An Artist in Egypt

by Walter Tyndale

In the mosques orthodox Moslems were replaced by sheykhs of the favoured sect. Christians and Jews were tolerated and often put in high positions. What civilisation gained here it more than lost by cutting off Cairo from the great centres of Saracenic learning, and though bent on destroying the power of the Sunnee or orthodox Moslems, there is no reason to suppose that leanings of Mo’izz were towards Christianity. To remedy this he built the university mosque of el-Azhar, proudly called ‘The Resplendent.’ He endowed it liberally, and gave the students every opportunity to study the Sheea teaching which had caused the rift in the Mohammedan world. A great impetus was given to art by the removal of the prohibition to copy any natural objects; and birds and beasts, flowers and foliage were freely made use of in design during the Fatimid period. Unfortunately little remains of this, for, when the orthodox party gained the ascendant during the rule of the House of Salahedin, these decorations were ‘a mark of the beast’ and were in most cases destroyed.

Vivid descriptions exist of the splendour of Mo’izz and the great ‘East Palace’ which he built. But nothing of all this now remains except the Azhar, which justly is still one of the most famous monuments of Cairo.

Parallel to the canal runs a narrow street called ‘Beyn-es-Sureyn’ or ‘Between the walls,’ and this conducts into another called ‘sharia el-Benât,’ which means the street of the sisters. It is here I have come to make a study of a doorway of little architectural pretensions; it leads into a house built in the middle of the nineteenth century and which backed into the canal. A terrific-looking crocodile used to hang over the door, and this one as well as others had caught my attention during former visits as being a characteristic ornament of a Nile city. Stories, I have since heard, refer to this crocodile, and made me wish to make a drawing of it. Children used to pass it and speak with bated breath; for it was said that it had grown to its size from feeding on the children, the parents of whom the master of the house had slain in Sennaar.

The house was built by the awe-inspiring Defterdar Ahmed, whom Mohammed Ali had sent to the Sudan to avenge the murder of one of his sons, and so terrible were his acts of retribution that he is since known as the ‘Tiger of Sennaar.’ His chief interest, however, for the present is, that, partly as a reward for his valour, the great Pasha gave him one of his daughters in marriage. Mohammed Ali is reported to have said that the Tiger would be a fitting mate to his Tigress.

If my readers have not forgotten the fate of O’Donald, the young Irish officer, they may recognise in this Tigress the lady of his undoing.

It is related that the princess Zohra, after the murder of her lover, was for many days as one bereft of her senses. The first conscious act we hear of her is when she stole from the palace in the dead of night and found her way to the field where O’Donald was buried. The jackals and dogs had left no trace visible of where the unfortunate man was placed,—they had done their work as well as Abbas could have wished. The poor woman was found at break of day, grubbing with her hands in the soil to find the body of her beloved one. She was forcibly led back to the palace and the matter was reported to her father. The servants were severely punished for allowing her to escape from the hareem, and Zohra was kept in strict confinement.

When the Defterdar returned soon after, from his campaign in the Sudan, Ali wished to honour him as highly as he could. He saw also in him one who had strength of will sufficient to be a match for his wilful daughter. Ahmed was proud of the alliance, and built and furnished a palace here in the ‘sharia el-Benât,’ worthy to be the home of his exalted bride. Whether the Defterdar’s life was a happy one we are not told. But it was a short one:—his death was due to a stroke, said the court physicians; poison, whispered the neighbours; and poison, said Abbas, whose hatred of his aunt and former playmate grew as time went on.

Little was seen or heard of the widowed princess for some time after. Few ladies from the different hareems were bold enough to call on her, and the huge crocodile seemed more like a bogey to frighten people off than an emblem of luck to the house which he adorned.

The mysterious disappearance of one or two young men became the talk of the neighbourhood, and this increased as the absence of others was observed. The body of one was found in the canal close to the water-gate of Zohra’s palace, and shortly after this a second one was seen there. No one dared voice their suspicions; but when the public story-tellers (the shoara) told of Kattalet-esh-Shugan, the Arabian Messalina, knowing looks were passed amongst the audience. The tragedies were repeated from time to time, and every mother of a handsome son trembled lest he should be caught in the toils of one she hardly dared name, but whose name was in the thoughts of all.

Abbas kept himself well informed as to what went on in Zohra’s palace, but he abided his time until Mohammed Ali should return from the wars, or until fortune should favour his accession to the viceregal throne. In 1841 the firmân of investiture, as it is called, brought the wars, which Mohammed Ali had waged with varying success, to a close. The hereditary sovereignty of Egypt had been secured to the family of the great Pasha and, except for the annual tribute to be paid to the Porte, Egypt had become an independent state.