THE MOSQUE OF MURIST?N KALA?N, MY EXPERIENCE WITH THE FAKíR, AND A DIGRESSION ON THE SUBJECT OF DERVISHES
PASSING once more the mosque of Kala?n, I was attracted to one of its windows; not on account of its particular interest as such, but of its possibilities as a point of vantage from which I might paint the opposite side of the road, and, unmolested, make studies of the interesting incidents which take place in it.
There was still time to go to the Wakfs ministry before it closed for the midday ‘siesta.’ ‘El Wakfs’ is the name of what we might term the Board of Religious Endowments. It is here where artists must apply for a pass to allow them to paint inside the mosques.
I fortunately found Herz Bey, the architect of the Wakfs, and he very kindly gave me what I required.
Apart from the window of Kala?n’s mosque which would be of great use to me, its interior is one of the finest and most ornate in the whole of Cairo. I had found several subjects there in former years, and I looked forward to finding a pleasant asylum in which I could restfully do some work after the fatigue of some days of street painting.
23 The mosque was falling into a ruinous state when I had last entered it. Originally most gorgeous, its colouring had then been softened down by more than six centuries since en-Nasir completed the dome which covers the tomb of his father.
I also looked forward to a cooler spot than my café, for Cairo has far from cooled down during the first days of November. Though the thermometer may not register so high as in June, the damp heat during the high Nile is more felt than the greater, but dryer, temperature of early summer.
I was prepared not to find the mosque as paintable as in the earlier days,
‘Before Decay’s effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers’;
yet I was hardly prepared to find it to all appearance a brand new building. It had been admirably restored, and restoration was necessary, I have no doubt, to prevent its falling into complete ruin, as so many other monuments have done. But, alas, its poetry was gone. Nor is this likely to return so long as it is kept as a show-place merely, and only visited by the tourist or student of Saracenic architecture. The hundred and one signs which suggested the worshippers who had gathered here during the six bygone centuries were all swept away; the worn praying mats were gone, and any of the movable furniture which is not now shelved and labelled in a museum may have found its way to some dealer’s shop,—the place for which these things were designed knows them no more.
I started a large drawing, for in spite of all it is a24 beautiful building, and looks now in all probability very much as it looked when Nasir’s work-people left it. I worked hard at this drawing; spent whole mornings getting the intricate arabesque patterns into perspective and their relative tones; but the longer I worked the more my drawing became the lifeless perspective elevation plate of some book on architecture.
Some day, when my last impressions of the place may fade and I may remember more clearly the shrine retaining its human associations, I may possibly be able to take up this drawing again and infuse some life into it.
I did better from the window overlooking the Nahasseen.
The ruinous domed mosque—built before the one of Kala?n—to shelter the remains of Ayyub es-Salih, has been heavily dealt with by ‘decay’s effacing fingers.’ Copper-smiths have rigged up their stalls against its crumbling walls, and the mosque school still hangs together sufficiently to be used by the youths repeating their Koran. This and an ever-moving crowd of people had at all events a soul left in it.
My regrets at having lost so much time in producing an artistic failure decreased in proportion as the use I was able to make of this window increased.
Facing immediately the street leading to the Beit-el-Kadi, I was able to take notes, on a market day, of all the incidents mentioned in the last chapter, and at ordinary times there would always be more than enough subject-matter to furnish the foreground of the couple of drawings I made from here.
Page 24
A CHEAP RIDE
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25 The mosque being now a ‘sight’ more than a place of worship, a fee is charged for admittance; and even this matter, which I was regretting before now, proved an advantage to me, for the attentions of the inquisitive are usually more marked while making figure studies than while painting some inanimate subject.
Small boys would occasionally crawl on to the sill and hang on to the grating to try and see what I was doing, till my man, whom I kept outside, would send them away.
A ragged fakir chose the bit of pavement just below my window to do a little basking in the sun. Mohammed whispered to me, through the grating, that he was a great saint, and squatted next to him in the full odour of his sanctity. A current of air would now and again bring some of this odour my way; but I restrained Mohammed from disturbing the fakir in his sleep. Others were not so considerate, for, in spite of the old man’s saintly repute, a number of young hooligans soon surrounded him, and comments on his appearance provoked such laughter as to wake him up.
The fakir now seemed as one possessed of a devil; he laid about with his staff and cursed his tormentors with a fluency which only a long practice, during his unregenerate days, could have given him. A young woman at a safe distance called out to him that the ghawaga, that is I, was sketching him, whereupon he turned round and directed the flow of bad language in my direction. The grating was a protection from the old fellow’s staff, and an unused-up lot of curses soon fell on the head of Mohammed, who moved him off.
26 Too much attention having been drawn to my window, I retired with my materials within the shades of the mosque interior.
I made inquiries about the old man. The term, fakir, is used in Egypt to denote a wandering dervish, and is also applied to any poor beggar. His rags were not simply the torn garments of a poor man, but a carefully made coat of many patches and of variously coloured stuffs, known as a ‘dilk.’ Shreds of coloured cloth were also fastened to the end of his staff. He wore no turban, and had supplemented his own hair with what I believe ladies call ‘a front’ made from a horse’s tail.
I was told that he belonged to the Rifaiyeh order of dervishes, and was famous in his day for being able to pass swords through his body without leaving a wound; he would also charm serpents and scorpions away from a house, eat live coals and chew glass.
As I have seen many appear to do these wonders without necessarily being considered very holy men, there remained a more potent reason for his reputed sanctity. I tapped my forehead once or twice, suggesting that an excess of miracles must have made him mad. ‘His mind is in heaven and only his body remains on earth,’ was the answer to my suggested question.
A superstitious awe for persons whose intellect is affected obtains all over the Mohammedan world—the Cairo hooligan being apparently the exception.
The great majority of dervishes are men of some trade or another and take part in a zikr during the religious festivals; a few lead a tramp’s life and beg their way from town to town where one of these festivals27 may be taking place; while those who are mentally afflicted without being actually dangerous can generally find the wherewithal to live in the district to which they belong. The latter are now rarely met with in the European parts of Cairo, and as they seem generally bereft of all sense of decency, the police may have something to say in the matter.
I attended a zikr during my first visit to Egypt, when an evening with the Howling or Dancing dervishes was still looked upon as one of the ‘sights.’ These were often got up by the dragomans as an entertainment for the tourists. H. H. the Khedive has since forbidden these shows as liable to bring Islamism into disrepute. Some wit remarked of the dragomans, that they believed in Mohammed and his profits. The dervishes (or darweesh, as they are called in Egypt) were genuine ones, and argued that their religious exercises might be just as acceptable even if they resulted in some profit in the shape of a ‘baksheesh’ from the unbelievers.
The first part of the performance was the same as may be seen any evening, in any village, during the month of Ramadan.
About a dozen men sat in a double row facing each other, and, taking their time from a leader, began by slowly repeating the first words of the Moslem’s confession of faith: ‘Lá iláha illa-lláh,’ which they accompanied with a swaying of their bodies backwards and forwards. Gradually they would increase the speed of the repetition and the movements, always taking their time from the leader. This got faster and faster till their chief shouted ‘Alláh!’ Then, repeating28 this one word, the swaying of their bodies became so rapid that one or two fell down exhausted. The remainder kept it up as long as their physical endurance would allow; their mouths foaming, their faces livid, and a mad look in their eyes. Presently more would fall down; some lying still, and others to all appearance in their death agony. The cry of ‘Allah’ finally ceased when the leader fell forward, and, saving a gasp or a gurgle, all was still.
Some of us were preparing to leave when a sign from the conductor of our party kept us in our seats.
These bodies stretched on the floor—to all appearance dead or dying—looked ghastly in the light of the flickering torches.
We sat on some time wondering what the next move would be. A heavy breathing with alternate choking on the part of one of the performers directed our attention his way. After making several attempts to rise, he succeeded in getting into a sitting posture and stared vacantly at us. When he seemed conscious of where he was and what he was doing, he rose rapidly to his feet and spun round and round for several minutes; he next seized hold of a torch, continued his gyrations, and without stopping held the lighted torch under his one garment, allowing the flames to pass all over his body. It reminded me horribly of the straw fires with which peasants are wont to burn the bristles off a stuck pig.
A foreign princess who was of our party, and on whose behalf this zikr had been arranged, had now seen as much as she could stand, and she and her immediate suite went away.
29 The performers seemed quite unconscious of this disturbance; the man kept on spinning round, toasting his chest and then his back till he let fall the torch and sank down on the matting.
Another had in the meanwhile come to life again and begun to spin like a teetotum. He drew two knives from his girdle and, while continuing his motion, rested the points on his lower eyelids; he next hacked his face and forehead, and when the blood-letting had sufficiently cooled his frenzy he joined his companions on the floor.
The low muttered ‘Alláh’ from the other dervishes showed that they were awakening from the kind of cataleptic sleep they had fallen into.
A third one now arose and startled one of the spectators by rushing forward and seizing a tumbler near him; he bit off pieces of glass and crunched them in his teeth. He looked absolutely loathsome as he appeared to swallow the glass, with the blood streaming from his mouth. His craving for glass was not satisfied yet. The glass of an oil lamp near me caught his eye, and catching hold of it, hot as it was, he chewed it up as a half-starved dog would chew a bone.
I had now had more than enough, and slipped quietly off before a fourth began his ‘turn.’
Mohammed followed me out. He was not very communicative about the unnatural orgy we had assisted at, and as he is a good Moslem, I fancy he seemed ashamed of the performance.
While walking down the Mousky on the following morning, a cabman seated on the box of his arabeyeh30 greeted Mohammed with an unusually cheery ‘Salaam Alêkum.’ The answer, ‘Alêkum es-Salaam, ya ibne Kelb,’ with an accompanying shake of the finger, was surprising; that is, ‘The peace be with you, O son of a dog.’ The cabby laughed and drove on. Mohammed looked rather consciously at me, and seeing that I looked puzzled, he asked me if I did not recall that cabman’s face. Yes, I had seen him before, but when or where I could not say. ‘Why, he is the darweesh who ate all that broken glass last night.’
True enough, it was the very man! But no première danseuse seen with her tinsel and spangles behind the footlights, and afterwards met in everyday garb, could have shown as great a contrast as did this cabby and the wild dervish of the previous night. He was dressed in European clothes, except for the red tarbouch, and he seemed none the worse for his last night’s glass supper.