourable excursion for the last
mameluke Sultans and the Turkish Pashas who
followed. The Emir Yashbak died before it was
completed and his Sovereign in person saw to the
completion of the edifice (1481). Yashbak was
the possessor of the now ruined palace which
stands near the mosque of Sultan Hassan, and
traces can still be seen of a large heraldic cartouche
containing the dawaddr's writing-box, considered
as a hieroglyphic sign until Abdel Hamid
Bey Mustapha's convincing demonstration. 1 A
cousin of General Yashbak, the Emir Ganem el
Bahlawan, built in the Serugiya a handsome
mosque (1478), which was restored and described
by Herz Pasha ; the Comite de Conservation des
Monuments Arabes has published this description,
with good photographic illustrations.
The Emir Mamay, whom Qaitbay sent as an
ambassador to Sultan Bayazid, and who, though
an envoy, was imprisoned by the latter, was the
owner of the fine palace known as the Beit el
Qady, not far from the Khan Khalily. Only the
maq'ad of that palace remains, a loggia facing
1 See Burlington Magazine, December 1919.
83
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
north, framed in slender arcades. This archi-
tectural feature is to be found in Qaitbay's own
houses and was afterwards repeated in the
palaces and private houses of the Turkish period,
probably because of its suitability to the climate
of Egypt and the north breeze, almost constant
in the summer, which brings a delicious coolness
in the evening.
Next to the Sultan's mausoleum, the most
beautiful monument of the Qaitbay period is,
to my mind, the small madrassa of the learned
Abu Bekr ibn Muzhir el Ansary, chief of the
Chancellery. Evidently a rich man, this Emir
also built a madrassa at Jerusalem. It is, unfortu-
nately, in a very dilapidated condition, owing
to neglect and to the damp climate of Palestine,
but a great deal still remains. The interior
offers several commodious rooms and some cells
for students, and, but for some details of the
facade, it presents very little similarity with
Abu Bekr's Cairo building. It is even doubtful
whether he ever saw it, for he is said to have been
seized by his last illness, A.H. 893, when on his
way to Jerusalem to visit his madrassa, which had
been completed in 885 (A.D. 1497). The Cairo
madrassa was finished a year earlier. The
THE EPOCH OF SULTAN OAlTBAY
exterior is plain, save for the two fine doors and
minaret, but the extreme skill of the architect
becomes apparent when the difficulty of the site
is observed. It is an angle of an ancient street
bearing the name of El Hakim's Wazir, Birgwan,
and the orientation was not favourable. However,
these very difficulties have been turned to good
account ; for instance, a most effective view of the
interior is obtained from the vestibule owing to the
diagonal position of a window opening into it.
The street is very narrow at present, but
many houses are being cleared away and a better
general view will soon be afforded. The interior
resembles no other, save that of the mosque of
Aslam el Bahay (745-1344), in this respect, that
the arches of two of the liwdns are supported by
columns. In this case, however, they are the two
principal liwdns, whilst, in the fourteenth century
mosque, the sanctuary is framed by a broad single
arch and the triple arch on two columns is re-
served for the two side liwdns.
The interior decoration is delicate and costly,
and has been repaired with great taste by Herz
Pasha (1883-97), the original designs being
preserved even in the case of the pierced plaster
windows of which the glass had practically dis-
85
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
appeared. As nothing remained of the lantern
(or perhaps dome), which covered the sahn, Herz
replaced it by a flat covering which does not
interfere with the general exterior outline of the
monument ; the closed interior gains in religious
feeling from having no open court. The marble
pavement, also very badly damaged, was repaired
on its own lines. The woodwork, among the
very best in Cairo, suffered comparatively less,
much of it being intact. The splendid bronze
door had been despoiled of its inscriptions by
thieves, who had also taken away a large portion
of the metal polygonal surface decoration, but
enough remained to reconstruct the design, and
this has been very skilfully done.
The graceful arabesques over the windows
on each side of the mihrdb are executed in a
peculiar method, a black or red composition being
inserted in grooves hollowed out of white marble.
This technique appears in Mameluke work for
the first time in the fifteenth century, but was
used by the ancient Egyptians of the eighteenth
dynasty. It is very effectively employed in
mosques of the late Circassian and early Turkish
period, such as those of El Ghury, Khairbek,
Sidi Sariya, etc. etc.
86
MADRASSA OF SULTAN QAITBAY AT QALA'AT EL KABSH. DETAIL OF INTERIOR.
THE EPOCH OF SULTAN QAlTBAY
Another beautiful madrassa, this one due to the
Sultan himself (1475), is as difficult of access as
that of Abu Bekr. It is situated on the height
known as Qalaat el Kabsh, and the best way to
reach it is to pass through the mosque of Sangar
el Gawly. The exterior is less harmonious than
that of the mausoleum ; not being a tomb, it is
deprived of the special charm imparted by a dome,
and the minaret is somewhat lacking in height,
perhaps on account of the high and exposed
ground on which the building is situated. Never-
theless that minaret is interesting because of its
rare form ; the lower of the two balconies rests
on a sort of cornice instead of the usual stalactites
and is placed much nearer the base than is the
general custom ; at the same time, the roof of
the mosque being particularly lofty, the relative
proportions of the building and its minaret seem
peculiar and abnormal.
The two doorways face north and south. The
north portal, in trefoil shape, is placed close to
the angle on which the minaret stands ; the upper
lobe of the trefoil is decorated in a very character-
istic manner, with a straight-lined design which
I have noticed on many Qaitbay monuments and
on no others : it was interesting to find it again
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
on some panels of the Sultan's madrassa in
Jerusalem.
The interior of the Qalaat el Kabsh madrassa
has unfortunately been much neglected, in fact
the whole building looks as if threatened by
imminent collapse, and it is surprising to read, in
the Comptes-rendus of the Comite, that large
sums have been spent for its consolidation. No
attempt has been made to restore its former
estate, and it is particularly badly kept by the
attendant in charge. However, it is easy to see
that it must have been strikingly beautiful ;
like the mausoleum, it is built on the " modified "
cruciform plan, a narrow pointed arch forming
each side liwdn. The two principal arches show a
decided return, again like those of the mausoleum,
but they do not look so broad in proportion,
owing to the greater height of the walls.
The archivolts of all four arches consist of
alternate plain red and richly carved white stone
voussoirs ; the same scheme of decoration is used
throughout the interior and is extremely pleasing,
especially in the treatment of the mihrdb.
Remains still exist of fine ceilings, and the
minbar is of marquetry inlaid with ivory and
ebony. The dikka forms an inner balcony in
THE EPOCH OF SULTAN QAlTBAY
the north liwdn, an attractive feature which is
also to be found in Abu Bekr's madrassa.
A drinking trough for horses and cattle stands
near the south entrance of the madrassa ; it is
not in a better state of preservation than that near
the mausoleum, which it greatly resembles. A
third drinking trough, near El Azhar, is in much
better condition ; it is perhaps later in date.
Like the neighbouring wakdla and sebil, it is
adorned with exquisite details.
Two other large waqdlas, or khans, were built
in Cairo by Qaitbay, and a good deal remains
of that which stands in the vicinity of Bab
en Nasr. Qaitbay built several of these khans
in Syria, and some are mentioned in Lanzone's
interesting Viaggio in Palestina e Soria da Kaid
Bai. 1
It was "only in 1490 that peace was concluded
between the Turks and Egypt, and Qaitbay took
advantage of it to secure the continuation of
revenue which he sorely needed to face the
enormous expenses caused by his passion for
1 A XVth century Arab text, edited and published with an
Italian preface and notes, Turin, 1878. A French translation,
by the present writer, will shortly be published, by the
Institut Franfais cT Archtologie Orientale in Cairo.
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
architecture. This useful annual sum, the exact
amount of which is uncertain, came from Cyprus ;
the island, ceded to the Lusignan family by
Richard Coeur de Lion in 1192, had been reduced
to vassalage by Sultan Barsbay in 1426, and paid
a yearly tribute to Egypt.
King John II of Lusignan was succeeded by
his son John III, married to Princess Helena
Paleologue, who had acquired a powerful influence
over her husband though she had borne him
but one daughter, Princess Charlotte. By a
Greek woman from Patras the king also had a
natural son, James, whom his wily stepmother
had forced to become a priest and who was
now Archbishop of Nicosia. Among the young
prelate's friends was an exiled patrician from the
powerful Republic of Venice, Andrea Cornaro,
a member of a ducal house who had settled
in Cyprus, where his family possessed land-
property, and was intriguing to obtain his pardon.
The clever Venetian persuaded the illegitimate
Prince to claim his rights against his step-sister,
married to a foreigner, Prince Louis of Savoy,
and to leave the Church in order to marry and
continue the dynasty. He also spoke to him
of his own niece, beautiful Caterina Cornaro, who,
90
THE EPOCH OF SULTAN QAlTBAY
should she become his Queen, would no doubt
secure an alliance with Venice. He succeeded so
well that James fell in love with Caterina at the
mere sight of her portrait and announced his
claim to the throne of his father. It was obvious
that Cornaro had thus found means of coming
again into favour with his fellow-citizens, for it
was the Venetian Ambassador who protected
James in his flight to Rhodes when his step-
mother attempted to have him assassinated, and
Caterina, his fiancee, was solemnly adopted by
Venice and declared Daughter of the Republic.
The death of John III (1458), immediately after
that of Queen Helena, hurried the course of
events ; James went to Egypt and succeeded in
obtaining assistance from Sultan Khoshqadam
by increasing the annual tribute, and especially by
acquiring the aid of the Ottomans against his
sister and her husband, Louis of Savoy, who had
no allies but the Republic of Genoa and the
Knights of Rhodes. He returned to Cyprus
with a Venetian squadron and married Caterina
Cornaro by proxy in 1469.
His reign lasted but three years ; he died in
1472, perhaps poisoned, leaving his wife pregnant
and under the official protection of Venice ;
9 1
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
when the child, a boy, was born he was given
Venetian sponsors at his baptism. Every action
of the widowed Queen was dictated to her by the
Republic, through the intermediary of her uncle
Andrea. It seems that the Cypriots did not
appreciate this foreign yoke, for a conspiracy
burst out in 1473, Cornaro was assassinated, and
the Queen and baby King imprisoned. They
were released and replaced on the throne by Vene-
tian forces, but the child died in 1475. James
had left some illegitimate children and provided in
his will that they should come next in order of
succession, but Venice had had them all, with his
mother, taken to Padua, where they died. Caterina
continued to reign alone ; no doubt she realised
that her power was solely upheld by the Republic,
impatiently awaiting for her death to seize the
coveted prey. In 1488, the Republic having
ascertained that she was contemplating a second
marriage with a Prince of the House of Naples,
her brother Giorgio was sent to her with orders
to impose abdication upon the Queen ; she
resisted until 1489, then gave way and let herself
be taken to Venice, where she was confined, with
every luxury and a hypocritical show of respect,
in the castle of Asolo, where she died at the age of
92
THE EPOCH OF SULTAN QAITBAY
fifty-six. Cypriot chronicles imply that she was
beautiful, but we have no trustworthy portrait of
Caterina ; M. Andre Maurel, whose Quinze Jours
a Venise led me to search into the sad history of
this noble lady, proves that the two so-called
portraits of her, by Titian and Giorgione, cannot
be authentic since both these painters were but
twelve years old when she returned to Venice
after her unhappy reign.
The Republic, though having thus seized upon
the Lusignan's kingdom, was unable to shake off
the suzerainty of Egypt. In 1490, Sultan Qaitbay
concluded peace with the Turk ; being con-
sequently unhampered in his movements, he
then turned towards Cyprus, and, by threaten-
ing to invade the island, easily obtained the con-
tinuation of the annual tribute. Interesting
letters have been preserved 1 in which Sultan
Qaitbay acknowledges, first, in 1476, Catherine's
royalty, and secondly, in 1490, the domination
of Venice over the island of Cyprus, in each case
accompanied by rich presents, spices, sugar,
pieces of silk, robes of honour, and plates and
bowls of porcelain ; the letter to the widowed
1 Italian translations of these are to be found in Mas
Latrie's Histoire de Chypre, Vol. Ill, p. 405.
93
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
queen is very lordly and condescending in tone,
and graciously accepts her excuses for having
omitted for two years to pay the tribute, owing
to the revolution during which her husband and
her uncle had died.
If the means used by Qaitbay to enforce an
annual subsidy from the Venetian Republic
were fully justified, the same cannot be said
of many cases in which historians detail the
cruelty and injustice of his exactions. He
neglected no opportunity or pretext to seize upon
the heritage of any rich man who happened
to die ; he burdened the fellahin with taxes and
went so far as to torture people in order to obtain
money from them to enable him to gratify his
mania for building. The history of Zein ed
Din Yehia gives an example of his rapacious
cruelty.
An Armenian by birth, he filled for many
years the post of ostaddr or major-domo, and Ibn
lyas relates that he was repeatedly imprisoned or
tortured under accusations of embezzlement of
funds. He had certainly become a very rich man
and, during the reign of Sultan Gaqmaq, his
protector, he built three fine mosques. One of
those mosques (A.D. 1444) is to be found in Bein
94
THE EPOCH OF SULTAN OAlTBAY
el Nehdein and was restored by the Comite. The
repairs were begun in 1884, when very few
monuments had yet received any attention, but
the work was interrupted again and again for
lack of funds. At last, in 1897, the restoration
was finished, at a total cost of two thousand nine
hundred and eleven pounds. The mosque is
small and planned after the later Circassian
style, with that peculiarity that the little school
(kuttdb) is placed, not above a fountain as usual,
but above the tomb, which is therefore without
a dome.
Like the later mosque of Qichmas el Ishaky,
this monument is very effectively situated on a
triangular piece of ground between two diverging
streets, the minaret placed well forward and two
charming mushrabiya balconies lend grace to
the east faade. The panelled pulpit bears on
its door frame the escritoire blason, placed sym-
metrically from left to right and then from right
to left.
Zein ed Din's second mosque, at Bulaq, dates
from the year 1449, and is often called the
Mehkemeh, or Tribunal. It is now being exten-
sively repaired. Like the third monument, by
he same builder, situated in the Habbaniya, it
95
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
presents an open sahn and a colonnade. The
last mentioned building bears no date, but, on
architectural grounds, Captain Creswell 1 places it
later than the two others. The same authority
attributes to Zein ed Din the small ribdt in the
Sharia Bein es Surein, known as the mausoleum
of Sheykh Abu Taleb (No. 141 on plan).
Zein ed Din and Qaitbay had formerly had
violent quarrels and, after the latter had become
Sultan, he was cowardly enough to take advantage
of his position in order to avenge himself cruelly
upon his former enemy. In 1469, he had the
old man (Zein ed Din was then over eighty)
arrested in his house and imprisoned in the
Citadel ; he then sent for him and, after over-
whelming him with insults, had him flogged in
his presence until the victim fainted. The next
and following days the same scene was repeated ;
finally the unfortunate octogenarian died in his
prison. The fact was reported to the Sultan, who
refused to believe it until he had seen the corpse.
He then laid hands on the wealth which had
excited his cupidity.
This ferocious picture goes very badly with
contemporary descriptions of Qaitbay 's piety
1 Brief Chronology, p. 131.
9 6
SEBIL-KUTTAB OF SULTAN QUITBAY.
THE EPOCH OF SULTAN QAITBAY
According to several legends, holy men had had
dreams foretelling his greatness which he, in his
modesty, forbade them to repeat. Ibn lyas,
speaking of his piety, relates a pretty episode :
the Sultan, returning from a ride, accompanied
by several Emirs, met the coffin of a poor, foreign
woman, being carried to the cemetery ; no one
followed the humble bier, the men who carried it
were alone. Alighting from his horse, and order-
ing his Emirs to do likewise, Qaitbay followed
the coffin for some distance, then himself per-
formed, in the street, the prayer for the dead.
But his piety was chiefly manifested by the
large number of pious buildings that he erected.
He built several sebils, or fountains for the poor,
in Cairo, and, in Jerusalem, a very characteristic
one in the sacred precincts of the Dome of the
Rock. 1 The charming little cupola, draped with
carved arabesques, is unlike any of the many
domes in the Holy City, though very familiar
to eyes accustomed to Mameluke architecture
in Cairo. The engaged columns in the western
angles are also very suggestive of the Qaitbay
style, though I do not remember seeing any
exactly like them with their alternate courses
1 See Frontispiece.
H 97
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
of plain and carved stone fitted in zigzag. Qaitbay
restored many mosques, including the most
holy, such as El Azhar, 1 the Mosque of Amr, the
Mausoleum of the Imam Shafey, etc. etc. At
Mecca, he built houses for poor pilgrims and a
madrassa ; he is also said to have built schools
at Ghazza and Damietta, both now disappeared,
whilst the one at Jerusalem preserves a magnificent
porch, and many interesting stone panels carved
in the same designs as those that are to be found in
his Cairo buildings. This proves how much of
this special style is due to the individual taste of
the sovereign who must have imposed it upon the
craftsmen whom he employed.
In Alexandria, his name has remained attached
to the fort and mosque which he built on what
the most reliable authorities consider to have been
the site of the ancient Pharos.
Among the religious monuments which he
erected in Cairo, Ibn lyas mentions " his beauti-
ful mosque outside Bab el Qarafa," of which
practically nothing remains ; he also speaks of
his mosque at Roda, built on the site of an older
one and of which some parts still date from his
time, and of another, " Sheykh Sultan Shah."
1 See Rambles in Cairo, p. 13.
9 8
THE EPOCH OF SULTAN QAITBAY
The last mentioned, situated in the Sharia Gheit
el Edda, leading to Bab el Khalq, and seldom
visited, has now a modern fa9ade, but the curious
octagonal columns carved with arabesques and
the inner East fa9ade, showing the Sultan's
cartouches, are still to be seen.
Qaitbay died in A.D. 1496 (A.H. 901), at the
age of eighty. The day before his death, the
Mamelukes, seeing he could not recover, forced
the almost unconscious patient to abdicate ;
they were then in the midst of one of the crises
of quarrels and fighting which occurred periodi-
cally within that turbulent corps. Qaitbay 's son
Mohammed, a worthless young man, was en-
throned in his place.
Ibn lyas describes the dead Sultan as being
a tall and powerful man, his face square rather
than oval and highly coloured. It seems sur-
prising that, with such a striking physique, he
should have been able to disguise himself as a
Maghraby (Moor), which he is said to have done,
and to wander in the streets and in the mosque
of El-Azhar in order to listen to conversations
and to hear what was being said of him. It may
be that his incognito was not so complete as it
pleased him to believe.
99
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
He left the kingdom impoverished by con-
tinual wars, a terrible plague (1492), and the
enormous building expenses owing to which
he earned the artistic reputation which has clung
to his name.
100
MOSQUE OF KHAIRBEK. NORTH-WEST FA9ADE.
CHAPTER IX
THE MOSQUE OF KHAIRBEK
NEXT to the Mosque of Aqsunqur, the
tourists' " Blue Mosque," stands the
Mosque of Khairbek, a monument of
which the outer aspect is exceptionally pleasing
to the eye. This is partly due to the fact that the
street facade, instead of presenting a long un-
broken line, is flanked on either side by a bold
projecting wing, consisting of a sebil at the north
end and a mausoleum at the other. The latter
is covered by a beautiful stone dome carved in
delicate lace-like arabesques ; it is a great pity
that the Comite has not yet seen its way to
straighten the iron finial which is leaning over
rather badly ; a small detail like that is sufficient
to spoil the pleasure of gazing at the whole
edifice. The minaret, which, like many others,
has lost its upper part, but which in this case has
been left in its uncrowned beauty, is one of the
finest in Cairo, its proportions being unusually
harmonious and successful in conveying an
101
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
impression of solidity. This effect is the more re-
markable in that the minaret, instead of standing
on a solid base, as is the general rule, is built over
a romantic little vaulted chamber, at the angle
of the mausoleum and the west fagade, in the
Tabbana Street. The entrance portal, a graceful
archway in the style of El-Ghury, does not open
immediately into the sanctuary of the mosque,
but into a yard full of ruins ; on the right, a
flight of stone steps leads into the madmssa.
I have brought several artistic and intelligent
visitors, who have made no special study of
Moslem architecture, to see this mosque, which
is not one of the most celebrated, and each of
them has remarked on the beauty of the interior.
It does not impress me in the same way, but
rather gives me a sensation of uneasy, enigmatical
attraction, due perhaps to the fact that the con-
struction is abnormal and unexpected, a departure
from the usual lines of the fifteenth century
mosques. At the same time it does not follow
the natural process of transition that might have
been expected at a moment when there was a
distinct evolution in architectural style ; the
differences which it presents are so marked as
to seem intentional, a kind of snobbish flattery
102
MOSQUE OF KHAIRBEK. PORCH.
i ' >.?: " : ; \ l<1
s V: ; .
THE MOSOUE OF KHAlRBEK
of the new conquerors. It may be that the
unpleasant personality of the Emir Khairbek,
revealed by the interesting chronicle of Ibn
lyas, reflects upon the mosque which he founded,
and that the judgment of those who know nothing
about him is fairer to the monument ; thus it is
easier to criticise a book impartially if the foibles
or vices of the writer are unknown. Some people
are so sensitive to architecture that certain
buildings seem to them to exhale a perceptible
good or evil psychic influence ; it would be
curious to know what effect the Mosque of
Khairbek has on such.
The group of monuments of which it forms part
was not built at one and the same time, and,
for that reason, lacks the satisfying homogeneity
which generally characterises the rapidly built
Mameluke monuments. The mausoleum is dated
by an inscription (908-1502), and Aly Pasha
Moubarak, who had access to the waqf documents
concerning the religious buildings of Cairo,
gives for the mosque the date of A.H. 927.
The courtyard also contains the ruins of a
large palace which, being connected with the
mausoleum by an arch, is supposed to have
belonged to the same Emir. If this supposition
103
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
is correct, as seems very probable, Captain
Creswell's 1 historical reasons for dating this
palace about A.H. 906 appear to be well founded.
The interior appearance of the mausoleum agrees
very well with the date given by the inscription ;
the style is that of the late fifteenth century
mosques, and many details recall the two mosques
of Sultan El Ghury, in the Ghuriya.
It is brightly lighted and, to my mind, carries
no suggestion of supernatural horrors, but it is said
that, for many years after Khairbek's death, the
place was supposed to be haunted, and the voice
of the dead oppressor of the poor was heard
every night groaning and imploring the pardon
of Allah for his wickedness. The funeral chamber
is entered by a fine doorway in the south-east
corner of the sanctuary ; next to it is a small door
leading into the vaulted chamber which supports
the minaret, and the irregularity of those two
unequal doorways under one arch is one of the
uncomfortable features of the interior of the build-
ing. The whole madrassa, built during the time
when Khairbek represented in Cairo the Turkish
Sultan, is quite different from a Mameluke
1 Brief Chronology of Muhammadan Monuments in Egypt,
p. 151.
104
MOSQUE OF KHAIRBEK. INTERIOR.
THE MOSQUE OF KHAlRBEK
mosque and very singular. The sahn, instead
of presenting an open centre or a flat wooden
roofing surmounted by a lantern, is covered over
by cross-vaults interrupted in the centre by a
small octagonal opening forming a lantern or
skylight. This feature, until that date practically
unknown in Cairo, is frequently to be found in
Palestine and North Syria, carried out in one kind
of stone. In this case the colour effect is much
better than would appear from the photograph,
the stone used being in alternate fawn and reddish
courses, only contrasting just enough to form an
agreeable relief. The decoration is sober and
restrained ; a graceful naskhy inscription in black
letters inlaid in white marble forms a frieze above
a simple facing of marble mosaic. A good dikka
of woodwork fills the vaulted bay which faces the
mihrdb. The orientation of this not being quite
correct, the Sheykhs have here rectified it by
placing in it a small water-colour painting of a
mihrdb.
The worldly fortune which attended the
founder could not have been less merited, and
the record of his life, which is to be extracted
from the chronicles of Ibn lyas, forms a series
of treacherous, cruel, and avaricious dealings.
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
Unfortunately the MSS. from which the Bulaq
edition has been printed, alone available here, is
not complete, the greater part of the reign of
El-Ghury being missing, and it is probable that
many interesting details relating to Khairbek's
early life and betrayal of Egypt are to be found
in the Paris MSS., quoted by van Berchem
and Casanova. A summary of his life in a few
lines, a sort of obituary notice added by Ibn
lyas to the narrative of his death, and one or two
allusions to the part he played at the battle of
Marg Dabek, are all we have here to go upon.
According to that summary, Khairbek was the
son of the Emir Bilbay, a Circassian, and origin-
ally belonged to Qaitbay's corps of Mamelukes.
Not only he but several of his brothers attained a
high rank at Court ; one of them even became
Vice-Roy of Syria under Sultan el Ghury.
Khairbek's own career included a mission to
Constantinople as ambassador, in the time of
Sultan Mohammed, son of Qaitbay, and it may be
that his Turkish inclinations date from that time.
He was made Governor of Aleppo in A.H. 910
and remained in that post until Sultan Selim Shah
defeated El Ghury at Marg Dabek, a victory
which practically decided the conquest of Egypt.
106
THE MOSQUE OF KHAlRBEK
Khairbek commanded the left wing of the
Egyptian Army, and another Mameluke Emir,
Ganbardy El-Ghazzaly, the right. The Turks
were provided with artillery, new to the Mameluke
troops, and it is said to have terrified them
utterly, but there seems no doubt that Khairbek,
and perhaps Ghazzaly also, had been bought
by Turkish gold. The two wings went over to
the enemy in the midst of the battle, leaving the
brave but aged Sultan to be trampled to death
under the feet of the fleeing horses of the centre,
which he himself commanded. Selim did not
forget what he owed to Khairbek but loaded him
with honours ; it would seem, however, that at
one time the treacherous Emir's allegiance to the
Turk wavered, for Ibn lyas tells us that, at that
time, he entertained in what we will decorously
call his heart (batnoh) feelings of disloyalty
towards the Sultan. Such feelings, however,
were not in his interest, and he suppressed them
so successfully that, in A.H. 923, he became
Governor of Cairo, with the title of Pasha.
He was the first of that long list of Viceroys
delegated by the Ottomans to rule over Cairo,
whose power, though almost unlimited, was so
transitory that an official actually existed (the
107
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
dda bachy) whose sole duty consisted in carrying
to the Pasha the news of his dismissal. Khairbek,
however, was never dismissed, but died in office.
On the occasion of his accession to the seat of
Governor, he made what was evidently con-
sidered a suitable match by taking to wife the
widow of a previous Mameluke Sultan, the
Princess Masrbay, who had been the wife of
Ez-Zaher Qansuh. She was duly installed in the
Citadel where the new Governor had taken up his
residence. A good deal of scandal seems to have
been caused by the fact that the wedding took
place in the month of Ramadan, and was attended
by a number of ladies who rode up on donkeys.
The marriage did not prove a happy one, for the
bride at all events, for, two years later, in A.H. 925,
we find that all Cairo was talking because, for some
unknown reason, the Governor had beaten his
wife until she nearly died.
Many other acts of cruelty are recorded of him ;
Ibn lyas says that more than ten thousand
persons were put to death by his orders. He had
a violent temper, and delighted in condemning
slaves to torture and death for trifling offences ;
a great many of his victims are mentioned by
name and details of their executions are given.
108
THE MOSQUE OF KHAlRBEK
Absolutely unscrupulous where money was con-
cerned, he took advantage of his situation to
despoil the fellahs and, by the time he died, had
a huge fortune, in spite of the fact that Egypt
was greatly impoverished by recent wars and the
wholesale plunder by the Turks, while she had of
late years lost the lucrative Indian trade through
the adoption of the Cape sea-route. The Cir-
cassian Mamelukes, Khairbek's former comrades,
were frequently kept waiting for months for the
arrears of their pay, and compensated themselves
by looting and pillaging houses and shops. His
death was ardently desired by the oppressed
Egyptians, and, when the dome of Mohammed
el Nasser's iwdn on the Citadel fell in A.H. 928*
it was considered an omen of evil for the Governor,
and secretly rejoiced over by the people for that
reason. He died in the same year of erysipelas,
after a painful illness of several days which, says
the chronicler, were the happiest the poor had
known since he had been in power. Remorse
seems in fact to have come to the dying man, who
tried to propitiate the Avenger by all means in his
power. He ordered hundreds of captives to be
liberated and slaves to be freed ; money and food
were distributed among the poor. He was buried
109
SOME CAIRO MOSOUES
in his mausoleum where it seems that one of his
brothers, the Emir Ganbalat, had already been
interred in the year 908 of the Hegira.
Another mausoleum bearing the name of
Khairbek is to be found in Aleppo, probably
built as a precaution in case he should die during
his governorate. It is of stone, and very simple
in style, comprising two small domes and the
ruined remains of a third. Above, the naskhy
inscription and the round cartouches containing
the blason of the founder are reminiscent of the
ornamentation of contemporaneous buildings in
Cairo. The blason is very full and includes the
dawaddr's escritoire engraved across the cup-
bearer's chalice, flanked with two mouth horns,
a second cup below and a lozenge above. It
is also to be found on other buildings in Aleppo,
the Khan ez Zeit and the Khan es Sabim, no
doubt built under Khairbek J s rule.
no
CHAPTER X
THE MOSQUE OF MALIKA SAFlYA
VISITORS to Cairo mosques are so
accustomed to enter them by stepping
over a low threshold or, at the most,
mounting a few steps, that it is quite startling to
have to climb an imposing flight of steps in order
to reach the door of this mosque. The effect
is very picturesque, especially as the steps are
disposed in a semi-circle, forming a kind of
artificial hill on which the monument is enthroned,
and its unique appearance often leads to curiosity
respecting its history, which is a remarkable one.
For this is one of the few mosques in Cairo which
bear a woman's name, though Queen Safiya does
not seem to have concerned herself with the
foundation of the edifice, but to have laid hands
on it after one of her officials had built it.
The career of this woman was a highly romantic
one. She belonged to the noble Venetian family
of Baffo, and her father was Governor of the
island of Corfu. Having sailed from Venice
in
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
one day in the year 1575, with a large party
of other ladies, in order to visit her father, her
ship was captured by pirates, who were so struck
by her extraordinary beauty that they reserved
her for the hareem of Sultan Murad III. The
latter, a weak, frivolous, but kindly prince,
conceived for her a violent passion, with which
she continued to inspire him until his death, and
from the first moment her influence over him
became paramount in spite of the desperate
efforts of her rivals. According to the Turkish
historians Abu Faruq and Ahmed Rassem, kindly
consulted for me by Ahmed Pasha Zaki, it was
under the reign of Selim II, father of Murad,
that women began to wield a power hitherto
confined to men only, and, before the advent
of Safiya, the Sultan was entirely ruled over by his
mother, a Jewess named Nur-Banu, and his
sister, Princess Asma, married to Sokolli Pasha.
The two women saw with much disfavour the
growing power of the new arrival, who had
immediately been made Sultana Khasski, or
Favourite, and they stooped to every means to
counteract it, seeking the most beautiful slaves
they could find in the hope of diverting Murad 's
love from the Venetian. On two occasions he was
112
THE MOSQUE OF MALIK A SAFlYA
temporarily attracted, firstly, by a certain calfa,
named Raziya, who had acquired some influence
over him by telling his fortune when he was
Crown Prince and, secondly, by a brilliantly
clever Hungarian dancer, but only to return to
Safiya more ardently than ever. Nur-Banu
feigned to believe that this was due to sorcery,
and caused several of the favourite's slaves
to be executed, but she never succeeded in defeat-
ing her beautiful daughter-in-law, and died in
impotent despair. She became reconciled to
Safiya on her death-bed, and advised her to
secure the services of her own freed- woman,
Djanfida, who carried great weight both in the
Palace and outside, and who, as Governess of the
hareem, undertook to train slave girls for the
master's favour. Safiya, strong in her position,
which had become more assured by her having
given a first-born son to the Sultan, seems to have
left the management of the hareem to Djanfida,
but to have reserved the affairs of the State for
herself. She lost no opportunity of serving either
her country or her countrymen, and her name
appears in several negotiations between the Porte
and Venice. 1
1 An interesting episode illustrates Safiya 's importance as
well as her inclinations : in 1585, the French ambassador,
I 113
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
When Murad died (1595), leaving no fewer than
twenty sons, Safiya's son Mohammed ascended
the throne, and we cannot absolve the powerful
Queen-Mother from having assented to the mur-
der of the nineteen others a barbarous custom
which had obtained at the Turkish court since
the reign of Mohammed I. One of those un-
fortunate youths, Prince Mustapha, was a poet,
and wept over himself in pathetic verses, written
in prevision of his own death when he heard of
that of his father.
With all his faults, Murad had one noble
inclination a passion for building ; he erected
fortifications against the Persians, and founded
mosques at Adrianople, Cyprus, Magnesia, etc.
Queen Safiya emulated her husband in this ;
she built a mosque at Scutari, and a cloister for the
Mawlawiya dervishes besides the palace known
as Daoud Pasha, which is situated on a height
and which she intended for a refuge in case of a
rising of the people. She had become possessed
of an enormous fortune, and occasionally defrayed
Germigny, asked for the assistance of an Ottoman fleet
against Philip II, and Queen Catherine of Medici wrote on
the subject an autograph letter to the Sultana, who com-
municated it to the Venetian ambassador.
114
THE MOSQUE OF MALIKA SAFlYA
the pay of some of the troops or other war expenses
from her privy purse ; but it was chiefly by
gifts of beautiful slaves that she preserved her
power over her son. According to Von Hammer, 1
her influence was corrupt and baneful and she
was partly responsible for the deplorable mistakes
made by the Government of Mohammed III.
When he died in 1603, his son and successor,
Ahmed I, who was only fourteen years of age,
refused to accede to the fratricidal custom of his
predecessors and allowed his brother, Mustafa,
to survive. His grandmother Safiya, or Baffa,
as she was frequently called, formerly all-power-
ful, first as Sultana Khassaki, under Murad III,
and then as Sultana Valida (dowager) under
Mohammed III, was sent to the Old Seraglio,
where she lived in obscurity for fourteen more
years. Her whole suite of slave girls, eunuchs,
etc., followed her, with the exception of her
major-domo, who was executed. She died
in 1618, in the first year of Othman IPs short
reign.
Some curious documents have been preserved
in the waqf archives, relating to a trial and
judgment pronounced at Stamboul in 1594,
1 History of the Ottoman Empire.
"5
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
which throw an interesting light on the judicial
customs of the time, and which constitute a
biography of the Mosque of Malika Safiya in
Cairo, if one may use such a term in speaking of
a stone and brick entity.
According to these, the mosque was built by
a eunuch named Othman ibn Abdullah, who
endowed it with the revenue from a very large
property. Another eunuch, named 'Abd er
Razaq, evidently Queen Safiya 's agent, alleged
that Othman, being her slave, had no right to
found a mosque or to dispose of any landed
property, and claimed, on the Queen's behalf,
possession of the property which had been appro-
priated to it. This would seem to have happened
after the founder's death, for the steward in
charge of the waqf, Daoud Agha, swore that
Othman Agha had been freed by the Queen
before he died, and that, moreover, he had acted
on her behalf and with her consent. 'Abd er
Razaq having denied these allegations, Daoud
Agha demanded that the Queen herself be called
as a witness. The Qady deferred to his request
and sent two deputies to the Palace to receive
the Queen's oath. On the strength of it he then
gave judgment in her favour, annulling the
116
THE MOSQUE OF MALIKA SAFlYA
waqfiya and dismissing Daoud from his post.
The Queen thereupon renewed the waqf and
appointed J Abd er Razaq as steward or agent
of the property. As a sequel to this well docu-
mented case, we find an inscription over the
entrance door leading from the sahn into the
sanctuary, which runs as follows :
" This blessed Mosque was founded by "
(here follows a long string of titles) " the mother
of our late Lord Sultan Mohammed Khan . . .
by the hand of our Lord Ismail Agha, legal
steward of the aforesaid waqf.
" This inscription was completed on the ayth
Moharram of the year 1019 (A.D. 1610) of the
Hegira."
This leads one to suppose that, several years
after the building of the mosque, Queen Safiya,
still disposing of great riches although her son
had now died, had an inscription placed in
Othman Agha's monument, attributing the
foundation of it to herself. Even the honour of
supervising the building is denied to Othman, but
given to a certain eunuch, Ismail Agha, who has
not hitherto appeared in the story, but who is
here markedly called the " legal " steward of the
aforesaid waqf. The date of building is carefully
117
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
left unmentioned, only that of the completion
of the inscription being quoted.
The whole thing has an air of duplicity which
does more credit to Safiya's cleverness than to her
honesty.
There are other points of interest in the
documents relating to the Mosque of Malika
Safiya, which have been communicated to me
through the kindness of Signor A. Patricolo.
One of these points, illustrating the literary
preoccupations of Moslem men of business, is
that the waqftya in question is entirely written
in rhymed verse. In order to conform with the
exigencies of this, the name of 'Abd el Razaq's
father, which would in the ordinary way be
assumed to be 'Abdallah, as was the custom where
eunuchs were concerned, is sometimes given as
'Abd el Halim, and sometimes 'Abd el Hannan,
according to the rhyme required, both these
names having practically the same meaning as
'Abdallah.
Another point is the extent of the waqf, con-
stituted first by Othman Agha, and then confirmed
by the Queen. It included a four hundred
feddan village in the Manuf province and an
estate in the Bulaq road, comprising seventeen
118
i
MOSQUE OF MILIKA SAFIYA. MINARET.
THE MOSQUE OF MALIKA SAFlYA
storehouses, one cafe, thirty- two shops, fifteen
tenement-rooms, one stable, five wells, two
tanneries and one slaughter-house. Here is also
a list of the officials and attendants appointed
at high wages for the services of the mosque :
two preachers, two imams, four muezzins, two
time-keepers, ten Quran-readers, two singers
" with fine voices," three readers of special
passages in the Quran, two cleaners, one librarian,
one leader of prayer, two lamp -lighters, two carpet
beaters, two attendants for the ablution court,
four gardeners for the garden which then existed
in front of the mosque, and lastly, one practical
workman for small repairs to the building.
The monument itself is quite worthy of
attention ; it is entirely Turkish in style, without
the numerous Mameluke details of structure and
ornament that are to be found in several other
mosques built in Cairo since the Turkish con-
quest, such as Sidi Sariya, El Bordeiny and Abu
Dhahab.
It stands quite clear from other buildings,
a feature which, according to Captain Creswell,
distinguishes mosques, properly so called, from
madrassas or college-mosques. The latter are
usually dominated in plan by the line of the
119
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
street to which they conform externally, whatever
the orientation of their interior may be, and often
have one fa$ade only. It is preceded by a square
court-yard to which access may be obtained, at
present, by two doors, each reached by a flight
of steps in the centre of the south and west faces
of the courtyard ; there is also a third door
on the north side to which there is now no stair-
case. The cloister which runs all round the fore-
court has three arches to each side, springing
from columns, and it is vaulted by a series of
small domes on Byzantine pendentives * of a type
unknown in Egypt before the Turkish conquest,
the dome on the centre of each side being oblong
in plan.
One small dome, however, stands up entirely
distinct from the others, the outline of it being
much more like the usual Mameluke form ; it
covers a small square room by the north-west
corner of the sanctuary, approached by a narrow,
screened gallery, which lines the west wall at a
lower level than the circular gallery which runs
1 Domes on continuous sphere pendentives (i.e., where
dome and pendentive are struck from the same centre) appear
in Fatimite times. Here, however, the dome rises with a
steeper curvature than the pendentive.
120
MOSQUE OF MALIKA SAF!YA. INTERIOR.
THE MOSQUE OF MALIKA SAFIYA
around the dome. The room was very probably
intended for ladies, for a mushrabiya window
looks out from it into the sanctuary.
A fine stalactite doorway leads into the sanctuary
over which lies the great dome, resting on six
pointed arches. It is surrounded by smaller
arches, of which the pendentives are cleverly
elongated or contracted to fit the irregular
rectangle they are required to fill.
The main dome is of brick and is pierced with a
number of small circular openings in addition to a
row of windows round the base. At the level of the
latter, a narrow gallery rests on projecting wooden
beams. The mihrdb stands at the back of a square
annexe built out in the centre of the east side
and roofed with a dome. The dikka, or wooden
balcony, is reached by a staircase arranged in the
thickness of the wall, a common feature in
Turkish mosques.
The beautiful minbar is also characteristically
Turkish ; it is entirely carved in white marble,
even to the door, and presents an open-work,
geometrical design which is exactly the same
as that of the unique wooden trellis in Barquq's
desert mausoleum. M. Saladin mentions that
this particular form of ornament is to be found
12 121
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
executed in marble in some Constantinople
mosques, and gives a photograph 1 of the minbar
of the Sulimaniya Mosque in which it is plainly
visible. He goes on to say that it is to be found
" in the Mosque of Sitta Nafissa in Cairo " ;
this is evidently owing to a confusion with the
subject of the present chapter, for the minbar
of Sitta Nafissa, like the whole of that mosque,
is modern and devoid of particular interest.
1 Page 514.
122
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL
MOSLEM MONUMENTS OF CAIRO
NO. ON
A.H. A.D. PLAN. 1
199 814 Nilometer . . . -79
212 827 Mosque of Amr ibn el Aas . 319
254-63 869-76 Aqueduct of Ibn Tulun
263-5 876-9 Mosque of Ibn Tulun . . 220
FATIMITE MONUMENTS
358-60 969-71 Bab Qady-Askar . . 47
359-61 970-2 Mosque of El Azhar . . 97
380-403 990-1012 Mosque of El Hakim . .15
478 1085 Mosque of El Guyushy . 304
480 1087 Bab en Nasr ... 7
480 1087 Bab el Futuh ... 6
484 1090 Bab ez Zuweila . . . 199
519 1125 Mosque of El Aqmar . . 33
527 1133 Mashhad of Sayeda Ruqiya . 273
555 1 1 60 Mosque of Es Saleh Talayeh . 116
1 The plan published by the Comite de Conservation
offers a number for each monument classed and registered ;
I have reproduced these numbers in the plan published with
Rambles in Cairo. They are also quoted in every instance
in Captain CreswelPs Brief Chronology. Each monument
bears a green enamel label with its number in white Arabic
characters.
123
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
AYUBITE MONUMENTS NO. ON
A.H. A.D. PLAN.
522-89 1176-93 Burg ez Zafar
572 , etc . 1 1 76 , etc . Citadel
608 121 1 Mausoleum of the Imam
Shafey . . . .218
639-41 1242-4 College of Negm et Din Ayub 38
640 1242-3 Mausoleum of Abbasside
Khalifes .... 276
647-8 1249-50 Mausoleum of Negm ed Din
Ayub . . . .38
BAHARITE MONUMENTS
648 1250 Mausoleum of Shagarat ed
Durr 169
665 1266-7 Bridge of Abul Munagga
665-7 1266-9 Mosque of Ez Zaher Beybars i
687 1284 Muristan of Qalaun . . 43
683-4 J 284-5 Mausoleum of Qalaun . . 43
684 1285 Madrassa of Qalaun . . 43
695-703 1295-6 = Madrassa of Mohammed en
1303-4 Nasser . ... 44
697 1298 Mausoleum of Zein ed Din
Yusuf .... 172
73 !3 3 Madrassa of Sangar el Gawly 221
706-9 1306-9 Mausoleum of Beybars el
Gashenkir . . . . 32
711 1311 Aqueduct . . . .78
715 1315 Tomb of Hassan Sadaqa . 263
124
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST
A.H.
A.D.
NO
. ON
7^-35
i3!8-35
Mosque of Moh. en Nasser PLAN.
(Citadel) ....
143
730
1329-30
Mosque of Almas .
I 3
730
1329-30
Mosque of Qusun .
202
720-42
1320-41
OkalaofQusun .
II
736
1335
Mausoleum of Qusun
290
736
J 335
Mosque of Beshtak
205
738
c- J 337
Palace of Yushbak
266
738-40
1337-9
Palace of Beshtak .
34
739-40
1339-40
Mosque of el Mardany .
120
740
1339-40
Mosque of Hadaq Miska
252
742
1341
Baths of Beshtak .
244
744-6
1344-5
Mosque of Aslam el Bahay .
112
747-8
1346-7
Mosque of Aqsunqur .
123
749
1348
Mausoleum of Princess Toghay
81
750
1349
Mosque of Sheikhu
H7
756
1355
Mausoleum of Sheikhu .
152
757
1356
Madrassa of Serghatmish
218
757-64
1356-63
Mosque of Sultan Hassan
133
761-2
1360
Mausoleum of Princess Tatar
36
765
1363-4
Mausoleum of Princess Tulbiya
80
770
1368-9
Mosque of Sultan Shaaban .
125
774
1373
Mosque of Algay et Yussefy .
131
CIRCASSIAN MONUMENTS
783
1382
Mausoleum of Yunis et
Dawadar ....
139
785
1383
Mausoleum of Aytmish el
Nagashy .... 250
125
SOME
CAIRO MOSQUES
NO. ON
A.H.
A.D.
PLAN.
786-8
1384-6
Madrassa of Barquq . .187
797
1395
Madrassa of Mahmud el Kurdy 117
811
I4O8
Mosque of Gamal ed Din
Yusuf . . . .35
812
1409
Madrassa of Farag . . 203
809-13
I4OO-IO
Tomb of Barquq . . . 149
814
I4II
Tomb of El 'Ainy . .102
818-23
1415-20
Mosque of El Muayyad . 190
822-3
I4I9-2O
Muristan of El Muayyad . 60
823
I42O
Baths of El Muayyad
826-7
H23-4
Madrassa of Barsbay . . 175
833
1430
Mosque of Gohar el Lala . 134
835
H32
Mausoleum of Barsbay . .121
c.
1430-40
Mausoleum of Umm el Ashraf 106
841
H37
Mosque of Barsbay at Khanqa
844
1440
Mosque of Taghry Bardy . 19
848
1444
Mosque of Yehia Zein ed Din 182
852-3
1448-9
Mosque of Yehia Zein ed Din 344
853-7
!449-53
Mosque of Yehia Zein ed Din 204
854-60
H50-56
Convent of Inal . . .158
c. 860
H56
Mausoleum of Barsbay . .124
877-9
1472-4
Mausoleum of Qaitbay . . 99
880
H75
Madrassa of Qaitbay . . 222
882
H77
Okala of Qaitbay (el Azhar) . 75
883
1478
Madrassa of Ganem el
Bahlawan . . . .129
884
1479-80
Madrassa of Abu Bakr b.
Muzhir . . . . 49
885
1480-1
Okala of Qaitbay (Bab en Nasr) 9
126
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST
A.H.
A.D.
NO. ON
PLAN.
885-6
I48O-I
Mosque of Qishmas el Ishaky 114
884-6
I479-8I
Mausoleum el Fadawiya . 5
c. 1490
Mosque of Abul *Ila . 340
QOO
H94-5
Madrassa of Ezbek el
Yussefy . . . .211
908
1502
Mausoleum of Khairbek . 248
908
1503
Mosque of Emir Akhor . 136
908-9
1503
Mosque of El Ghury . .189
908-10
1503-4
Mausoleum of El Ghury . 66
906-22
I50I-I6
Gates of Khan Khalil . 53,4,6
906-22
I50I-I6
Okala of El Ghury . . 64
TURKISH MONUMENTS
935
1528
Mosque of " Sidi Sariya " .142
945
1538
Mosque of Shahin Agha el
Khaluaty
975
1567
Mosque el Mahmudiya . . 135
975
T 5 6 7
Mosque of Sinan Pasha
1019
1610
Mosque of Malika Safiya . 200
1041
1631
House el Giridliya . .321
1047
1637
House of Gamal ed Din . 72
U57
J 744
Sabil kuttaf of Abder Rahman
Katkhoda . . . .21
1187
1773
Mosque of Mohammed Abu
Dhahab . . . .98
"93
1779
Palace of Musaffer Khan . 20
1205
1790
Mosque of Ahmed el Bordainy 201
1327
1911
Mosque of er Rifay
1336
1920
Mosque of Abul 'Path (Abdine)
127
INDEX
OF PERSONAL NAMES
Abbas, Wazir, 3, 4
'Abdallah, 4
'Abdel Hamid Bey Mustafa,
83
'Abdel Malek, 48
'Abd el Rahman, 41, 42
'Abd er Razak, 116, 118
Abu Bekr ibn Muzhir, 84,
87,89
Abu Dhahab, 119
Abu Faruq, 112
Abu Horiba, 82
Abul Mohassen, Gamel ed
Din, 17
'Aded le din Illah, Khalife el,
4,6
'Adel, el, 14
Ahmed 1, 115
Ahmed Rassem, 112
Ahmed Sultan, 75
Ahmed Zaki Pacha, 112
Akush, 54
Alexander Borgia, 79, 80
'Aly Bey Bahgat, 9
'Aly, ibn Abu Taleb, i
'Aly, son of Aybek, 33, 36
'Aly Pacha Mubarak, 103
'Amr, ibn el 'Aas, 62, 98
Aqbogha, 38
Aqmar, el, 13
Aslam el Bahay, 85
Asma, Princess, 112
Aubusson, Cardinal d', 77
Aybek el Muezz, 7, 26, 31,
32> 33, 34, 35> 36
Azhar, El, 8, 62, 89, 98
Badr el Gamaly, 7
BafFo, see Safiya
Bahgat, see 'Aly
Balqish Jehan Raziya, 26
Barsbay, Sultan, 74, 90
Bayazid, 77, 78, 80, 83
Bektimur, Seif ed Din, 8
Berchem, van, 10, 40, 43, 76,
106
Beshtak, 12
Beybars el Bondoqdary, 23,
25
Beybars el Gashenkir, 8, 49,
5, 5 1 , 53, 54, 55, 5 6 , 59>
62, 63, 64, 69, 71
Bilbay, 106
Birgwan, 85
Blochet, E., 26
Bordeiny el, 119
Casanova, 106
Chagarett Od Dourr, see
Shagaret ed Durr
129
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
Charles VIII, 79
Chosroes, 48
Comite de Conservation des
Monuments Arabes, 9, n,
48, 53>83> 88, 101, 123
Cornaro, Andrea, 90, 91, 92
Cornaro, Caterina, 73, 90, 91,
92, 93
Cornaro, Giorgio, 92
Creswell, 96, 104, 119, 123
Daoud Agha, 116
Djem, 73, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80
Djanfida, 113
Ezbek, Emir, 81
Ezbek el Yussefy, 82
Fadawiya, el, 82
Faiz, Khalife el, 3, 4, 7
Fakhr ed Dm, 17, 20, 21, 23
Fares Aqtay, Emir, 25, 32
Firuz Shah, 26
Fostat, 62
Fouad, H. H. Sultan, 46
Franz Pascha, 70
Gamel ed Din Mohsen, 20, 35
Ganem el Bahlawan, 83
Gaqmaq, Sultan, 74, 94
Ganbalat, no
Ganbardy el Ghazzaly, 107
Gayet, 70, 71
Gibb, E. J. N., 80
Giorgione, 93
Ghury el, 87, 102, 104, 106
Hafez-le-din Illah, Khalife
el, 4
Hakim, el, 8, 53, 69, 85
Hammer, von, 115
Hassan, Sultan, 48, 72, 83
Helena Paleologue, 90, 91
HerzPacha,83,85,86
Hussein (Martyr), 7
Ibn ed Deif, 5
Ibn lyas, 50, 60, 97, 98, 99,
105, 106, 107, 108
Ibn Masun, 2
Ibn Tulun, 8, 10, 38, 66
Idekin, 33
Inal, Sultan, 74
Innocent VIII, 79
Ismail Agha, 117
Ismail of Damascus, 15
Ismail Pasha, 81
Joinville, 17, 23
Kamel, el, 13, 14, 18,32
Khairbek, 87, 101, 103, 104
106, 107, 108, 109, no
Khalil, 19, 20, 27, 30, 38
Khoshqadam, Sultan, 75, 91
Khosrow Pacha, 13
Lagin, 8
Lane Poole, 3, 37, 43, 52, 70
74> 77> 80
Lanzone, 89
Louis, Saint, 16, 18, 19, 22
23> 25
Louis of Savoy, 90, 91
Lulu, Prince of Mausul, 34
Lusignan, Charlotte of, 90
Lusignan, James of, 90, 91
Lusignan, John II of, 90, 91
130
INDEX
Mamay, Emir, 83
Maqrizy, i, 5, 18, 20, 27, 33,
36, 49, 51, 61, 62
Marcel, 26
Margoliouth, 70
Marwan, Khalife, 41
Mas Latrie, 93
Masrbay, Princess, 108
Mathias Corvinus, 79
Maurel, Andre", 93
Merionec, A. de, 19
Modestus, 47
Mohammed I, 114
Mohammed II, 73, 75, 76,
77
Mohammed III, 114, 115,
117
Mohammed, son of Qaitbay,
99, 106
Mohammed en Nasser, son
of Qalaun, 8, 12, 28, 48,
^9> 55> 5 6 > 57> 5 8 > 59> 6o >
u, 64, 65,66, 109
Mostassem b'lllah, Khalife,
Mu'awiya, 41
Muezz, el, see Aybek
Munissa, 13
Murad III, 112, 114
Mussa Muzaffar ed Din, 32
Mustafa, Prince, 114
Nasser, en, see Mohammed
Nasser Youssef, En, 34, 35
Negm ed Din, see Saleh
Nur Banu, 112, 113
Othman, Sultan, 74
Othman II, 115
Othman, ibn Abdallah, 116,
118
Osama, 3
Patricolo, 44, 45, 118
Qaitbay, 48, 70, 73, 75, 76,
77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84,
88, 89, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99,
106
Qalaun, u, 12, 38, 71, 72
Qanuh, 108
Qichmas el Ishaqy, 82, 95
Quatremere, 49
Raziya, 113
Richard Cceur de Lion, 90
Robert of Artois, 22
Ruzzik, see Saleh
Safiya, Malika, in, 112, 113,
114, 115, 116, 117, 118
Saffa, Es, Khalife, 41
Saladin, Sultan, 8, 13
Saladin (writer], 70, 121
Saleh Negm ed Din Ayub,
n, 13, 14, 15, 18,19, 20,
23, 26, 27, 28, 30, 32
Saleh Talayeh ibn Ruzzik, i,
2, 3>4>5> 6 >78, 10
Sangar el Gawly, 53, 59, 61,
62,63,66,68,69,87
Selar, 8, 50, 53, 55, 56, 59,
60,61,62,63,64,65,66,68
Selim Shah, Sultan, 106
Selimll, 211
Serghatmish, 10
Shafey, Imam, 45, 47, 48,
SOME CAIRO MOSQUES
Shagaret ed Durr, 13, 19, 20,
21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31,
32, 34> 35> 38
Shams ed Din, 26
Sheykhy,Ech, 60, 61,63
Shawar, 6
Sidi Sariya, 13, 87, 119
Sokoli Pacha, 112
St. Maurice, M. de, 81
Suheyl, 20, 21
Sultan, Shah, Sheykh, 98
Taibars, 38
Talayeh, see Saleh Talayeh
Timurbugha, Sultan, 75
Titian, 93
Turan, Shah, 19, 20, 24, 25
Uday, 45
Ummaya, 40
Uzun Hassan, 75
Walid, Khalife el, 41
Yashbak el Mahdy, 82, 83
Yunis, Emir, 14, 15
Yussef Eff. Ahmed, 47
Zaher b'amr Illah, ez, 3
Zein ed Din Yussef, 40, 43,
44, 45, 46, 94, 95, 96
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