Position 8 - The Holy Carpet Parade With The Mahmal, Before The Departure Of The Pilgrims For Mecca, Cairo

There is nothing in Cairo which so strikingly reminds us that we are in a country professing the religion of Mohammed, as the ceremonies connected with this pilgrimage to Mecca, the city where he so long labored and over which, after long exile, he finally triumphed. It is now two or three days since the feast of Bairam, which we visited at the cemetery of the Bab el-Wezir, the gate by the citadel; and here is a celebration to which the Moslem turns out with even more delight than to Bairam.

Every year at the expense of the Sultan a fine carpet or huge fabric for festooning the Kaaba at Mecca is made in this city, and we are now viewing the procession which is bearing it from the citadel to the mosque of the Hasanên, where the pieces will be sewed together and lined, in readiness for the departure of the pilgrims.

We cannot here see the carpet itself, but the “mahmal” which accompanies it is even more sacred. We refer to the curious object which you see at the head of the long procession. It is a pyramid of woven fabric richly embroidered, surmounting a roughly cubical base, of the same material. The whole is stretched on a wooden frame, and contains nothing. Brazen ornaments at each corner and a similar adornment crowning a cylinder at the top complete the strange object. Attached to the ornament at the top are two copies of the Koran, the holy scripture of Islam. It is all mounted upon a magnificent camel, which is here so hidden by the mahmal and the crowd that you can scarcely see it at all. In this way the mahmal proceeds to Mecca with the pilgrims and with them also returns to Cairo.

The origin of the object is interesting. The Sultan Negm ed-Din, whose son was the last of the dynasty of Saladin, had a beautiful Turkish slave in his harem, who eventually became his favorite wife. Her name was Sheger ed-Durr, which means “Spray of Pearls,” and on the death of the last of the line of Saladin, she claimed the throne. Although the Moslems are always exceedingly averse to having a woman as sovereign, she ruled successfully for several years and performed the pilgrimage to Mecca in a haudag or camel saddle of royal splendor, which she after that regularly sent with the pilgrims each year as the outward symbol of her presence, although it was empty. They married her to a husband as soon as they could, and in a fit of jealousy she had him murdered in his bath, whereupon she was taken to the citadel and imprisoned.

There she “vindictively pounded her jewels in a mortar that they might adorn no other woman,” and then in the presence of the woman who had occasioned her jealousy, she was beaten to death and her body flung into the moat of the citadel. Some one finally gave her decent burial and her tomb still survives here. But the great Sultan Bibars continued the custom of sending the empty haudag, and despatched the first one to Mecca with the pilgrims in the year 1272 or 1277 A. D., from which time it has always been a part of the procession. It is therefore a memorial of the beautiful but ill-fated “Spray of Pearls,” which here heads this procession over six hundred years after the unfortunate queen's death.

But the Moslem sees more in it than a woman's camel saddle; for him it has become sacred beyond expression. Lane narrates that in 1834 he followed beside the mahmal as it was brought into the city at the return of the pilgrims, and that as he did so he grasped and held the fringe of one side, uttering a pious exclamation to soothe the officer in charge of it, who looked at him with some question as to the propriety of such a liberty. But Lane was dressed as an Oriental and was thus mistaken for a Moslem. Having later told the incident to one of his Moslem friends, the latter expressed the greatest astonishment, and said, adds Lane, “that he had never heard of anyone having done so before; and that the prophet had certainly taken a love for me, or I could not have been allowed: he added that I had derived an inestimable blessing; and that it would be prudent in me not to tell any others of my Moslem friends of this fact, as it would make them envy me so great a privilege, and perhaps displease them.”

In a small circle on the front of the pyramidal top of the mahmal you see the monogram of the present Sultan of Turkey, who is the head of the Moslem heirarchy, though the legitimacy of his succession is seriously questioned by the Moslems themselves. Guarding the mahmal is a circle of horsemen from the army of Egypt. It was these men under English leadership and supported by some English regulars who rescued the Sudan and regained Khartum, to which we are to pay a brief visit at the end of our journey.

That long line of camel riders behind the mahmal will in a few days begin the weary desert journey around the north end of the Red Sea and southward to Mecca. Those who can afford it, however, are able to facilitate the journey in the most prosaic modern fashion. They go by railway to Suez at the head of the Red Sea, thence they take a steamer to Giddeh, the port of Mecca, from which they can reach the holy city in a few hours.

At Mecca the pilgrims undergo a long and wearisome ceremonial lasting some days, and the sacred carpet is draped about the Kaaba, which is a rectangular shrine in the centre of the great mosque court of Mecca. The old carpet of the year before is taken down, cut up and divided among the pilgrims. Something over four months after the procession has left Cairo, its return is announced by a special messenger, and the pilgrims are received with great rejoicing, the mahmal being brought in with much the same ceremony which we observe here.

It is considered the pious duty of every Moslem to undertake this arduous pilgrimage at least once in his life, and its maintenance, involving a military escort, rich gifts to the city of Mecca and many other expenses, costs the government annually some $250,000. Besides the expense the pilgrimage is a fruitful source of disease. Many die from the hardships incident to the desert journey, and it is a sad and touching scene when the caravan returns, to see the wives and sisters who go out to meet and receive their husbands or brothers only to learn that they have perished in the desert. The reception of the returning caravan is always accompanied by the loud wailing and piercing shrieks of stricken women, as they learn of their bereavement. But worse than this is the importation of epidemics, especially cholera, from the unsanitary houses of Mecca, in which the pilgrims have lived. Many a blasting visitation of cholera can be traced directly to this source.

There is no time when so many gaily dressed Moslems may be seen in the street as at this celebration before us, but even on any ordinary day the shifting panorama of the Cairo streets and bazaars, will afford the western eye, accustomed to the soberest and most prosaic of city streets, the keenest enjoyment and delight. The mass of bright color constantly changing with kaleidoscopic variety and bewildering rapidity, is of itself a continual pleasure. We have often mentioned the Arabian Nights, but you will find things around every corner here which will make you think that you have walked into the world of the Arabian Nights, as Alice stepped into Wonderland through the looking glass.

The barber shaving the heads of the faithful in an open booth, which is really a part of the street; the little street restaurant, where the patrons squat in the mire before the low table and devour a plentiful repast for a penny; the water carriers bowing beneath a heavy water skin; the seller of cool sherbet, jingling together his brass cups; the woman of the poor classes with a child astride of her shoulder; the Cairo houris with faces all veiled save the thrilling black eyes; fine old sheiks with long white beards and massive turbans; slow plodding camels with swaying neck; tiny donkeys staggering beneath the garden truck of some poor peasant; staid merchants sitting on the bench or mastaba of their bazaars and smoking the long pipe lazily or sipping their coffee as they indifferently watch the passing throng; all this framed in a narrow winding street, with picturesque, grated windows, from which veiled faces look down upon the scene, while a thousand varied cries of pedlars, donkey boys, auctioneers and beggars mingle in bewildering confusion with the constant hum of conversation from the bazaars, and the nose is greeted by the strange aromatic odor which always fills these oriental streets— all this I say conveys such a jumble of impressions and appeals to so many senses at once, that the unaccustomed visitor revels in it all with a delight that must be experienced to be appreciated. I know Europeans who have lived in Cairo for a generation, who nevertheless find as much pleasure in these charming Cairo streets as they did when they first saw them.

But now we must leave all this and step into one of the courts that we may see what one of these oriental houses is like.