Egypt Through The Stereoscope

A Journey Through The Land Of The Pharaohs

by James Henry Breasted | 1908 | 103,705 words

Examines how stereographs were used as a means of virtual travel. Focuses on James Henry Breasted's "Egypt through the Stereoscope" (1905, 1908). Provides context for resources in the Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA). Part 3 of a 4 part course called "History through the Stereoscope."...

Position 2 - Cairo, Home Of The Arabian Nights, The Greatest City Of Africa, Northwest From Saladin's Citadel To The Nile

Here for the first time we feel the charm of the Orient! Spread out before us is the city of Moslem song and story, the greatest seat of Saracen art, the home of the Arabian Nights. For two miles it stretches out before us, and it is twice as long the other way. Remember, we are standing at the eastern side, looking northwestward from the southeastern corner of the city. Before us is Alexandria, 130 miles away, where we left the Mediterranean. Our route hither lay along the western side of the Delta, which is between us and the Mediterranean.

This city which we overlook is located a short distance above the southern apex of the Delta, on the eastern bank of the Nile. We cannot see the river itself from our present standpoint, but we can locate it precisely. Far out on the further edge of the city, to the left of the taller minaret on this nearest mosque, you discern a white building with a dome in the centre. That is the new museum, and it is located on this shore of the river, so that the Nile flows just behind it. Beyond the museum you see the dark line of palms which fringe the further shore of the river and form extensive groves there.

The course of the river is here due north; hence, as we look westward our line of sight is across it at an oblique angle. Here, too, though you perhaps have not yet noted it, we may observe how we have entered the vast valley or cañon which just below us here merges into the Delta. Do you see that low, gray line that rises just behind the dark band of palm forest behind the town on the left? That is the cliff forming the western wall of the Nile valley (see Map 4), and we are standing upon the walls of a stronghold that rises upon the corresponding eastern cliff.

Between these eastern and western walls lies the fertile valley, with the Nile flowing much nearer the eastern than the western cliff; for those western bluffs are nearly ten miles away, while the river is less than two miles distant from us as we stand on these eastern heights. Behind those distant cliffs is the vast expanse of the Sahara stretching on and on across all north Africa to the far Atlantic, while behind us is the same desert interrupted by the Red Sea and extending across Arabia into the heart of Asia.

We are looking across the great fertile trench which the Nile has cut through this desert of two continents, and at its northern end, where it merges into the Delta, here at our feet, lies the city of Cairo. Under the golden sunshine its soft brown domes and graceful, slender minarets rise against the masses of whitewashed dwellings or are confused among the deep shadows and sombre walls of sun-dried brick houses, the whole forming such an oriental picture as you may see elsewhere only at Damascus.

It is a romantic story, that of this ancient town. Far back in the days of those pyramid-building Pharaohs, whose marvelous pyramids out yonder on that distant cliff in the west we shall yet see, there was an insignificant town, somewhere along the eastern bank of the river, known as the “Place-of-the-Combat,” because it was told in mythic story, that Horus and Set had once done mortal combat here for the supremacy of the Nile valley. A little later, in the third millennium before Christ, the great city in this vicinity was Memphis, on the other side along the distant bluffs a little further south, where we shall later visit it.

North of us but a few miles was the famous city of the sun, Heliopolis, to which we shall also pay a visit later on; but the oldest monument which we can find in the immediate suburbs of Cairo is out here on our left, where out of range lies a wretched little settlement known as “Old Cairo .” (See Map 4.) There in the days of the Greek domination in Egypt was a town of some sort which they called Babylon, doubtless from some fancied resemblance between its old Egyptian name and Babylon on the Euphrates. There, when Egypt became a Roman province, was stationed a Roman garrison in a fortress, which still survives as the oldest monument in the history of Cairo.

In 640 A. D., only eight years after Mohammed's death, the Caliph 'Omar with many misgivings, allowed a little band of fiery Arabs under Amr ibn el-As, to attempt the conquest of Egypt, and after several victories before reaching here, they besieged the Romans in the fortress of Babylon, which they finally took, and the defeated Romans fled to Alexandria. 'Amr, so the story goes, had left his tent standing by Babylon, when he pursued the Romans to Alexandria, and on his return he began a town there, which, because of this circumstance, was called Fostat, that is, “the Tent.”

The “town of the tent,” which was the first Moslem town here, was therefore not on the present site before us, but by the river south of Cairo, and it is still over a mile and a half from the southern extension of the city (on our left). It was also called Misr, the Old Testament name for Egypt, as well as the usual designation for Egypt in the Koran, and the name Cairo was then unknown. Misr flourished, and became a prosperous commercial town, filled with fine houses and splendid bazaars.

But in 1168 A. D., when Amalric, the Latin king of Jerusalem, advanced to the conquest of Egypt, it was burned to save it from his hands. “Twenty thousand naphtha barrels and ten thousand torches were lighted. The fire lasted fifty-four days, and its traces may still be found in the wilderness of sand-heaps stretching over miles of buried rubbish on the south side of Cairo.” Thus perished a priceless monument of mediaeval Moslem life and art.

Cairo had already been founded on the ground before us. From the beginning the caliph's governors and commanders had been accustomed to reside here and on the ground between here and Misr. They gradually drew some of the town up this way. Finally, when the new dynasty of the Fatimids came in under el-Mu'izz, in 969 A. D., he founded here a new town, which was called el-Kahira (Cairo), because the planet Mars, known as the “Conqueror” (el-Kahira), was in the ascendancy at the laying of the first stones. The people from burning Misr swelled the population of the already considerable town, and under the wealthy Fatimids it became a beautiful and prosperous metropolis. Next to nothing of this early Cairo of the Fatimids now survives; the city upon which we are looking is of later date; of this later city we shall have more to say as we pass on.

This masonry upon which we stand, is part of the citadel of Cairo, erected by Saladin in 1176 A. D., and its erection marks the beginning of the later Cairo which we have before us. You see the obsolete batteries on the parapets below us on the right. Those two curved salients beyond the guns, defend an entrance to the fortress known as the Bab el-Azab, over which floats the flag of the Turkish Sultan, with its star and crescent; for the viceroy of Egypt is a vassal of the Turk. That Bab el-Azab gives access from the fortress to the park below us. You see one of the two white sentry boxes below at the door of the fortress on the right. The circular park with its rows of trees is the Place Rumêlah, and hither each year the pilgrims returning from Mecca march in procession amid great public rejoicing.

The most prominent building before us is the superb mosque of Sultan Hasan, the finest example of Saracen architecture in Cairo, and perhaps anywhere. It was built in 1356 to 1359, and the Sultan was so delighted with it that he cut off the right hand of the architect, under the impression that it would then be impossible for the unfortunate man ever to design another, which might rival it. The splendid entrance on the other side is 85 feet high, and the massive walls, 113 feet in height, are built of stone taken from the pyramids.

That dome, the lines of which are not a success, is a later work, for unhappily the original dome fell in 1660, and was later restored. Of the four minarets designed by the architect, but three were erected, and one of these fell shortly after its completion and killed three hundred pupils of the school beneath it. One of the remaining two had to be rebuilt in 1659, owing to an earthquake, and was made too small. Only the one here on the left is the work of the architect. It is the tallest minaret in Cairo, being no less than 270 feet in height. Its exposed position has cost the building much damage.

In the innumerable conflicts of the Mamlukes, cannon were often posted upon the roof and trained upon the citadel where we stand. Of course, the defenders of the citadel responded in kind, and cannon shot may still be found in the masonry of the fine old mosque. “In a quieter situation the mosque might have escaped injury, but even as it is, scarred with bullets and lopped of its original dome and minarets, it remains the most superb if not the most beautiful monument of Saracenic art in the fourteenth century.”

This heavy flat-topped building, with the tall arches on the right of the Sultan Hasan's mosque, is the mosque or monastery of the Rifa 'iyeh, an order of dervishes having several sects, one of which is noted as furnishing the performers of the most astonishing prodigies on the occasion of any public procession. They walk before the procession, thrusting nails into their eyes, swallowing burning charcoal and pieces of glass, or they lie down in the street and shatter great stones against their breasts. To another sect of the same order belong the remarkable snake charmers, now very rarely, if ever, seen by Europeans; but their remarkable feats are vouched for by credible witnesses. The numerous men and boys you will see about the streets of Cairo now, with small and harmless snakes, are not to be confused with these snake charmers of the Rifa'iyeh. Their mosque is unfinished, as you see. This striped mosque beyond the flagstaff on the extreme right is a modern structure of no architectural value.

You notice that no domes or minarets are visible along the river, the native town being here on the east, the nearer side of the city. There was formerly considerable space between the old native town and the river. Within fifty years this has been taken up by Europeans, whose villas now stretch north and south and bring the town down to the river on the west. He who loves the picturesque native life will mourn to see it thus closely crowded by the prosaic life of the west, but fortunately the Moslem quarters here at our feet keep quite aloof and the tenacity with which they cling to their old ways and customs is surprising.

Of the 600,000 inhabitants of the modern city, some 40,000 are Europeans, and their influence is, of course, very strong, working great changes in the mediaeval city, which Cairo still was only fifty years ago. But in spite of these powerful foreign influences, this old city still remains the center of orthodox Moslem learning. It is the great university town of the whole Moslem world, and although the mosque of el-Azhar, the building in which the university is located, once had probably as many as 15,000 students, it still has some 7,000 people in it, including over 200 professors. The latter still continue teaching by rote the mediaeval learning, which has always formed the curriculum of the university.

The mosque of the Sultan Hasan before us will answer as an index for locating some of the chief points in the modern city. The peak of the dome just cuts into the white façade of the luxurious Hotel Savoy, one of the several magnificent European hotels now to be found in Cairo. Nearer than this hotel, and seen between the dome and the shorter minaret, is the Abdin Palace, in which the present Khedive or Viceroy of Egypt resides. At the right of the tall minaret, just under the swell of the lowest balcony, is another palace, once occupied by the Khedive Ismail of Suez Canal fame; but it is now used as a hotel, called the Gezireh Palace Hotel.

Gezireh means “Island,” and the place is so-called because it stands upon an island in the Nile. We shall later see this island and the bridge leading to it. The large white-domed building on the left of the tall minaret we have already mentioned. It is the National Museum of Egypt, recently completed and occupied. There we shall examine some of the treasures which it contains as we go past on our way out to the great pyramids. To the left of the museum you may faintly discern the long, low barracks of the British army of occupation. Behind the base of the tall minaret, and seen over the roof of the mosque, is a grove, on the further edge of which (cut by the minaret) appears the vice-regal library, rich in oriental manuscripts.

Another palace of the vice-regal family occupies the left end of this grove. Another patch of grove further to the left, and nearer the river and the barracks, marks the buildings of the different Ministries of Justice, Finance and the Interior, and Public Works and War. Out of range on the extreme right is the famous Shepheard's Hotel, the first European hotel established in Cairo. Thus the world of modern Europe is crowding upon mediaeval Cairo. Every winter thousands of tourists occupy the hotels, of which, besides the luxurious places we have mentioned, there are many of moderate price and comfortable appointments.

We shall now proceed to a somewhat elevated point outside the eastern wall of Cairo on our right, but out of our present field of vision. There we shall look nearly southward, directly across our present line of sight. Turn to Map 4 and find the red lines numbered 3, extending from the east side of the city slightly west of south, which show more definitely what is to be our next position and our field of vision from it.

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