Position 7 - The Prayer Niche, Southeast Toward Mecca, And The Pulpit In The Tomb Mosque Of Kait Bey, Cairo

How do you like walking about on a not too clean oriental floor with your shoes off? Or if the attendant has been amiable he has allowed you to put on some old felt slippers over your shoes, or even wrap them up in some tattered bits of rags which he has at hand for the purpose. But no Moslem would think of entering the holy place on such a compromise. He will remain with bare feet until he steps outside the door of the sacred building.

See how the light filters through the beautiful tracery of those stained windows in the upper part of the wall before us, which we saw from the outside. It is in such designs as this that the Saracen artist is unexcelled by any other. This rectangular transept before us was, in the original court-mosque, that side of the court facing Mecca. It was then a mere roofed portico on the side of the court, and its back wall was arranged as you see this one.

That niche there is called by the Moslems the “mihrab,” and it marks the proper direction for prayer, which they term “kibleh,” or “facing” for it is very important that a Moslem should always pray toward Mecca. Mohammed first made the kibleh toward Jerusalem, which is holy alike to Jew, Christian and Moslem, but when he failed to convert the Jews to Islam, he changed it to Mecca, and subjected the Jews to the severest persecution; at least those in Medina, his home after he forsook Mecca. On the further side of the prayer niche you observe the “mimbar,” or pulpit, from which the Friday sermon or “Khutbeh” is delivered every week.

The preacher, who is not specially ordained for his office, but may be any person of theological learning, comes in and seats himself on the steps while the Muezzin enters and proclaims the hour of prayer. Then the preacher rises and, standing on the second step, delivers a short sermon, for tradition avers that the prophet affirmed that “the length of a man's prayers and the shortness of his sermon are signs of a man's common sense.” Christianity has quite reversed this estimate. The wood-carving on some of these pulpits is among the finest decorative designs produced by the artists of the Egyptian sultans.

A man need not possess all these appurtenances in order to be able to pray. Wherever he is, he must pray five times a day, and consider himself very lucky that he is not obliged to pray oftener, for tradition has a curious story that Allah first demanded fifty times a day, but that Mohammed, on hearing from Moses that he had failed in attempting to hold the Hebrews to this number of daily prayers, returned to Allah and asked a remission, which request being granted, he asked for another remission, and he continued to ask until the number was reduced to five, where it remained.

Many Moslems are undoubtedly true to this obligation, and there is no more impressive sight than to see one of these great Cairo mosques filled with a vast multitude zealously engaged in worship, and swaying when they bow down for the prayers, as if a great wave of the sea were passing. But there are many whose prayers are either not performed at all, or only now and again in the most perfunctory manner.

There is, however, a ceremony in which every Moslem joins with the utmost fervor, and that is the procession of the Kisweh, or sacred carpet. In order to see this we must return to the city and find a good place for observing the procession as it passes from the Rumêlah before the citadel (seen from Position 1).