I have made the Pilgrimage to Mecca sixty times, but if Allah had suffered me to stay a month at Alexandria and pray on its shores, that month would be dearer to me.
The Arabs were anything but barbarians; their own great city of Cairo is a sufficient answer to that charge. But their civilisation was Oriental and of the land; it was out of touch with the Mediterranean civilisation that has evolved Alexandria. At first they made some effort to adapt it to their needs. The church of St. Theonas became part of the huge “Mosque of the 1,000 Columns;” the church of St. Athanasius also became a Mosque—the present Attarine Mosque occupies part of its site; and a third Mosque, that of the Prophet Daniel, rose on the Mausoleum of Alexander. But the Caesareum, the Mouseion, the Pharos, the Ptolemaic Palace, all became ruinous. So did the walls. And though the Arabs built new walls in 811, their course is so short that they vividly illustrate the decline of the town and of the population. (See map p. [98]). They only enclosed a fragment of the ancient city.
In 828 the Venetians, according to their own account, stole from Alexandria the body of St. Mark, concealing it first in a tub of pickled pork in order to repel the attentions of the Moslem officials on the quay. The theft was a pardonable one, for the Arabs never seem to know that it had been made; it occasioned much satisfaction in Venice and no inconvenience in Alexandria. St. Mark procured, there was little to attract the European world; the ports of Egypt were now Rosetta (Bolbitiné Mouth of the Nile), and Damietta (Phatnitic Mouth); there was no reason to approach Alexandria now that her water system had collapsed. Towards the end of the Arab rule she did indeed regain some slight importance; the Mameluke Sultan of Cairo, Kait Bey, built on the ruins of the Pharos the fine fort that bears his name (1480). He built it as a defence against the growing naval power of the Turks. The Turks conquered Egypt in 1517, and a new but equally unimportant chapter in the history of Alexandria begins.
St. Theonas: p. [170].
Attarine Mosque: p. [143].
Mosque of the Prophet Daniel: p. [104].
Fragment of Arab Wall: p. [106], 155.
Fort Kait Bey: p. [133].
THE TURKISH TOWN (16th-18th Cents.)
Under the Turks the population continued to shrink, so that eventually the narrow enclosure of the Arab walls became too large. A new settlement sprang up on the neck of land that had formed between the two harbours. It still exists and is known as the “Turkish Town.” A second-rate affair; little more than a strip of houses intermixed with small mosques; a meagre copy of Rosetta, where the architecture of these centuries can best be studied. So unimportant a place can have no connected history. All that one can do is to quote the isolated comments of a few travelers. (i) The English sailor, John Foxe, (1577) has a lively tale to tell. He had been caught by the Turkish corsairs and imprisoned with his mates. With the connivance of a friendly Spaniard he organised a mutiny, recaptured his ship and in true British style worked it out of the Eastern Harbour under the fire of the guns on Kait Bey. (ii) John Sandys (1610) gives a quaint but impressive description of the decay:—