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The murakkee (who was no other than the mosque servant and my ally of the courtyard) then proceeded to open the folding-doors of the pulpit, and took a wooden sword from behind them, and holding it with its point to the ground, he also repeated the salutation. From a raised platform (known as the dikkeh, and standing at the entrance to the liwán) an officiant now chants the praises of Mohammed. The servant then recites each verse of the adán, and they are repeated in a sonorous voice by the man on the dikkeh. During this the khateeb, as the preacher is called, advances to the pulpit, and taking the sword from the murakkee, he slowly ascends the steps, and reaching the top one, he waits till the recital is concluded.

The preacher stands, holding the sword point downwards, and delivers his address in a solemn and effective manner to his congregation, who sit rapt in attention.

No special vestments are worn by those who officiate, and the ordinary robes of a sheykh seem perfectly appropriate. The sword, the only object used in the simple ritual, is to remind the hearers that Islam was spread by the sword and that by its power it should, if necessary, still be maintained. Little outward reverence is shown to the mosque, as such, at ordinary times, for I have seen it used as a convenient place to sleep in during the heat of the day, and the playing amongst its columns of lads during the intervals of their tasks strikes no one as unseemly behaviour. But at the call to prayer the demeanour of all present is strikingly reverent.

I have worked in a great number of mosques and must have seen thousands of men attending the services, but I don’t recall having seen half a dozen worshippers in any other but the native dress. Now that all the youth of the country, who attend the Khedivial schools or have of late years passed through their classes, adopt the European garb; that the numerous employees in the government and other offices have all forsaken the native dress—is it not strange that a trousered Moslem should hardly ever be seen inside a mosque unless he goes there merely as a spectator? The effendi, a title loosely given to every native in European dress and tarbouch, feels, I’m sure, ill at ease amongst his co-religionists when the services of his religion are being held. The devout Moslem views the western garb as ‘a mark of the Beast.’ This is felt so strongly in Morocco, that should a Moor appear in coat and trousers, his co-religionists would tear them off him.

The encouragement given in Egypt to the adoption of western clothes is a fatal mistake. The courteous manners of the oriental seem to leave him with his cast-off kuftán; his morals are distinctly worse when the ties of his creed are loosened; and the Christian missionary knows well enough that the westernised Egyptian is not a fertile soil for the Gospel seed. We must not flatter ourselves that our hold on Egypt is in any way strengthened by this silly fashion; we have only to attend a nationalist demonstration to see how the trousered effendi out-numbers the robed Egyptian. Should the sword of the preacher unhappily be held aloft and a holy war proclaimed from every pulpit, this European veneer would vanish like smoke, and the effendi would revert to the garb of the sheykh.

During my first season in Egypt I painted a crowd of young students at the entrance of one of the Khedivial schools. The lads were all robed and turbaned, and whatever their social positions may have been, each individual looked a dignified young gentleman. When next I visited Cairo all this was changed. The kuftán and the gibbeh were replaced by sweated tailor goods from some Greek departmental stores. I felt a personal dislike to the whole education department, and especially to the British Adviser. I am glad to add that I have since learnt that our countrymen had nothing to do with it. It was the Egyptian officials who inaugurated the change. Education has made such advances since the British occupation, through the efforts of a hard-working and certainly not overpaid British staff, that I am glad to know that I was not justified in attributing to it so foolish a blunder.

CHAPTER XI
THE BLUE MOSQUE AND KASR-ESH-SHEMA

I HAVE never passed a season in Cairo without making a study of some sort in the Blue Mosque. There are many mosques of much greater architectural pretensions, as well as of more historical interest; but so long as artists continue to flock to Egypt in search of subjects, so long will the Blue Mosque serve them for material. On entering the blue-tiled liwán after a tramp through the glare and the dust of the open spaces around the citadel, something of the pleasure is experienced of him who, after a desert journey, first rests his eyes on the green of cultivation. The pleasure is as much a physical as an intellectual one, for the hot season draws one there far more than does the cold. The temperature would be no higher were the walls a scarlet, but I’m sure it would be more felt; and this is not only so to those whose training inclines them to search out beautiful colour, for I have observed that more people come here to sleep through the heat of the day than to any other mosque.