XXXVIII
WAYS THAT ARE EGYPTIAN
I wonder why we are always taken first to the mosques, or why, when our time is pretty limited, we are taken to them at all. Mosques are well enough, but when you have seen a pretty exhaustive line of them in Turkey and Syria, Egypt cannot furnish any very startling attractions in this field. For mosques are modern (anything less than a thousand years old is modern to us now), and Egypt is not a land of modern things. Besides, here in Cairo there are such a number of fascinating out-of-the-way corners which we are dying to see—unholy side-streets, picturesquely hidden nooks, and mysterious, shut-in life; besides all the bazaars—
Never mind; the mosques did have a certain interest, especially the mosque of Al-Azhar, which is nine hundred years old and built about a great court—an old mosque when America was still undiscovered—and the mosque of Hassan, "whose prayer will nevair be accept," Abraham said (Abraham being our guide), "because when ze architec' have finish, ze Sultan Hassan have cut off hees han' so he cannot produce him again." Napoleon's first gun in Egypt hit a minaret of Hassan's mosque, it is said, and it has had bad luck generally, perhaps because of the cruel act of its royal builder. We were not even required to put on slippers to enter it, so it cannot be held in very great veneration. Then there is the mosque of Mohammed Ali, built within the last century and modern throughout, the only mosque in the world, I believe, to have electric lights!
It was Mohammed Ali who settled the Mameluke problem in the conclusive way which sultans adopt at times. The Mamelukes were the Janizaries of Egypt, though fewer in number. Still, there were enough of them to make trouble and keep matters stirred up, and Ali grew tired of them. So did the public, according to our guide:
"Ali, he say to some people, 'You like get rid of zose Mameluke?' an' all ze people say, 'Yez, of course.' So Ali he make big dinner, an' ze Mameluke come an' eat, an' have fine, big time."
It was on the 1st of March, 1811, that Ali issued his general invitation to the Mameluke leaders to attend a function at the Citadel; and, after entertaining them hospitably, invited them to march through a narrow passageway, which was suddenly closed at each end, while from above opened a musket-fire that presently concluded those Mamelukes—470 of them—with the exception of one man, who is said to have leaped his horse through a window down a hundred feet or so, where he "Jump from hees horse and run—run fas' to Jaffa!" which was natural enough.
There was only one trouble with that story. Abraham did not explain how this particular Mameluke came to have his horse at luncheon, and why, with or without horses, a number of those other Mamelukes did not follow him. Every Mameluke of my acquaintance would have gone through that window, mounted or otherwise, and without calculating the distance to the ground. However, Abraham showed us the passage and the place of the leap, and later the graves of the 470, all of which was certainly convincing. Following the removal of the leaders, a general burial of Mamelukes took place throughout Egypt, since which time members of that organization have been extremely hard to catch. It must have been Ali's neat solution of the Mameluke problem which fifteen years later was copied in Constantinople by Mahmoud II., when he disposed of the Janizaries.
It was at the tomb of a distinguished pasha—a fine, inviting place—that we saw a small green piece of the robe of Abraham. It was incorporated in a very sacred rug, one of the twelve which Cairo, Constantinople, and Damascus contribute to Mecca each year. We asked how Abraham's robe could hold out this way, and his namesake shrugged and smiled: