Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

Stand with me on the Hill of the Citadel and take a look over Cairo. We are away up over the river Nile, and far above the minarets of the mosques that rise out of the vast plain of houses below. We are at a height as great as the tops of the Pyramids, which stand out upon the yellow desert off to the left. The sun is blazing and there is a smoky haze over the Nile valley, but it is not dense enough to hide Cairo. The city lying beneath us is the largest on the African continent and one of the mightiest of the world. It now contains about eight hundred thousand inhabitants; and in size is rapidly approximating Heliopolis and Memphis in the height of their ancient glory.

Of all the Mohammedan cities of the globe, Cairo is growing the fastest. It is more than three times as big as Damascus and twenty times the size of Medina, where the Prophet Mohammed died. The town covers an area equal to fifty quarter-section farms; and its buildings are so close together that they form an almost continuous structure. The only trees to be seen are those in the French quarter, which lies on the outskirts.

The larger part of the city is of Arabian architecture. It is made up of flat-roofed, yellowish-white buildings so crowded along narrow streets that they can hardly be seen at this distance. Here and there, out of the field of white, rise tall, round stone towers with galleries about them. They dominate the whole city, and under each is a mosque, or Mohammedan church. There are hundreds of them in Cairo. Every one has its worshippers, and from every tower, five times a day, a shrill-voiced priest calls the people to prayers. There is a man now calling from the Mosque of Sultan Hasan, just under us. The mosque itself covers more than two acres, and the minaret is about half as high as the Washington Monument. So delighted was Hasan with the loveliness of this structure that when it was finished he cut off the right hand of the architect so that it would be impossible for him to design another and perhaps more beautiful building. Next it is another mosque, and all about us we can see evidences that Mohammedanism is by no means dead, and that these people worship God with their pockets as well as with their tongues.

In the Alabaster Mosque, which stands at my back, fifty men are now praying, while in the courtyard a score of others are washing themselves before they go in to make their vows of repentance to God and the Prophet. Not far below me I can see the Mosque El-Azhar, which has been a Moslem university for more than a thousand years, and where something like ten thousand students are now learning the Koran and Koranic law.

Here at Cairo I have seen the people preparing to take their pilgrimage to Mecca, rich and poor starting out on that long journey into the Arabian desert. Many go part of the way by water. The ships leaving Alexandria and Suez are crowded with pilgrims and there is a regular exodus from Port Sudan and other places on this side of the Red Sea. They go across to Jidda and there lay off their costly clothing before they make their way inland, each clad only in an apron with a piece of cloth over the left shoulder. Rich and poor dress alike. Many of the former carry gifts and other offerings for the sacred city. Such presents cost the Egyptian government alone a quarter of a million dollars a year; for not only the Khedive but the Mohammedan rulers of the Sudan send donations. The railroad running from far up the Nile to the Red Sea makes special rates to pilgrimage parties.

Yet I wonder whether this Mohammedanism is not a religion of the lips rather than of the heart. These people are so accustomed to uttering prayers that they forget the sense. The word God is heard everywhere in the bazaars. The water carrier, who goes about with a pigskin upon his back, jingling his brass cups to announce his business, cries out: “May God recompense me!” and his customer replies, as he drinks, by giving him a copper in the name of the Lord. The lemonade peddler, who carries a glass bottle as big as a four-gallon crock, does the same, and I venture to say that the name of the Deity is uttered here more frequently than in any other part of the world. It is through this custom of empty religious formulas that I am able to free myself of the beggars of the city. I have learned two Arab words: “Allah yatik,” which mean: “May God give thee enough and to spare.” When a beggar pesters me I say these words gently. He looks upon me in astonishment, then touches his forehead in a polite Mohammedan salute and goes away.

On my second visit to Egypt I was fortunate in being in Cairo on the birthday of the Prophet. It was a feast day among the Mohammedans, and at night there was a grand religious celebration at the Alabaster Mosque which Mehemet Ali, that Napoleon of Egypt, built on the Citadel above Cairo. Its minarets, overlooking the Nile valley, the great deserts and the vast city of Cairo, blazed with light, and from them the cry of the muezzins sounded shrill on the dusky air: “Allah is great! There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is the Prophet of Allah! Come to worship! Allah is great! There is no God but Allah!”

As this call reverberated through the city, Mohammedans of all classes started for the Citadel. Some came in magnificent turnouts, bare-legged, gaudily dressed syces with wands in their hands running in front of them to clear the way. Some came upon donkeys. Some moved along in groups of three or four on foot. The Khedive came with the rest, soldiers with drawn swords going in front of his carriage and a retinue of cavalry following behind.

The Alabaster Mosque covers many acres. It has a paved marble court, as big as a good-sized field, around which are cloisters. This is roofed with the sky, and in the midst of it is a great marble fountain where the worshippers bathe their feet and hands before they go in to pray. The mosque is at the back of this court, facing Mecca. Its many domes rise to a great height and its minarets seem to pierce the sky. It is built of alabaster, but its exterior has become worn and pitted by the sands of the desert, which have been blown against its walls until it has nothing of the grandeur which it must have shown when its founder worshipped within it.

The interior, however, was wonderfully beautiful that night, when its gorgeous decorations were shown off by the thousands of lights of this great service. Under the gaslight and lamplight the tinsel which during the day shocks the taste was softened and beautified. The alabaster of the walls became as pure as Mexican onyx, and the rare Persian rugs that lay upon the floor took on a more velvety tint.