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.
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 three117 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.118 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 ?sthetic 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 feelings119 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 of120 Abu-Sarga, for it tells us of another resting-place about midway, and that is Joseph’s well on the citadel hill.
We are taken down some dilapidated steps to visit the crypt, which we are told was the Egyptian house of Joseph and Mary while they hid their child from Herod’s wrath. Needless to say that the crypt is a Christian structure, and of a later date than the Roman fortress, which at its earliest is placed in the second century of our Lord. But there is no reason why this spot should not have been chosen by the Holy Family after their flight into Egypt. Some ruined shrine to a god of the decadent mythology may have stood here in which they may have made their home, as the early Christians oftentimes did some three centuries later. To build a church on so hallowed a spot would have been the first thought of these Christians, if any record still remained. When Babylon was besieged by the Mohammedan invaders, this church might have then been destroyed, or if it survived so long a siege, it would have disappeared after Merwán, the last of the Omayyad khalifs, had set fire to Fostat.
Be this as it may, it is quite probable that this pretty tradition has some foundation in fact.
There is little at present to see in the crypt by the light of the tallow dip which the Coptic servant holds in his fingers, but I should have regretted not to have seen that little. The tenth-century church above it is a little gem, and however much the dirt of those who attend it, and the formal ritual which few of the worshippers can understand, may prejudice one against the modern Copts, the fact remains that their faith has121 withstood centuries of persecution. Stanley Lane-Poole wisely remarks that ‘no one can stand unmoved in a Coptic church during the celebration of the Mass, or hear the worshippers shout with one voice, just as they did some fifteen hundred years ago, the loud response, “I believe this is the Truth,” without emotion.’
The whole of the Coptic settlement here is built within the girdle-wall of the Roman castle of Babylon, or ‘el-Kasr-esh-Shema,’ as the natives still call it. This Arabic name, ‘The Castle of the Sun,’ emphasises the position it held in regard to ancient Heliopolis, of which it was a bulwark. We also hear mention of this esh-Shema in the prophecies of Jeremiah xliii. 13: ‘He shall break also the images of Beth-shemesh, that is in the land of Egypt; and the houses of the gods of the Egyptians shall he burn with fire.’
Perched up between two bastions of the Roman castle, and over its gate, is the Mu’állaka............