Chapter I: The Saracens of Egypt (1)

The study of any branch of art supposes some acquaintance with the history of the people among whom the art was practised. Without such knowledge not only is much of the interest lost by the inability to enjoy the associations which the imagination winds about the possessions and works of historical personages,—always a strong attraction in antiquarian studies,—but we even lack the data upon which to construct a true and natural sequence of the art itself. Especially important is the aid lent by history to Mohammadan art. It frequently happens that the analogies that go to make up the style of a given period are obscure and difficult to seize in the scattered relics of Saracenic handiwork, and our only safe guides are the names of princes and nobles which the artist, allured by the fluent grace of the Arabic writing as much as by the desire to record the name of the nobleman who expended his treasure upon skilful work, was accustomed to engrave upon most of his productions. These inscriptions, which seldom record the name of the artist himself, but frequently that of the great man for whom the work was executed, are a prominent feature in Saracenic art, and form an invaluable aid to the student in establishing a definite and indisputable sequence of styles. The mosques were naturally inscribed with the name of the pious founder; and when a later grandee devoted his wealth to restoring the sacred building, he too would place his deed on record, over the entrance, or above the niche, and his new pulpit or carved door would be duly inscribed with his name: thus we are furnished with the dates both of foundation and restoration,—a circumstance of the utmost value in Egyptian architecture. Most of the smaller objects of art, such as metal bowls, glass lamps, and trays, have inscriptions, and a large proportion of these contain the name of some Sultan or noble who is well known to history. From such information we are able in most branches of Saracenic art to weld a chain of artistic development which enables us with little difficulty to class most of the undated specimens.

In the following pages such a chain of examples of known date will be found illustrated and described; but it is not the less necessary to provide the reader with the means of ascertaining for himself the date of an example which he may possess, and which may not be susceptible of positive identification by the help of the engravings in this work. For this purpose a slight knowledge, at least, of the history of Egypt under the Saracens is necessary, and the details, which cannot be given in so brief an outline as is possible in the present limits of space, may be to some extent supplied by the chronological tables which are appended to this chapter.

The writer on the art and history of the Mohammadan East labours under the disadvantage of being obliged to begin at the very beginning; to assume in his reader an ignorance not merely of the chief names of Saracenic history, but even of whole dynasties, and their places in general history. A person of ordinary education may possess some acquaintance with the early events of the Muslim empire, the life of the Prophet Mohammad, the first sweep of conquest, and perhaps even the Khalifates of Damascus, Baghdad, and Cordova. In the later history of the Arab empire, a name here and there, a Saladin or Nūreddīn, a Hākim or a Boabdil, may be known; but the rest is naturally a blank. People have enough to learn in the present day without attempting Oriental history. In describing the art of Greece or of Italy we are generally on familiar ground; the names of Pericles and Hiero, of the Medici and the Sforze, ought to be as well known as that of Wolsey or William of Wykeham. In Eastern history we must perforce take nothing as known until it has been explained; and in doing so now, no discourtesy is designed towards those few who are acquainted with the history, and who will, I am sure, forgive repetition for the sake of the larger number whose studies have not been directed to Oriental subjects.

The history of Egypt under Mohammadan rulers extends from the middle of the seventh century to the present day; but we are only concerned with that portion of those twelve centuries which bears an intimate relation to the development of Saracenic art. The earliest monument which undoubtedly preserves its original design and ornament is the mosque of Ibn-Tūlūn, built in the latter part of the ninth century (878); after this we have but five or six monuments of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, and then the most brilliant period of mediaeval Egyptian art opens with the accession of the Mamlūks. Again, after the destruction of the Mamlūk power by the Ottoman conqueror Selīm in the beginning of the sixteenth century, though a few rare survivals of the ancient artistic genius of the Saracens are found, and in the smaller branches of skilled industry, in wood-work, glass, and mosaic, the workmen of Egypt continued to produce some excellent results, the energy and enthusiasm of the artists languished for lack of encouragement, and as a rule the period of Turkish domination furnishes but the record of a long and dreary process of degradation in every branch of art, until the nadir of Eastern art was reached in the palaces of the Khedives. The period of the finest and most abundant works of art is that of the Mamlūks, from the thirteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century, and to these three centuries we must devote our chief attention. Of the earlier periods a very slight outline is all that can be attempted. The rule of the Fātimy Khalifs indeed is recorded to have been signalized by extraordinary artistic productiveness: but too few examples of this period have come down to us to justify us in giving it a rank equal to that of the Mamlūks.

The history of Mohammadan Egypt falls into eight divisions: (1) the period of governors appointed by the Khalifs of Damascus and of Baghdād (A.H. 21-254/A.D. 641-868); (2) the dynasty of Tūlūn (254-292/868-904); (3) an interval of governors appointed by the Khalifs of Baghdād (292-323/904-935); (4) the dynasty of Ikhshīd (323-358/935-969); (5) the Fātimy

Khalifs (358-567/969-1171); (6) the Ayyūby house of Saladin (567-648/1171-1250); (7) the Mamlūks, Turkish (Bahry) and Circassian (Burgy), (648-922/1250-1516); and (8) the period of Turkish Pashas, ending in the dynasty of Mohammad ‘Aly (Mehemet Ali).

1. In A.D. 639, the eighteenth year after the Higra or Flight of Mohammad from Mekka to Medīna, ‘Amr, the general of the Khalif ‘Omar, invaded the Egyptian province of the Byzantine empire. Aided by the factious divisions which sundered the Greek and Coptic Christians, and made the latter eager to welcome any invader who would bring down the arrogance of the Melekites, ‘Amr was soon able to march on Alexandria, the first city of the East, and after a siege of fourteen months, on the first day of the Mohammadan year 21 (10th December 641), captured it. The victorious general was named the first Muslim governor of Egypt, and the spot where he pitched his tent (in Arabic, Fustāt) became the site of the new capital of Egypt, El-Fustāt, which speedily grew to handsome proportions. From the time of ‘Amr, A.H. 21, to the appointment of Ibn- Tūlūn in A.H. 254, a period of 233 years, 98 governors, nominated by the Khalifs of Damascus and Baghdād, ruled the province of Misr or Egypt (the name Misr is given both to the country and to its capital); and as some of these enjoyed more than one term of office, there were 105 changes of government in 233 years, giving an average of about two years and a quarter for each governor. A ruler liable to be removed at any moment, and enjoying so brief a term of office, was not likely to occupy himself with the embellishment of a capital which after a few months’ or years’ reign he might never see again, and he probably directed his energies, like a Turkish Pasha, to accumulating all the wealth he could with his brief opportunities. We have no monuments of the period of the governors, with the exception of the mosque of ‘Amr, at Fustāt, which has been too often restored to furnish trustworthy evidence as to the style of architecture or decoration. The governors indeed built other edifices; the representatives of the ‘Abbāsy Khalifs founded in 133 a new quarter of the capital, adjoining Fustāt, which was called El-‘Askar, or “the Camp,” because the soldiers first had their quarters there; and here they erected a government house and a mosque, of which, however, no trace now remains. El-‘Askar was never more than an official quarter: the capital was still Fustāt.

2. _Ahmad Ibn-Tūlūn_ was a Turkish governor appointed by the ‘Abbāsy Khalif, in 868, but after a year he asserted his independence, while still rendering homage to the Khalif as his spiritual lord by retaining his name on the coinage and in the public prayers. Ibn-Tūlūn was the first Mohammadan ruler who founded a dynasty in Egypt; he was also the first to unite Syria with Egypt, as did all independent sovereigns of Egypt afterwards; and he was the first great encourager of Saracenic Art; for he abandoned the old government house at El-‘Askar, and built a new suburb, connecting that quarter with the citadel hill, which he called El-Katāi‘, or “the Wards,” either because a large part of it was given in feof to the numerous colonels of his 30,000 troops, or because the new suburb was partitioned into various quarters allotted to different nations and separate trades. Both El-‘Askar and El-Katāi‘ were fashionable suburbs, where the nobility and men of position resided; and the streets were full of splendid houses. But the glory of the latest suburb was the mosque of Ibn-Tūlūn, of which we shall have more to say hereafter. It is the first undoubted example of true Saracenic art in Egypt, and one of the noblest monuments in the East. Ibn-Tūlūn also built himself a stately palace, with a _meydān_ or race-course attached, where the Sultan and his courtiers played at polo. One of the many splendid gates of this meydān was called the “Gate of Lions,” because it was surmounted by two lions in plaster; another was called the Sāg gate, since it was made of that wood. Around rose the handsome palaces of the generals; the mosques and the baths; the windmills and brick-kilns; the great hospital; the markets for the assayers, perfumers, cloth merchants, fruiterers, cooks, and other trades, all well built and densely populated. The palace, mosque, race course, and hospital, together cost a sum of nearly 300,000 dīnārs of gold; and the annual revenue from taxes, to meet this vast outlay, and the expenses of government, was placed at 4,300,000 dīnārs. To which fact may be added the instructive comment that at the time of Ahmad’s death no less than 18,000 persons were found in the prisons. His son Khumāraweyh, who succeeded in 883, carried this passion of splendid luxury to its height. He turned the meydān into a garden, filled with lilies, gilliflowers, saffron, and palms and trees of all sorts, the trunks of which he coated with copper gilt, behind which leaden pipes supplied fountains which gushed forth to water the garden. In the midst rose an aviary tower of sāg wood; the walls were carved with figures and painted with various colours. Peacocks, guinea-fowls, doves and pigeons, with rare birds from Nubia, had their home in the garden and aviary. There was also a menagerie, and especially a blue-eyed lion who crouched beside his master when he sat at table, and guarded him when he slept. In the palace, Khumāraweyh built the “Golden Hall,” the walls whereof were covered with gold and azure, in admirable designs, and varied by bas- reliefs of himself and his wives (if we are to credit the historians), and even of the _prime donne_ of the court. They were carved in wood, life-size, and painted with exquisite art, so that the folds of the drapery seemed natural; they wore crowns of pure gold and turbans set with precious stones, and jewelled earrings. Such figures are unparalleled in Saracenic art; yet the account is too detailed to be altogether a fiction. But the chief wonder of Khumāraweyh’s palace remains to be described: it was a lake of quicksilver. On the surface of the lake, lay a leather bed inflated with air, fastened by silk bands to four silver supports at the corners; here alone the insomnolent sovereign could take his rest. Of all these marvels, and the splendid harīm rooms, the spacious stables, the furniture, wine-cups, rich silk robes, inlaid swords, and shields of steel, nothing has come down to us. We are obliged to take the mosque of Ibn-Tūlūn as witness to the consummate luxury and artistic eminence of the period.

3. After the fall of the dynasty of Tūlūn, owing to the weakness of the later members of the family, who paid the common penalty of their Capua, _governors_ appointed by the Khalifs once more exercised their monotonous sway over Egypt, and again there is nothing to record in works of art.

4. Nor did the accession of Mohammad _El-Ikhshīd_, in 935, bring any change for the better in this respect. El-Ikhshīd followed the example of Ibn-Tūlūn, and made himself independent ruler of both Egypt and Syria, but he left no great works behind him, nor did his dynasty contribute to the monuments of the Saracens. His two sons were under the tutorship of the eunuch Abu-l-Misk Kāfūr, “Father of Musk, Camphor,” who ruled the kingdom well, kept a generous open table, where 1700 pounds of meat were consumed daily, but was unable to resist the invasion of the Fātimy Khalif, El-Mu‘izz, who conquered Egypt in 969, and Syria in the following year, and also annexed the Arabian provinces of the Higāz and the Yemen.

5. Hitherto the rulers of Egypt had been at least appointed by the lawful heads of the Mohammadan Empire, the Khalifs, first of Damascus, and then of Baghdād; many of them were Turks or Tartars, notably Ibn Tūlūn and El-Ikhshīd, who both came from beyond the Oxus; but they were not the less the servants of the Khalifs. In the Fātimy Khalifs we see for the first time an heretical line of rulers invading the empire of the Khalifs, and owning no sort of allegiance to them. The Fātimy Khalifs had created a kingdom in Tunis upon the ruins of the Aghlaby power, and now they proceeded to add the dominions of the Ikhshīdīs to their realm. They transferred their seat of government from Tunis to Egypt (and thereby soon lost their western provinces), and founded a new suburb, or rather a vast palace, which was called _El-Kāhira_, or Cairo. The design of the Fātimy general Gauhar was simply to build a palace for his master, the Khalif, where that sacred personage might be able to enjoy perfect seclusion; and it was only in much later times, after the burning of Fustāt, that El-Kāhira became really a city. El-Kāhira was, in fact, originally but a walled enclosure with double earthworks, about three quarters of a mile long and half a mile broad, containing the two royal palaces, one called the Great Palace (which was so extensive that on the fall of the Fātimy dynasty, in 1171, it was found to contain 12,000 women and eunuchs), the other, the Small Palace, overlooking the pleasure-grounds; and the two were connected under the open space which divided them (and which is still known as the street _Beyn-el-Kasreyn_, “Betwixt the Palaces”), by a subterranean passage. Close to the Eastern or Great Palace was the Imperial Mausoleum, in which El-Mu‘izz deposited the bones of his ancestors, which he brought with him from their places of sepulture in the west. Further south was the mosque, also built by Gauhar, in which the Khalif, as Imām of his subjects, conducted the Friday prayers. The palaces received the name of _El-Kusūr ez-Zāhira_, “the Splendid Palaces,” and the mosque that of El-Azhar, “the Most Splendid,” which it still retains, and under which it has long been widely known as the great seat of Mohammadan learning, frequented by students from the most distant countries of Islam. In addition to the garrison’s quarters, many other buildings are enumerated, sufficient to account for the remaining space; such were the treasury, mint, library, audience-halls, arsenals, provision-stores, and imperial stables. No person was allowed to enter within the walls of El-Kāhira but the soldiers of the garrison and the highest officials of the state, whose greatest privilege was that of approaching the sacred person of the Khalif. Ambassadors from foreign lands were obliged to dismount at the gates of the fortress, and were conducted thence to the audience-hall on foot, an official on either side grasping their hands.[1] The old gates of Cairo are the gates of this palace or fort, built by order of Bedr el-Gemāly, in 1087, by three Greeks.

Thus the capital of Egypt underwent a third move to the north-east: first was El-Fustāt, founded by ‘Amr, close to the Roman fortress of Babylon; then El-‘Askar, a move north-east, built by the ‘Abbāsy governors; thirdly, El-Katāi‘, the creation of Ibn-Tūlūn (which remained an important suburb until desolated by the great famine of El- Mustansir’s reign); and now, fourthly, Cairo, the site of the Fātimy palace. Of these, the scanty remains of El-Fustāt are seen in what is called Masr-el-Atīka, or “Old Cairo;” El-‘Askar and El-Katāi‘ have disappeared, save the mosque of Ibn-Tūlūn, and part of their site has been covered by later houses; El-Kāhira is Cairo, but has greatly expanded since the time when it comprised little more than the huge palace of the Fātimy Khalifs: new suburbs have joined it to the Citadel on one side, and prolonged it beyond the northern gates on the other. Yet Cairo is practically the Fātimy capital, though, unfortunately, beyond the mosques of the Azhar and El-Hākim, built in 971 and 990, and a fragment here and there, nothing remains of all the splendour which the historians attribute to these celebrated Khalifs.[2] Reference will frequently be found in the following pages to the costly possessions of these rulers, especially those included in the well-known Inventory of El-Mustansir, and it will suffice here to remark that the Fātimis even surpassed Ibn-Tūlūn in magnificence and the encouragement of every branch of art, and that to them, more perhaps than to any other Eastern dynasty, we owe the introduction of Saracenic design into southern Europe. The Mohammadan Amīrs of Sicily, who left so rich a legacy of art to the Norman kings, were vassals of the Fātimy Khalifs.

6. How Saladin—or, to be accurate, Salāh-ed-dīn Yūsuf, son of Ayyūb—was despatched to Egypt with the troops of Nūr-ed-dīn, Sultan of Damascus, to support the cause of one of those powerful vizirs who by their arrogance and rivalry had prepared the downfall of the Egyptian Government, and how the brilliant young soldier and statesman soon found his way to depose the last of the Fātimy Khalifs and assume the supreme authority himself, are almost matters of European history. The period of Ayyūby rule from 1171, when the prayers were ordered to be said no longer in the name of the heretical Khalif, but in that of the Khalif of Baghdād, the orthodox head of Islām, to the year 1250, when the sovereignty descended to the Mamlūks, falls within a century, but it was filled with wars and deeds that have made this period known even to European readers. El-Mu‘izz the Fātimy had changed Egypt from a province into a kingdom with a definite political significance; Saladin transformed the kingdom into a powerful empire. The long struggle with the Crusaders, the victory of Tiberias, the conquest of Jerusalem, the well-known treaty with Richard Cœur de Lion, though most familiar to us, form but a part of Saladin’s exploits. He made his power felt far beyond the borders of Palestine; his arms triumphed over hosts of valiant princes to the banks of the Tigris, and when he died, in 1193, at the early age of 57, he left to his sons and kinsmen, not only the example of the most chivalrous, honourable, and magnanimous of kings, but substantial legacies of rich provinces, extending from Aleppo and Mesopotamia to Arabia and the Country of the Blacks.

And, like so many of his successors the Mamlūks, Saladin combined in a marked degree the passion for war with the love of the beautiful. The third wall, and the Citadel of Cairo, with its magnificent buildings, now alas destroyed, bore witness to his encouragement of architecture. The citadel was begun in 1176, with materials obtained from some of the smaller pyramids of Gīza, and so strongly and carefully was it constructed that when Saladin died the fortress was not yet completed, but remained unfinished until the year 604 = 1207. The eunuch Karākūsh, “Black Eagle,” was entrusted with the superintendence of the work, and this may account for the sculpture of an eagle on the Citadel wall. The present massive gate, within which is the passage where the massacre of the last descendants of the Mamlūks by Mohammad ‘Aly took place in 1811, is an eighteenth century work, but the walls and part of the internal masonry belong to Saladin’s fortress. Of the mosque and palace, however, no trace remains. The so-called “Hall of Joseph,” or _Kasr Yūsuf_ (which was Saladin’s name as well as the patriarch’s), pulled down about 1830, was really the _Dār-el-‘Adl_, or “Hall of Justice,” of the Mamlūk Sultan En-Nāsir, more than a century later. The deep well with its massive masonry is, however, attributed to Saladin, and there used to be ruins of a solid and beautifully decorated mansion which was known, rightly or not, as the “House of Salāh-ed-dīn Yūsuf.”

Saladin’s empire needed a strong hand to keep it united, and the number of relations, sons and nephews, who demanded their share of the wide provinces, rendered the survival of the Ayyūby dominion precarious. Saladin’s brother, El-‘Adil, the “Saphadin” of the Crusades, indeed controlled the centrifugal tendencies of his kindred for a while, and his son El-Kāmil gloriously defeated Jean de Brienne on the spot where the commemorative city of El-Mansūra, “the Victorious,” was afterwards erected by the conqueror. After his death, in 1237, however, the forces which made for disintegration became too strong to be resisted; various petty dynasties of the Ayyūby family were temporarily established in the chief provinces, only to make way shortly for the Tartars, and in Egypt and Syria notably for the Mamlūks, who in 1250 succeeded to the glories of Saladin.

The monuments of the Ayyūbīs that are still standing, besides the Citadel and third wall, are very few. The fine ornament of the interior in the tomb-mosque of Esh-Shāfi‘y belongs at least in part to El-Kāmil; the tomb and college of Es-Sālih Ayyūb, son of El-Kāmil, are still partly preserved opposite Kalaūn’s Māristān; and there are, or were, fragments of his once splendid castle on the Island of Rōda, on the Nile—the island which gave his Mamlūks the epithet of _Bahry_, or “River-y”—the materials of which were used in the construction of En- Nāsir’s Mosque in the Citadel. The Kāmilīya Mosque has unhappily disappeared, though not before some valuable sketches had been made by Mr. James Wild.

7. The word _Mamlūk_ means “owned,” and is applied to white slaves, acquired by capture in war or purchase in the market. The two dynasties of Mamlūks were lines of white slaves, imported for the protection of the Ayyūby Es-Sālih against his kinsmen and the Franks, and who presently acquired the power and the government of Egypt. They were reinforced from time to time by fresh purchases, for the climate of Egypt was unfavourable to the fertility of foreign immigrants, and the stock had to be refreshed from outside. Es-Sālih’s Mamlūks were loyal servants; they defended his kingdom while he lived, and it was their brilliant charge under Beybars that routed the French army and brought about the capture of St. Louis himself. Es-Sālih’s son was a drunken debauchee, and helpless to meet the difficulties in which his kingdom was involved. In circumstances that hardly left an alternative, he was put out of the way, and a lady, Sheger-ed-durr, “Tree of Pearls,” ascended the throne of her late husband and master Es-Sālih, as the first Slave Monarch of Mohammadan Egypt. Her rule was but brief; jealousy led her to murder the Mamlūk chief Aybek, whom she had married for political reasons, and she paid the penalty of her crime by being herself beaten to death with the bath-clogs of some female slaves who sympathized with her rival. After her death began that singular succession of Mamlūk Sultans, which lasted, in spite of special tendencies to dissolution, for two hundred and seventy-five years.

The external history of these years is monotonous. Wars to repel the invasions of the Tartars or to drive the Christians from the Holy Land, struggles between rival claimants to the throne, embassies to and from foreign powers, including France and Venice, the Khan of Persia, and the King of Abyssinia, constitute the staple of foreign affairs. To enumerate the events of each reign, or even the names of the fifty Mamlūks who sat on the throne at Cairo, would be wearisome and unprofitable to the reader: the chronological tables at the end of this chapter will tell all that need be told. But it is different with the internal affairs of the Mamlūk period. In this flowering time of Saracenic art, a real interest belongs to the life and social condition of the people who made and encouraged the finest productions of the Mohammadan artist, and it will not be superfluous to explain briefly what the condition of Egypt was under her Mamlūk rulers. Some consideration of this subject is almost demanded by the startling contrasts offered by the spectacle of a band of disorderly soldiers, to all appearance barbarians, prone to shed blood, merciless to their enemies, tyrannous to their subjects, yet delighting in the delicate refinements which art could afford them in their home life, lavish in the endowment of pious foundations, magnificent in their mosques and palaces, and fastidious in the smallest details of dress and furniture. Allowing all that must be allowed for the passion of the barbarian for display, we are still far from an explanation how the Tartars chanced to be the noblest promoters of art, of literature, and of public works, that Egypt had known since the days of Alexander the Great.

During this brilliant period the population of Egypt was sharply divided into two classes, who had little in common with each other. One was that of the Mamlūks, or military oligarchy, the other the mass of the Egyptians. The latter were useful for cultivating the land, paying the taxes which supported the Mamlūks, and manufacturing their robes, but beyond these functions, and that of supplying the judicial and religious posts of the empire, they had small part in the business of the state, and appear to have been very seldom incorporated into the ranks of their foreign masters. The names of the Mamlūks that have descended to us in the accurate and detailed pages of El-Makrīzy are generally Tartar or Turkish,[3] and even when they are ordinary Arabic names, they were borne by Tartars who had put on an Arabic name along with the speech, dress, and country of their adoption. In the glories, military and ceremonial, of the Mamlūks the people had no part. They were indeed thankful when a mild sovereign, like Lāgīn, ascended the throne, and when taxes were reduced and bakhshish distributed, and they would join, like all populaces, in the decoration of the streets and public rejoicings, when the Sultan came back from a career of conquest, or recovered from an illness; but they had no voice in the government of the country, and must make the best they might of the uncertain characters of their ever-changing rulers. The men who governed the country were the body of white military slaves, who had been imported by Es-Sālih, and were renewed by purchase as death or assassination reduced their numbers.

Before Es-Sālih’s death a certain number of his Mamlūks had risen from the ranks of common slaves to posts of honour at their master’s court; they had become cup-bearers, or tasters, or masters of the horse to his Majesty, and had been rewarded by enfranchisement; and these freed Mamlūks became in turn masters and owners of other Mamlūks. Thus, at the very beginning of Mamlūk history, we find a number of powerful _Amīrs_ (or “commanders,” lords), who had risen from the ranks of the slaves and in turn become the owners of a large body of retainers, whom they led to battle, or by whose aid they aspired to ascend the throne. The only title to kingship among these nobles was personal prowess and the command of the largest number of adherents. In the absence of other influences the hereditary principle was no doubt adopted, and we find one family, that of Kalaūn, maintaining its succession to the throne for several generations, though not without brief interruptions. But as a rule the successor to the kingly power was the most powerful lord of the day, and his hold on the throne depended chiefly on his strength of following, and his conciliation of the other nobles. The annals of Mamlūk dominion are full of instances of a great lord reducing the authority of the reigning Sultan to a shadow, and then stepping over his murdered body to the throne. Most of the Mamlūks died violent deaths at the hands of rival Amīrs, and the safety of the ruler of the time depended mainly upon the numbers and courage of his guard. This body- guard, or _halka_, enjoyed remarkable privileges, and was the object of continual solicitude on the part of the Sultan. As his own safety and power depended upon their fidelity, he was accustomed to bestow upon them grants of lands, rich dresses of honour, and unstinted largesse. A great part of the land of Egypt was held by the soldiers of the guard in feofs granted by the crown;[4] and the Amīrs who commanded them, nobles specially attached to the Sultan, and generally promoted from among his own Mamlūks, received handsome appanages. These soldiers of the guard numbered several thousand, and must have passed from Sultan to Sultan at every change of ruler; their colonels, or “Amīrs over a Thousand,” as they were called, became important factors in the choice of rulers, and often deposed or set up a Sultan as seemed good to them. The Sultan, or chief Mamlūk, was in fact more or less, according to his character, at the mercy of the officers of his guard; and the principal check he possessed upon their ambition or discontent was found in their own mutual jealousies, which might be played upon so as to neutralize their opposition.

Each of the great lords, or Amīrs, were he an officer of the guard, or a court official, or merely a private nobleman, was a Mamlūk Sultan in miniature. He too had his guard of Mamlūk slaves, who waited at his door to escort him in his rides abroad, were ready at his behest to attack the public baths and carry off the women, defended him when a rival lord besieged his palace, and followed him valiantly as he led the charge of his division on the field of battle. These great lords, with their retainers, were a constant menace to the reigning Sultan. A coalition would be formed among a certain number of disaffected nobles, with the support of some of the officers of the household and of the guard, and their retainers would mass in the approaches to the royal presence, while a trusted cup-bearer or other officer, whose duties permitted him access to the king’s person, would strike the fatal blow, and the conspirators would forthwith elect one of their number to succeed to the vacant throne. This was not effected without a struggle; the royal guard was not always to be bribed or overcome, and there were generally other nobles whose interests attached them to the reigning sovereign rather than to any possible successor, except themselves, and who would be sure to oppose the plot. Then there would be a street fight; the terrified people would close their shops, run to their houses, and shut the great gates which isolated the various quarters and markets of the city; and the rival factions of Mamlūks would ride through the streets that remained open, pillaging the houses of their adversaries, carrying off women and children, holding pitched battles in the roads, and discharging arrows and spears from the windows upon the enemy in the street below. These things were of constant occurrence, and the life of the merchant classes of Cairo must have been sufficiently exciting. We read how the great bazaar, called the Khān El-Khalīly, was sometimes shut up for a week while these contests were going on in the streets without, and the rich merchants of Cairo huddled trembling inside the stout gates.

The contest over, and a new Sultan set on the throne, there remained the further difficulty of staying there. “J’y suis” was a much easier thing to say in Egypt than “j’y reste.” The same method that raised him to power might set him down again. An example, drawn from the annals of the thirteenth century, will show better than any generalizations, the uncertain tenure of power among the fickle military oligarchy of the Mamlūks. In 693 A.H., or A.D. 1293, En-Nāsir Mohammad was raised to the throne, which had been occupied by his father Kalaūn and his brother Khalīl. En-Nāsir was a mere child, nine years old, and the real authority devolved on his Vizīr (or “Viceroy,” _Nāib-es-Saltana_, as this minister was generally styled under the Mamlūks), by name Ketbugha. Naturally there were several other nobles who envied Ketbugha his position of influence and authority; and one of these, Shugay, taking the lead, offered armed resistance to the authority of the Viceroy. Ketbugha’s Mamlūks used to assemble at the gate of the Citadel to defend him in his progress through the city, and Shugay, with his retainers, would waylay the vice-regal _cortège_ as it rode through the narrow streets, and bloody conflicts ensued. The gates of the city were kept closed, and the markets were deserted, until at length Shugay was captured, and his head was paraded on a pike through the streets of Cairo. But disaffection was not quelled by the slaughter of Shugay and his followers. There dwelt a body of 300 Mamlūks called Ashrafy[5] (after their master El-Ashraf Khalīl) in the quarter of Cairo called El- Kebsh, and these warriors, finding their occupation gone by the murder of their master, made an attempt to seize the sovereign power. They assembled and went to the royal stables at the foot of the Citadel, and thence to the armourers’ market, plundering and destroying on their way, and eventually they encamped at the gate of the Citadel, and laid siege to the fortress. Whereupon Ketbugha’s immediate supporters mounted their horses and rode down to meet them. The Ashrafīs were dispersed, and given over to various horrible tortures—blinded, maimed, drowned, beheaded, and hanged, or nailed to the city gate Zuweyla—and only a few were so far spared that they were allotted as slaves to their conquerors. Thus the rebellion was put down; but the next day, the Viceroy Ketbugha, calling a council of the great nobles of the Court, protested that such exhibitions were dishonourable to the kingly state, and that the dignity of Sultan would be irreparably compromised if a child like En-Nāsir were any longer suffered to occupy the throne. The child was therefore sent away to grow up, and Ketbugha, as a matter of course, assumed the sceptre of his ward. This was in 1295, and in the end of 1296, on his return from a journey to Syria, the new Sultan had the misfortune to excite the latent jealousy of some of the powerful nobles who accompanied him: his tent was attacked; his guards and Mamlūks, by a devoted resistance, succeeded in enabling their master to fly, and the leader of the rebellion, Lāgīn, was forthwith chosen Sultan in his stead.

Husām-ed-dīn Lāgīn, who now ascended the throne under the title of El- Mansūr, had originally been a slave of El-Mansūr ‘Aly son of Aybek (whence he was called El-Mansūry), and had then been bought for the trifling sum of about £30 by Kalaūn, under whom he rose from the grade of page to that of _silāhdār_, or armour-bearer; and Kalaūn, coming to the throne, gave him the rank of Amīr and made him governor of Damascus. Kalaūn’s son Khalīl, on succeeding to the sovereignty, cast Lāgīn into prison, and in return for this treatment Lāgīn assisted in his murder. During the brief reign of Ketbugha, he held the highest office in the land, that of Viceroy (_Nāib-es-Saltana_) and now he had turned against his latest lord, and had seized the crown for himself. The terms of his election throw an interesting light upon the precarious authority of the Mamlūk Sultans. His fellow-conspirators, after the flight of Ketbugha, marched at Lāgīn’s stirrup, hailed him Sultan, and payed him homage; but they exacted as a condition of their fealty that the new monarch should continue as one of themselves, do nothing without their advice, and never show undue favour towards his own Mamlūks. This he swore; but so suspicious were they of his good faith, that they made him swear it again, openly hinting that when he was once instated he would break his vow and favour his own followers, to the injury of the nobles who had raised him to the throne. When this had been satisfactorily arranged, Es-Sultān El-Melik El-Mansūr Husām-ed-dīn Lāgīn, “The Sultan, Victorious King, Sword-blade of the Faith, Lāgīn,” rode on to Cairo, attended by the insignia of sovereignty, with the royal parasol borne over his head by the great Lord Beysary; the prayers were said in his name in the mosques, drums were beaten in the towns he passed through; the nobles of Cairo came out to do him fealty; and, escorted by a crowd of lords and officers, he rode to the Citadel, displayed himself as Sultan to the people in the Hippodrome, and made his royal progress through the streets of the capital, from the Citadel to the Gate of Victory. The ‘Abbāsy Khalif of Egypt, a poor relic of the ancient house of Baghdād, rode at his side; and before them was carried the Khalif’s diploma of investiture, without which very nominal authority no Sultan in those days would have considered his coronation complete. The streets were decorated with precious silks and arms, and great was the popular rejoicing; for the benevolence and generosity of Lāgīn made him a favourite with the people, and he had already promised to remit the balance of the year’s taxes, and had even vowed that if he lived there should not be a single tax left. The price of food, which had risen to famine height during the late disturbances, now fell fifty per cent.; bread was cheap, and the Sultan was naturally adored.

In spite of his share in a royal murder and a treacherous usurpation, this Mamlūk Sultan seems to have deserved the affection of his subjects. Not only did he relieve the people from much of the pressure of unjust and arbitrary taxation under which they had groaned, but he abstained, at least until he fell under the influence of another mind, from the tyrannical imprisonments and tortures by which the rule of the Mamlūks was too commonly secured. His conduct to his rivals was clement to a degree hardly paralleled among the princes of his time. He did not attempt to destroy the ex-Sultan Ketbugha, but gave him a small government in Syria by way of compensation. The child En-Nāsir had nothing to fear from Lāgīn, who invited him to return to Egypt, and told him that, as the Mamlūk of the boy’s father, Kalaūn, he only regarded himself as his representative, holding the throne until En-Nāsir should be old enough to assume the government himself. Lāgīn was zealous in good works, gave alms largely in secret, and founded many charitable endowments. Among his services to art must be mentioned his restoration of the Mosque of Ibn-Tūlūn, at a cost of £10,000, to which he was impelled by the circumstance that he had found refuge in the then deserted building during the pursuit which followed the murder of Khalīl. Hidden in the neglected chambers and arcades of the old mosque, where so few worshippers repaired that but a single lamp was lighted before the niche at night, and the muëzzin cared to come no further than the threshold to chant the call to prayer, Lāgīn vowed that he would repay his preservation by repairing the mosque that had sheltered him; and it is interesting to know that the panels of the pulpit, which, with a cupola over the niche, formed the chief additions (beyond mere repairs) that Lāgīn made to the mosque, are now in the South Kensington Museum (figs. 35-8.) Such good deeds, and the magnanimous release of many prisoners, and not least, a bold foreign policy, as when he sent an army to capture towns on the distant borders of Armenia, could not fail to endear him to the populace; and when he was confined to the Citadel for two months with injuries resulting from a fall at polo, the rejoicings on his return to public life were genuine and universal. All the streets were decorated with silks and satins, the shops and windows were hired by sightseers, eager to catch a glimpse of the Sultan, and drums were beaten during his state progress through the capital. He celebrated the occasion by giving a number of robes of honour to the chief lords, freeing captives, and distributing alms to the poor. His private life commended him to the good Muhammadans of Cairo; for although in his youth he had been a wine-bibber, gambler, and given over to the chase, when he ascended the throne he became austere in his practice, fasted two months in the year besides Ramadān, affected the society of good pious kādis and the like, was plain in his dress, as the Prophet ordains that a Muslim should be, and strict in enforcing simplicity among his followers. His ruddy complexion and blue eyes, together with a tall and imposing figure, indeed marked the foreigner, but his habits were orthodoxy itself; he bastinadoed drunkards, even if they were nobles; and his immoderate eating was not necessarily wicked.

But Lāgīn, with all his virtues, had a weakness, too common among Mamlūk sovereigns; he was passionately attached to one of his retainers, named Mangūtīmūr, and by degrees suffered himself to be led by this favourite where his better judgment would never have allowed him to stray. Mangūtīmūr was neither a bad nor a contemptible man; but he was devoured by ambition and pride, and had no scruples when it was a question of removing an obstacle in his path to power. One of these was the great Lord Beysary, who had himself declined the crown, and who, when consulted by Lāgīn on the wisdom of making Mangūtīmūr his viceroy, reminded the Sultan of his vow when he was elected to the supreme power, and told him in blunt language that Mangūtīmūr was not worthy of the honour to which the Sultan destined him. The favourite, when he was made Viceroy after all, did not forget Beysary or his other detractors; some he banished, others were imprisoned and bastinadoed, and Beysary himself was placed in a sort of regal confinement, and there kept till his death. We shall hear more of Lord Beysary when we come to describe his perfume-burner in the chapter on metal-work, and it is enough to say here that he was too much devoted to the comforts and enjoyments of good living to care to trouble himself with the uneasiness which proverbially attends crowned heads. He was moreover an old man, and had been a notable and respected figure in Mamlūk court life for the past fifty years; his arrest was therefore the more wanton. Mangūtīmūr’s oppressions were not tamely endured by the Amīrs; but it was no light thing to risk the horrors of incarceration in the Citadel dungeon, a noisome pit, where foul and deadly exhalations, unclean vermin, and bats, rendered the pitchy darkness more horrible, and where for nearly half a century it was the practice to incarcerate refractory nobles, until, in 1329, En-Nāsir had the dreaded hole filled up. At length a combination was formed; Lāgīn was treacherously murdered as he was in the act of rising to say the evening prayers, and immediately afterwards Mangutīmur was entrapped. He was for the moment consigned to the pit under the Citadel, when the Amīr who had dealt the fatal stroke to Lāgīn arrived on the scene, and crying with a strident voice, “What had the Sultan done that I should kill him? By God, I never had aught but benefits from him; he brought me up, and gave me my steps of promotion. Had I known that when the Sultan was dead this Mangūtīmūr would still be living, I would never have done this murder, for it was Mangūtīmūr’s acts that led me to the deed.” So saying, he plunged into the dungeon, slew the hated favourite with his own hands, and delivered his house over to the soldiers to pillage.

This sketch of a few years of Mamlūk history will serve to show the perils that surrounded the kingly state. It is a fair sample of the whole history, although now and again a sovereign would ascend the throne whose personal qualities or diplomatic talents succeeded in keeping the reins of government in his hands for a considerable period. The uncertainty of the tenure of power, and the general brevity of their reigns, (they average about five years and a half,) make it the more astonishing that they should have found time or leisure to promote the many noble works of architecture and engineering, which distinguish their rule above any other period of Egyptian history since the Christian Era. The Sultan’s office was indeed no sinecure, apart from the constant watchfulness needed to manage the refractory Mamlūks. Two days a week did Lāgīn devote to sitting in the Hall of Justice and hearing any complaints that his subjects might bring before him, in addition to those petitions which were constantly presented to him as he rode through the city. The correspondence of the empire, again, was no light matter, and most of the Sultans took a personal share in drawing up the despatches. Beybars had established a well organized system of posts, connecting every part of his wide dominions with the capital. Relays of horses were in readiness at each posting-house, and twice a week the Sultan received and answered reports from all parts of the realm. Besides the ordinary mail, there was also a pigeon post, which was no less carefully arranged. The pigeons were kept in cots in the Citadel and at the various stages, which were further apart than those of the horses; the bird knew that it must stop at the first post-cot, where its letter would be attached to the wing of another pigeon for the next stage. The royal pigeons had a distinguishing mark, and when one of these arrived at the Citadel with a despatch, none was permitted to detach the parchment save the Sultan himself; and so stringent were the rules, that were he dining or sleeping or absorbed in polo, he would nevertheless at once be informed of the arrival, and would immediately proceed to disencumber the bird of its message. The correspondence conducted by these posts was often very considerable. Here is an example of the business-hours of the famous Sultan Beybars. He arrived before Tyre one night; a tent was immediately pitched by torchlight, the secretaries, seven in number, were summoned, with the commander-in- chief; and the adjutant-general (Amīr ‘Alam) with the military secretaries were instructed to draw up orders for drums and standards, &c. For hours they ceased not to write letters and diplomas, to which the Sultan affixed his seal; this very night they indicted in his presence fifty-six diplomas for high nobles, each with its proper introduction of praise to God. One of Beybar’s letters has been preserved; it is a very characteristic epistle, and displays a grim and sarcastic appreciation of humour. Boemond, Prince of Antioch, was not present at the assault of that city by Beybars, and the Sultan kindly conveyed the information of the disaster in a personal despatch. He begins by ironically complimenting Boemond on his change of title, from Prince to Count, in consequence of the fall of his capital, and then goes on to describe the siege and capture of Antioch. He spares his listener no detail of the horrors that ensued: “Hadst thou but seen thy knights trodden under the hoofs of the horses! thy palaces invaded by plunderers and ransacked for booty! thy treasures weighed out by the hundredweight! thy ladies bought and sold with thine own gear, at four for a dīnār! hadst thou but seen thy churches demolished, thy crosses sawn in sunder, thy garbled Gospels hawked about before the sun, the tombs of thy nobles cast to the ground; thy foe the Muslim treading thy Holy of Holies; the monk, the priest, the deacon, slaughtered on the altar; the rich given up to misery; princes of royal blood reduced to slavery! Couldst thou but have seen the flames devouring thy halls; thy dead cast into the fires temporal, with the fires eternal hard at hand! the churches of Paul and of Cosmas rocking and going down!—then wouldst thou have said, ‘Would God that I were dust! Would God that I never had this letter!’ . . . This letter holds happy tidings for thee: it tells thee that God watches over thee, to prolong thy days, inasmuch as in these latter days thou wert not in Antioch! Hadst thou been there, now wouldst thou be slain or a prisoner, wounded or disabled. A live man rejoiceth in his safety when he looketh on a field of slain. . . . As not a man hath escaped to tell thee the tale, we tell it thee; as no soul could apprise thee that thou art safe, while all the rest have perished, we apprise thee!” Nevertheless, Boemond was mightily incensed with the Sultan’s sarcastic attentions.[6]