SECTION II.
FROM THE SQUARE TO RAS-EL-TIN.
Route:—By the Rue de France and Rue Ras-el-Tin to Ras-el-Tin promontory; returning to the Square by Anfouchi Bay and the Eastern Harbour—the “Circular” Tram (Green Triangle) runs along the Quays.
Chief points of interest:—Terbana and Chorbagi Mosques; Mosque of Abou el Abbas; Anfouchi Catacombs; Ras-el-Tin Palace; Prehistoric Harbour; Fort Kait Bey; New Quays.
We start from the north-west corner of the Square. The Rue de France traverses the “Turkish Town” (p. [84]), which was built in the 17th and 18th cents. on the spit of land that had accreted round the ruined Ptolemaic dyke (p. [10]). Its bazaars and Mosques are on a small scale, for the city was then at her feeblest. But the district is picturesque and, especially at evening, full of gentle charm. The best way of seeing it is to wander aimlessly about.
In the Rue de France:—Right: Rue Pirona. Built into the wall at its entrance are fragments of Egyptian sculpture, the lion-headed goddess Sekhet, &c. The road opens into a picturesque little square which contains a former Native Tribunal, and a building (No. 4) that has a carved gateway and a tranquil court yard with antique columns.
In the roads to the left of the Rue de France are some Mosques:—
Mosque of Sheikh Ibrahim Pacha, off the south-west corner of the Square; big ugly building with red and yellow minaret.
Chorbagi Mosque, in the Rue el Midan. Well worth a visit. Date—1757. Plan—similar to the Terbana (see below). Exterior spoilt by restoration, but the door from the vestibule into the mosque proper has over it a trefoil arch full of brilliant tiles; in the centre of the arch is a miniature praying niche (mihrab).—The Interior, though mean architecturally, retains its magnificent Tile Decoration almost intact. The tiles are grouped round the walls in great panels, the design being sometimes geometrical and sometimes a pot of flowers. Between the panels are bands of contrasting tiles. Colours:—in the panels, yellow, green, and a deep cornflower-blue predominate; in the bands, china-blue and white. A few of the panels are of polished conglomerate stone. The Prayer Niche—flanked by two bizarre twisted columns—has the pot of flowers design. The door of the pulpit is handsome; it has duplicated Cufic inscriptions, which on the right read from right to left, as is usual, and on the left are reversed for the sake of symmetry: a good instance of the decorative tendency of Arab Art. Externally the Mosque is flanked by arcades; one overlooks the street and is used by the Muezzin, since there is no minaret; the other looks into a courtyard of stilted arches.
Mosque of Abou Ali. (Go nearly to the end of the long Rue Bab el Akdar; thence, right, into Rue Masguid Ali Bey Guenenah; thence, right again). There is nothing to see in this humble little Mosque, but it is said to be the oldest in the city. In it are the figures 677, which, if they record the date A.H., would mean 1278 A.D. The natives say that it once stood at the edge of the sea, so that the faithful made their ablutions with salt water before praying. The tradition may be correct, for the old line of the coast lay here. (see map p. [98]). The building in its present appearance cannot be earlier than the 18th cent.; in it, perched on the summit of the pulpit, is the model of a boat.
Continuing from the Rue de France we see ahead the white mass of the Terbana Mosque.
Well worth visiting, in spite of modern plaster and paint. Date—1684. The little doorway on the street is in the “Delta” style—bricks painted black and red, with occasional courses of wood between them and Cufic inscriptions above: “There is no God but God,” and “Mohammed is the Prophet of God”; better examples of the style at Rosetta (p. [185]). The rest of the ground floor is occupied by shops. At the top of the stairs an interesting scene unfolds. To the left are two great antique granite columns with Corinthian capitals, and through them an open air terrace with an iron trellis and barred windows. To the right is the Vestibule of the Mosque, once very beautiful; two thirds of the entrance wall are still covered with tiles, designed like those in the Chorbagi, and over the door is the inscription “Built in 1097 A.H. by Haj Ibrahim Terbana,” surmounted by a trefoil arch. More antique columns. The Interior is a rectangle, divided up by eight columns, disfigured but antique. Good painted ceiling, best seen from the western gallery. The Prayer Niche is finely tiled, as is the wall to its right; the large tiles with white daisies on them are inferior modern work. Lamentable chandeliers.—There is an external gallery with antique columns. The Minaret rises above the entrance landing; its topmost gallery is tiled.
The main route now takes the name Rue Ras-el-Tin. Here once began the southern shore of the Island of Pharos. Consequently ancient remains occur in situ.
Right: Rue Sidi Abou el Abbas leads to the square of that name—the most considerable in the Turkish Town; here, by evening light, one sometimes has the illusion of oriental romance; here (1922) is the rallying point of the Nationalist demonstrations. The road, just before it enters the square, crosses the site of a temple to Isis Pharia who watched over the lighthouse. (see coin in Museum, Room 2).
Dominating the square is the great white Mosque of Abou el Abbas Moursi, built 1767 by Algerians, some of whom still live in the neighbourhood; the tomb of the saint (d. 1288) is under a low dome; the other side of the Mosque (reached by a winding passage to the right) has an unrestored brick entrance in the “Delta” style, with pendentives, tiles, and a Cufic inscription.—At the end of the Square:—little Mosque of Sidi Daoud, with tomb of the saint, from whose precinct two tall palm trees rise.—Just off south side of square is a typical street tomb (Sidi Abou el Fath), enclosed in its green lattice; of the houses close to it No. 31 has good carved “Mashrabieh” work, No. 33 a carved lintel, with door posts of alternate courses of limestone and wood. All this tangle of lanes preserves the atmosphere of the 18th cent. East. Between the Abou el Abbas Mosque and the sea is a large modern Mosque—the Bouseiri—where the Sultan usually makes his Friday prayer; a little up the street is a stone fragment, covered with hieroglyphs, and now used upside down as a seat.
The Rue Ras-el-Tin is now joined by the “Circular” tram line. To the right is a large piece of waste ground. In the corner of this, close to the road, are some dilapidated glass roofs; these protect the Anfouchi Tombs; the custodian lives close by.
THE ANFOUCHI TOMBS.
The Anfouchi Tombs
I. Vestibule with scribblings
II. Vestibule with chessboard decorations
III. Vestibule with benches
IV. Vestibule with Roman additions
Though inferior to the Kom es Chougafa Catacombs, (p. [148]), these tomb groups are interesting for their decoration scheme. Their entrances adjoin, their plan is similar:—a staircase, cut through the limestone, leads down to a square hall out of which the tomb-chambers open. The decoration is of stucco painted to imitate marble blocks and tiles. It is shoddy, and sometimes recalls the imitation wall papers of Victorian England. Archaeologists know it as the First Pompeian style. Date:—Ptolemaic with Roman additions. Name of occupants: unknown.
Right-hand tomb group. (see plan p. [127]).
At the first turn of the stairs, protected by a cloth, is a good picture. Subject:—Purification of the Dead by water (?); Horus, with a falcon’s head, points with one hand to the land of death, and with the other tries to draw the dead man towards it; Osiris holds out a lustral vase; Isis is behind.—At the second turn of the stairs is another picture, half destroyed;—Osiris sits on a throne as king of the Dead with the dog-god Anubis behind him; before him, just discernable, stands Horus introducing the dead man.
Thus the staircase reminded visitors of the difficulties through which the dead must pass, and honoured Osiris, Isis, and their son Horus—a trinity whose worship was popular in Ptolemaic times and often connected with the worship of Serapis. The walls imitate alabaster &c.; on the vault, geometric designs.
The Hall is open to the air. It gives access to two tomb chambers, each of which has a vestibule for mourners. That to the right (i) is undecorated, but the scribblings on the vestibule walls are most amusing; they were made over 2,000 years ago by a visitor or workman, and help us to reconstruct the life of the Greco-Egyptian city. The inscriptions are in Greek. On the left wall Diodorus has immortalised Antiphiles, his friend. Further on is a sailing ship. Right wall, a battle ship with a turret for fighting, such as might have accompanied Cleopatra to Actium.
The vestibule in front (ii) is quite charming. It was decorated in the same style as the staircase—traces of this remain on the inside of its entrance wall—but soon after a fresh coat of stucco was applied, and painted like the first to imitate marble, but in better taste. Below, is a dado of “alabaster” above it an effective design of black and white squares arranged chess board fashion and divided by alabaster bands. In the chess board are mythological scenes, now defaced. The ceiling, being purely geometric, probably belongs to the earlier scheme.
At the end of the vestibule is the entrance to the tomb chamber, with the disc of the Sun (Ra) carved above it, and, on either side, little sleeping sphinxes upon pedestals. A door once closed it; holes for the bolt remain. The tomb chamber itself is decorated in the same pretty style. An altar once stood in the middle. In the back wall is a tiny shrine, closing the vista. The general effect is good, but dainty rather than solemn; the terrors of ancient Egypt are on the wane.
Left hand Tomb group.
The vestibule in front, as one enters the Hall, is very long, and low benches on which the mourners sat run up it on each side. (iii). In the tomb chamber is an enormous sarcophagus of rose coloured granite from Assouan.
The vestibule and tomb chamber to the left (iv) were excavated and decorated on the usual plan. But in the Roman period they were much pulled about, and brick work introduced, together with three new sarcophagi.
There are traces of other tombs over the waste ground, which covers the cemetery of the ancient Island of Pharos. We are now in the centre of the Island, and about to visit its western extremity.
Straight ahead, up a rise, is Ras-el-Tin Palace, the summer residence of the Sultan, who makes his state entry every June. It was built by Mohammed Ali (p. [88]), who had here the stormy interview with Sir Charles Napier, that ended his loftier ambitions (p. [89]); Ismail restored it; Tewfik was here during some of the troubles of 1882 (p. [95]). It is not ugly, as palaces go; the grandiose classical portico is rather impressive. To the right are the barracks.
The peninsula narrows. The road leads on to the Yacht Club (left), and terminates at the Military Hospital which is beautifully situated on the rocky point of Ras-el-Tin (the “Cape of Figs”); splendid views of the Western Harbour and the sea; a Temple of Neptune once stood here, and there are ruins of tombs all along the northern shore. A modern lighthouse stands in the Hospital enclosure, and marks the entrance to the harbour. The Breakwater (constructed 1870-74) starts below, makes towards the isolated rock of Abou Bakr, then bends to the left. Over the water are the island of Marabout and the headland of Agame, which are part of the same limestone chain as Ras-el-Tin, and connected with it by submarine reefs.
The sea west and north of the point is full of remains of the Prehistoric Harbour.
PREHISTORIC HARBOUR.
For details of this important and mysterious work see “Les Ports submergés de l’ancienne Isle de Pharos” by M. Jondet, the discoverer. Possibly it may be the harbour alluded to in the Odyssey (see p. [6]), but no historian mentions it. Theosophists, with more zeal than probability, have annexed it to the vanished civilisation of Atlantis; M. Jondet inclines to the theory that it may be Minoan—built by the maritime power of Crete. If Egyptian in origin, perhaps the work of Rameses II (B.C. 1300); statues of his reign have been found on Rhakotis (p. [7]), and we know that he was attacked by “peoples of the West,” and built defences against them. It cannot be as late as Alexander the Great or we should have records. It is the oldest work in the district and also the most romantic, for to its antiquity is added the mystery of the sea.
Long and narrow, the Harbour stretched from the rock of Abou Bakr on the west to an eastern barrier that touched the shore beyond the Tour de la Mission d’Egypt. These two points are joined up by a series of breakwaters on the north. The entrance was from an unexpected direction, the south. Having rounded Abou Bakr, ships turned north under the Ras-el-Tin promontory, where there is deep water. To their left were solid quays, stretching to Abou Bakr, and recently utilised in the foundation of the modern breakwater. To their right was another quay. Having entered, they were well in the middle of the main harbour, with a subsidiary harbour to the north.
The visit to the Harbour is best made by boat, since most of the remains now lie from 4 to 25 feet under the sea. They have, like all the coast line, subsided, because the Nile deposits on which they stand are apt to compress, and even to slide towards deeper water. They are built of limestone blocks from the quarries of Mex and Dekhela, but the construction, necessarily simple, gives no hint as to nationality or date. The modern breakwater, being built across the entrance, makes the scheme rather difficult to follow. (see Plan p. [131].).
The Prehistoric Harbour
Modern work shown thus .......
Ancient work shown thus ________
The Small Quay (a) is in perfect condition, and not four feet under water. Length: 70 yards, breadth, 15; the surface curves slightly towards the south. The blocks, measuring about a yard each, are cut to fit one another roughly, small stones filling up the joints. The Ras-el-Tin jetty crosses the end of this Quay; the point of intersection is near the red hut on the jetty.—At the north end of the Quay is an extension (b) that protected the harbour entrance.
Further north, well inside the harbour, is an islet (c) covered with remains. Some are tombs, and of later date; submerged, are the foundations of a rectangular building (30 yds. by 15) reached on the south by steps, and connected by little channels with the sea on the north. This islet may have contained the harbour offices.
From the modern breakwater the Great Quays (d) show here and there as ochreous lines below the waves. They are 700 yds. long, and constructed like the Small Quay, but from larger stones. They connect with the rock of Abou Bakr (e), the western bastion of the Prehistoric Harbour; it is a solid mass over 200 yds. square; most is on the sea level, but a part juts up; it is marked all over with foundation cuts and the remains of masonry. West of Abou Bakr is a double breakwater (f) further protecting the works from the sea and the prevalent wind; and on it hinges the huge northern breakwater (g) also double in parts, which runs with interruptions till it reaches the eastern barrier (h). The rock is named after the first Caliph of Islam.
The outer harbour (i) has not yet been fully explored.
Having returned as far as Ras-el-Tin Palace, we bear to the left, and follow the tram line along the shore of Anfouchi Bay. The Bay is very shallow and the entrance is protected by reefs. Pirates used it once. Native boat builders work along its beach and are pleasant to watch. In the corner is Anfouchi Pier, with a bathing establishment; beyond, on a small promontory, stands all that is left of Fort Adda; Arabi had his powder stored here in 1882, and the English blew it up (p. [94]). Now the tram turns a sharp corner, and a second Fort swings into view—Fort Kait Bey.
FORT KAIT BEY (THE “PHAROS”).
This battered and neglected little peninsula is perhaps the most interesting spot in Alexandria, for here, rising to an incredible height, once stood the Pharos Lighthouse, the wonder of the world. Contrary to general belief, some fragments of the Pharos still remain. But before visiting them and the Arab fort in which they are imbedded, some knowledge of history is desirable. The fortunes of the peninsula were complicated, and the labours of scholars have only lately made them clear.
HISTORY.
(1). The original building. (see also 16).
The lighthouse took its name from Pharos Island (hence the French “phare” and the Italian “faro”). No doubt it entered into Alexander the Great’s scheme for his maritime capital, but the work was not done till the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Probable date of dedication: B.C. 279, when the king held a festival to commemorate his parents. Architect: Sostratus, an Asiatic Greek. The sensation it caused was tremendous. It appealed both to the sense of beauty and to the taste for science—an appeal typical of the age. Poets and engineers combined to praise it. Just as the Parthenon had been identified with Athens and St. Peter’s was to be identified with Rome, so, to the imagination of contemporaries, the Pharos became Alexandria and Alexandria became the Pharos. Never, in the history of architecture, has a secular building been thus worshipped and taken on a spiritual life of its own. It beaconed to the imagination, not only to ships at sea, and long after its light was extinguished memories of it glowed in the minds of men.
It stood in a colonnaded court. (Plan II p. [135]). There were four stories. ([Plan I, Fig. i]). The square bottom storey was pierced with many windows and contained the rooms, estimated at 300, where the mechanics and attendants were housed. There was a spiral ascent—probably a double spiral—and in the centre there may have been hydraulic machinery for raising fuel to the top; otherwise we must imagine a procession of donkeys who cease not night and day to go up and down the spirals with loads of wood on their backs. The storey ended in a square platform and a cornice and figures of Tritons. Here too, in great letters of lead, was the Greek inscription; “Sostratus of Cnidos, son of Dexiphanes: to the Saviour Gods: for sailors”—an inscription which, despite its simplicity, bore a double meaning. The “Saviour Gods” are of course Castor and Pollux who protect mariners, but a courtly observer could refer them to Ptolemy Soter and Berenice, whose worship their son was promoting.
Kait Bey Plan I
Fig I The Pharos as built by Sostratus
Fig II The Pharos in the Arab Period
Fig III The Castle before 1882
Kait Bey Plan II
The second storey was octagonal and entirely filled by the spiral ascent. Above that was the circular third story, and above that the lantern. The lighting arrangements are uncertain. Visitors speak of a mysterious “mirror” on the summit, which was even more wonderful than the building itself. What was this “mirror”? Was it a polished steel reflector for the fire at night or for heliography by day? Some accounts describe it as made of finely wrought glass or transparent stone, and declare that a man sitting under it could see ships at sea that were invisible to the naked eye. A telescope? Is it possible that the great Alexandrian school of mathematics discovered the lens, and that their discovery was lost and forgotten when the Pharos fell? It is possible. It is certain that the lighthouse was fitted with every scientific improvement known to the age, that the antique world never surpassed it, and that the mediaeval world regarded it as the work of Jinns.
Standing on the lantern was a statue of Poseidon. This terminated the tower, whose complete height certainly exceeded 400 feet and possibly touched 500.
(2) History of the Building.
We must now follow this masterpiece of engineering into ages of myth and oblivion. It retained its form and functions unimpaired up to the Arab Conquest (A.D. 641). The first, and irreparable, disaster was the fall of the lantern (about 700), entailing the loss of scientific apparatus that could not be replaced. There is a legend that the disaster was planned by the Byzantine Emperor, who could not attack Egypt owing to the magic “Mirror,” which detected or destroyed his ships. He sent an agent who gained the Caliph’s confidence and told him that beneath the Pharos the treasure of Alexander the Great lay buried. The Caliph commenced demolition, and before the inhabitants of Alexandria, who knew better, could intervene, the two upper stories had fallen into the sea. Henceforth the Pharos is only a stump with a bonfire on the top.
There were restorations under Ibn Touloun (880), and also about 980, but they were unsubstantial additions to the Octagon which the wind could blow away. Structural repairs were neglected, and about 1100 the second disaster occurred—the fall of the Octagon itself through an earthquake. The square bottom story survived, but only as a watchtower on the top of which was run up a small square Mosque. (see [Plan I, Fig. ii], which illustrates this state of the Pharos. The level of the ground has risen owing to the debris from the octagon, and the lower story has been buttressed). Then came the final earthquake (14th cent.) and the slow dissolution was over.
Though unable to preserve the Pharos the Arabs admired it, and speak, with their love of the marvellous, of a statue on it whose finger followed the diurnal course of the sun, of a second statue who gave out with varying and melodious voices the various hours of the day, and of a third who shouted an alarm as soon as a hostile flotilla set sail,. The first two statues may have existed; the Alexandrians loved such toys. And there is an element of truth in another Arab legend—that the building rested upon a “glass crab.” Some vitrious composition probably did form the foundation, and we know that “Cleopatra’s Needle” actually did rest on crabs of metal (p. [162]); the oriental mind has confused the two monuments. The legend culminates in the visit to the Pharos of a cavalcade of horsemen who lose their way in the 300 rooms, and inadvertently riding into a crack in the glass crab’s back fall into the sea! But sometimes the lighthouse sheltered pleasanter adventures. The poet El Deraoui, for example, writes:
A lofty platform guides the voyager by night, guides
him with its light when the darkness of evening falls.
Thither have I borne a garment of perfect pleasure
among my friends, a garment adorned with the memory of
beloved companions.
On its height a dome enshadowed me, and thence I saw
my friends like stars.
I thought that the sea below me was a cloud, and that
I had set up my tent in the midst of the heavens.
Moreover “El Manarah,” as the Arabs called it, gave the name to, and became the model for, the “minaret.” There is no minaret in Alexandria that closely follows the Pharos, but at Cairo (e.g. at the Tombs of the Mamelukes) one can still see the square bottom story, the Octagon, the Round and the Summit that exactly reproduce the four-stage design of Sostratus.
(3). Fort Kait Bey.
For a hundred years ruins cumbered the peninsula. Then (1480) the Mameluke Sultan Kait Bey fortified it as part of his coast defence against the Turks, who had taken Constantinople and were threatening Egypt. (p. [81]). Kait Bey is a great figure at Cairo, where mosques commemorate his glorious reign. Here he only builds a fort, but like all his work it is architecturally fine, and even in decay its outlines are harmonious. The scheme was a pentagon ([Plan II]) and in the enclosed area, on the exact site of the Pharos, stood a square castle or keep with a mosque embedded in it. ([Plan I, Fig. iii], which shows the castle before it was ruined, the minaret sticking up inside it). The Turks effected their conquest in 1517, and when their power in its turn declined, Mohammed Ali (1805-1848) modernised the defences. No visitors were admitted, and the Fort gained the reputation of an impregnable and mysterious place. Its career ended with the English bombardment of 1882. Though it did not suffer as much as its neighbour Fort Adda, damage enough was done. The castle was shattered, the minaret snapped, and the desolation and squalor re-established that brood there to-day.
We can now examine the existing remains. (See Plans I & II pp. [134] & [135]).
The connecting spit of land only formed in the 9th cent. Previously there was shallow water, spanned by a bridge. Right, as we approach, is anchorage for an Italian fishing fleet; the men come from Bari in the Adriatic.—The road leads by the side of the fort to the new breakwater, built to protect the Eastern Harbour and the Sea wall. The Breakwater is a noble work, and it is a pity it is approached through a gateway that suggests an English provincial Jail; the embellishments of modern Alexandria are unduly lugubrious.
The blocked up Gateway to the Fort is flanked by round towers; inside it are several rooms with 15th cent. vaulting.—To its left, built into the masonry of Kait Bey’s wall or lying on the beach, are about thirty broken columns of red Assouan granite; also two or three pieces of fine speckled granite and one piece of marble. These are survivals from the Pharos, and may have stood in the colonnade of its surrounding court; the sea wall of that court probably diverged here from the line of Kait Bey’s wall; there are traces of cutting among the rocks.
The interior of the Fort (best entered from the right) is now a bare enclosure with a few coast-guard huts. The isolated lump of building at the end is the remains of Kait Bey’s Castle, occupying the ground plan of the Pharos and utilising in part its foundations. Some of these foundations can be seen in the passage immediately to the right of the Castle. The orientation of the Castle and the Pharos was not exactly the same, since the Castle had to be adjusted to the points of the compass on account of the mosque that it contained.—The modern buildings to the right of the passage also rest on old foundations; it is thought that here stood the reservoir, filled with fresh water from the mainland and that on the other side (left of present Castle) stood another edifice with the mechanical statues to balance the design. But this is all conjecture.
The Mosque in the Castle is notable for two reasons: architecturally it is the oldest in the city, and in style it is essentially Cairene. It was built by the central government in the course of their coast defence scheme, and so does not resemble the ordinary mosque of the Delta. The entrance, with its five monoliths of Assouan granite, taken from the Pharos, is almost druidical in effect, but the arch above them and the flanking towers faintly recall the glories of Kait Bey’s work at Cairo. In the vestibule are remains of stucco on the ceiling and marble on the floor.—The actual Mosque is of the “school” type—a square with an arched recess opening out of each side, each recess being assigned to one of the four orthodox sects of Islam; the Mosque of Sultan Hassan at Cairo is a famous example of this type. The square, and the step leading up to each recess are inlaid with marble. Light enters through carved woodwork above.
Over the Mosque are vaulted rooms. From the summit of the mass is a View of Alexandria, not beautiful but instructive. From right to left are:—Fort Adda, Ras-el-Tin lighthouse (background); minarets of Abou el Abbas and Bouseiri Mosques (foreground); Kom-el-Nadur Fort; Terbana Mosque (foreground); Pompey’s Pillar (back); Kom-el-Dik Fort; the long line of Eastern suburbs; beyond them the distant minaret of Sidi Bishr; the coast ends in the wooded promontory of Montazah. Close beneath is the modern Breakwater stretching towards the opposing promontory of Silsileh; and left, awash with waves, the Diamond Rock.—And now let the visitor (if the effort is not beyond him) elevate himself 400 feet higher into the air. Let him replace the Ras-el-Tin lighthouse by a Temple to Poseidon; let him delete the mosques and the ground they stand on, and imagine in their place an expanse of water crossed by a Dyke; let him add to “Pompey’s Pillar” the Temple of Serapis and Isis and the vast buttressed walls of the Library; let him turn Kom-el-Dik into a gorgeous and fantastic park, with the Tomb of Alexander at its feet; and the Eastern Suburbs into gardens; and finally let him suppose that it is not Silsileh that stretches towards him but the peak of the Ptolemaic Palace, sheltering to its right the ships of the royal fleet and flanked on the landward side by the tiers of the theatre and the groves of the Mouseion.—Then he may have some conception of what Ancient Alexandria looked like from the summit of the Pharos—what she looked like when the Arabs entered in the autumn of 641.
Beneath the Batteries on the north of the Fort, and almost level with the beach, is a long gallery in which lie some shells that were fired by the English in 1882.
The tram now follows the curve of the Eastern Harbour, a beautifully shaped basin. It was the main harbour of the ancients, but Mohammed Ali when he planned the modern city, developed the Western instead (p. [91]). There is a sea wall in two stages, to break the waves which dash right on to the road in rough weather; and there is a very fine promenade—the New Quays—which stretches all the way from Kait Bey to Silsileh. A walk along it can be delightful, though occasionally marred by bad smells.—We pass, right, the Bouseiri Mosque (see above) and finally come to the French Gardens, that connect with the Square, whence we started.
Left of the French Gardens are: the French Consulate—an isolated building; the General Post Office—entered from the road behind; and the Church of St. Andrews—Church of Scotland. To the right, down Rue de l’Eglise Maronite, is the Maronite Church, an inoffensive building; (for the Maronites see pp. 77, 213).