From the mouths of the Nile, Ibn Batûta approached that ancient land where mournful memorials stand out, clear and awful, in the flood of light; where every winding of the mysterious valley repeats the enigma of the tomb. He came to Cairo, and saw the Pyramids,
“Memphis, and Thebes, and whatso’er of strange
Dark Ethiopia on her desert hills conceals.”
He tells us of all in architecture that struck him as worthy of mention, of the products of the soil, of the habits of the people, and of their government. He praises the emulation of the provincial Emirs of Egypt in good works and the building of mosques. He watches the gathering of great personages at the procession of the Mahmil, or drapery woven to cover that sanctuary at Mecca wherein lay the object of Arabian worship ages before Mohammed was born. For the Sacred Stone fell from Paradise with Adam; and the Archangel Gabriel carried it to him for the house which he built to God.
Magistrates and juris consults, the great officials of the Sultan and the Syndics of Corporations, some on horseback, some on foot, assemble at Cairo and await the Holy Drapery. The Emir who, this year, is to head the annual pilgrimage, arrives with attendant troops and camels and water-carriers. A conical box encloses the sacred cloth. All the nondescript population of the city follow it. By some trick of the camel-drivers, their beasts are urged to strange screeching; and the motley throng makes its slow progress round the city, a winding river of vivid colour and odd effect; a procession not without dignity, but which an ancient Athenian had perhaps found a tawdry show compared with the simple grace of the procession of the peplops in his City of the Violet Crown.
From Cairo, our pilgrim makes his way to Panopolis, then “a great town, fine and well-built,” and so to Syene, partly following the river where each new morning mocks the ruined temples, and partly taking short cuts across the desert.
A holy man told him that he would find it impossible to fulfil his pilgrimage just then; but he pushed across the unpeopled sands which lie between the Nile and the Red Sea, and, after a trying journey of fifteen days, found himself among a “black” race, called Bodjas, who were settled at Aidhab, at that time a port of considerable trade. These people wore yellow garments and affected the smallest of head-gear. They would seem to have preserved their independence by martial spirit; and, as is so often the case among a warrior-people, daughters were not allowed to succeed to property. At this moment, they were at war with the Mamaluke soldiery of Egypt; and it was impossible for pilgrims to get transport across the Red Sea.