Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

There is no view in Egypt to be compared with that from the Citadel of Cairo. The city, with all its oriental picturesqueness, is at your feet. Domes and minarets are everywhere. You look over it, and your eyes rest sometimes on the green culture, sometimes on the drab desert of Egypt. Beyond, stretching away till it is lost in the haze of distance, is the Valley of Egypt. Through it winds old Nile. It is closed on either side by the irregular ranges of the Libyan and Arabian hills. You know that these pass on through Egypt into Nubia, as the boundaries of the valley. Beyond the river, at the distance of eight or nine miles, on the lower stage of the Libyan range, stand the Great Pyramids of Gizeh. Further off, at about double the distance from you, stand the older Pyramids of Abouseir. Seen from no other point are the Pyramids so impressive. There they stand, at the entrance of the valley, and have stood for more than five thousand years, to tell all who might come down into Egypt of its greatness and glory. They have none of the forms, or features, of architecture. They are mountains, escarped for monuments, by Titan’s hands.

And a little further on are the mounds of Memphis. There lived the men—one would give something to see a day of the life of that old world—who imagined, and made these mountains. You remember that all you saw of them at Memphis was a colossal statue prostrate on the ground. As you look now on the Pyramids you understand that Colossus. These Titan builders felt themselves more than men.

You think how pleasant it would be to sit here, on the parapet of the citadel, inhaling the calumet of memory and imagination; your dear friend, however, who is with you, and who is the most patient and best fellow living, has had enough of it; and he summons back your thoughts from their flight into the far-off tracts of antique time, by a proposal to take another look at the Khan Khaleel Bazaar. As you move away you tell him, to be revenged, ‘that history, like religion, has no power over those who have no imagination; or an imagination furnished only with the images of their own sight-and-self-bounded world.’ ‘Nonsense,’ he replies; and you find yourself again jostling your way through the narrow, crowded, irregular streets of Cairo, upon an ass, with a little swarthy urchin running before you to clear your path. And though everybody seems to submit to him, and to attend readily to his shouts of ‘Right,’ ‘Left,’ ‘Mind your legs,’ you will always have to keep a sharp look-out yourself. You will often be brought to a standstill. There are no trottoirs. The people on foot, the camels, and donkeys, are all jumbled up together. The projecting loads on the camels’ sides seem almost arranged for giving you a lick on the head, and knocking you off your ass.

At last you emerge from the side streets into the Mouské. This is the main artery of the city, and here is the full tide of Cairene life. It is now between four and five o’clock, and the tide is at the top of the flood. The street is straight, and, for a Cairene street, wide enough; the crowd is great; but here everybody, as a matter of course, endeavours to make way for everybody. What you first notice is the abundance of colour. The red tarboosh is perhaps the commonest covering for the head. The turbans vary much; some are of white muslin; some of coloured shawls. The variety of dress is great. Nineteen-twentieths of the passers-by are clad in some form or other of Oriental costume. Their complexions vary as much as their dress. There is every shade, from the glossy black of the Nubian to the dead white of the Turk. The predominant colours are the different shades of yellowish brown which have resulted from the varying degrees of intermixture of Arabs and Copts. Here, at home, the men being at work during the day, it often happens that there are as many women in the street as men. In Cairo the former are often entirely wanting in the street scene, and are never seen in a large proportion. In stature the men are almost always above what we call the middle height, well proportioned, and never fat or pursy, like our beef-eating and beer-drinking people. Their features are regular and pleasing. Their bearing staid and dignified.

There are in the crowd men with water-skins and water-jars. For some insignificant coin—there are four hundred paras in a shilling—they sell drinks to thirsty souls. There are hawkers of bread, of fish, of vegetables, of dates, of oranges, and of a multitude of other matters. These articles are generally cried, if not in the name of the Prophet, still with some pious, or, if not so, then with some poetical, formula. Perhaps a carriage of the Viceroy passes containing some of the ladies of the hareem. They will be escorted by two black guardians of the hareem on horseback, one on each side of the carriage, and preceded by two runners carrying long wands, and dressed in spotless white, with the exception of their red fezes and gaily-coloured shawls. The latter they use as sashes. Each will have cost them fifteen pounds, or more.

When you have become accustomed to the people in the streets, you look at the people in the shops; of course not the Frank, but the native shops. These are merely recesses in the walls of the houses, which form the street. The merchant, or shopkeeper, seldom lives in the house, in the ground floor of which his shop is situated, but generally somewhere at a distance. He has no shopmen, or assistants. The recess, in which he carries on his business, if large, is about in space a cube of ten or twelve feet. It has no door or windows, but is closed with shutters, which the shopkeeper takes down when he comes to do business. He puts them up whenever he wants to go to Mosk, or elsewhere. When his shop is open for business he will be seen seated, cross-legged, on the floor in front of his goods. Every shop being a dark hole, and having its owner seated in front of it, reminded me of a prairie-dog village, where every hole has a prairie-dog seated in front of it, much in the same way; and, too, on the look out. These traders appear to have no Arab blood in them, but to be Greeks, Jews, Turks, Syrians, anybody and everybody except the people of the country. Many of them have an unhealthy appearance. Few of them are good-looking.

As to the houses, what most frequently attracts the eye is the carved wood lattice of the windows. The first floor is frequently advanced beyond the ground-floor. The archway of the door is, in the better class of houses, often ornamented with carved stone-work; and the door itself decorated with a holy text—reverently; perhaps, also, with some lurking idea of excluding evil influences.

But this style of building is now becoming obsolete; and the new houses in and around the Esbekeyeh, and between the Esbekeyeh and Boulak, are being built in the Frank style. The Viceroy has here, for the space of about a square mile, laid out broad macadamized streets, with broad trottoirs on each side, as if he were contemplating an European city. Not much, however, with the exception of these roadways, has yet been done towards carrying out his grand designs, except around the Esbekeyeh. This is the grand place, or square, of Cairo. It now contains a public garden, that would be an ornament worthy of any great European city. It is well lighted with gas made from English coal. As you go to the opera—for there is an opera, too, in Cairo—and return after it is over to your hotel, you are glad of the light; but you are, at the same time, conscious of a little sentimental jar. You did not go to Egypt to find coal gas, and London gas-lamp-posts in the city of Saladin, and of the Caliphs, and in the land of the Pharaohs. You are no longer surprised that the new houses are built in the Frank style.

The Mosks of Cairo may be counted by the hundred. Some have great historical interest; some great artistic merit; some are the great schools of the country.