The actual structure was raised by a certain Aksunkur during the middle of the fourteenth century, and many much finer mosques of that period are still remaining. It was restored more than three centuries later by Ibrahim Agha, and, whatever the purist may have to say to the contrary, it is these restorations which give the charm to the place.
Blue tiles cover the whole wall of the vast liwán; from the matted pavement to the spring of the vaulting they spread around the prayer-niche till, high up, they reach the ribbing of the dome. This was a great undertaking of Ibrahim Agha, for though the tiles were not worth the fancy prices of the present day, it must have been a very costly affair even in his time. The domed chapel, containing the tomb of the founder, is more beautiful still, but it is almost too dark to make painting a possibility.
The look of neglect and gentle decay is not depressing, as in many a Cairene building which lies under the sentence of complete renovation or of a total collapse. Some structural repairs have lately been made, which were doubtless badly needed; but I hope it may stop at that. The Moslem has all he wants now for his frequent prayers or his midday nap, and no renovation of the mosque would ever compensate for the loss of its present charm.
The mosques of Cairo can be an endless source of instruction to any one interested in the builder’s art, their number is so great (over four hundred) and they are so varied in character; they suit their surroundings as if they had grown into the spaces they occupy, and those who worship there look as if they had been grown for that purpose.
Interesting as are the temples of ancient Egypt, they have not the human interest of the Cairene mosques. Old and decrepit as the latter may be, the beauty of life is still there; the temple at its best has but the beauty of a corpse. The restoration of the mosques, if well done, as happily is often the case here, may rob them of some temporary charm, but it preserves to the people a valuable heritage; whereas the restored temples will merely give future generations something to laugh at.
What temple is grander than Tulún’s mosque? Or in which of them did the builder’s art excel that of the Sultan Hassan? Yet how few visit these mosques compared with the crowds who are rushed through the temples of Upper Egypt. The one of all others which every tourist is taken to see is the mosque of Mohammed Ali, which crowns the citadel heights. It is imposing from its magnificent position; but who ever leaves it with any higher thought than of the money which has been lavished on it?
An appreciative guide to the mosques may now be found in Douglas Sladen’s Oriental Cairo, and to do here inadequately what he has done so well is not the purpose of these pages.
If so much enjoyment is to be got out of the study of Saracenic structures, what about the early Christian churches? They provide less æsthetic entertainment than do the mosques, solely because their number is very much more restricted. But where in this wide world can any one interested in the dawn of Christianity find a spot to appeal more to his sympathies than in the seven Coptic churches which cluster round the old fortress of Babylon? Concealed as they are from public view, one enters their precincts with much the same feelings as on entering the catacombs of Rome. Within the walls of this Christian settlement, dark and narrow passages lead to the unobtrusive interiors of the churches. The search for the doorkeeper, and when he is found, the primitive key with which he unbolts the ponderous lock, and the man’s dress, which twelve centuries of Mohammedan rule has not altered, all tend to take one back to the days when in these hidden places the shrines of Abu-Sarga and of Kadisa-Barbára were raised.
The first of these two, which is more familiar to us as Saint Sergius, is usually visited before the others. It dates from the tenth century, when the more tolerant rule of the first Fátimid khalifs would allow of its construction; but it stands on the site of a church of a very much earlier date. The crypt of its predecessor still remains, and this takes one back to the times when Memphis stood where some rubbish hills now only mark its site on the western banks of the Nile; when Bab-li-On was in truth the southern gate of On, the ‘City of the Sun,’ of which nothing now is visible but the obelisk of Heliopolis.
A tree marks the spot where the Virgin and the child Jesus are said to have rested. It is about a mile this side of the obelisk, and some fifteen miles from the fortress of Babylon which the Romans built on the site of the gate of On, and whose name it retained. Tradition has it that near this tree the Virgin bathed her child in some brackish water, and this becoming sweet, the pilgrims to this day drink of that fountain. Tradition helps us to trace the journey of the Holy Family from this tree to the crypt below the church of Abu-Sarga, for it tells us of another resting-place about midway, and that is Joseph’s well on the citadel hill.