Chapter V: Wood-Work

When we remember how little wood grows in Egypt, the extensive use made of this material in the mosques and houses of Cairo appears very remarkable. In mosques, the ceilings, some of the windows, the pulpit, lectern or Korān desk, tribune, tomb-casing, doors, and cupboards, are of wood, and often there are carved wooden inscriptions, and stalactites of the same material leading up to the circle of the dome. In the older houses, ceilings, doors, cupboards, and furniture, are made of wood, and carved lattice windows, or meshrebīyas, abound. In a cold climate, such employment of the most easily worked of substances is natural enough; but in Egypt, apart from the scarcity of the material, and the necessity of importing it,[41] the heat offers serious obstacles to its use. A plain board of wood properly seasoned may keep its shape well enough in England, but when exposed to the sun of Cairo it will speedily lose its accurate proportions; and when employed in combination with other pieces, to form windows or doors, boxes or pulpits, its joints will open, its carvings split, and the whole work will become unsightly and unstable. The leading characteristic of Cairo wood-work is its subdivision into numerous panels; and this principle is obviously the result of climatic considerations, rather than any doctrine of art. The only mode of combatting the shrinking and warping effects of the sun was found in a skilful division of the surfaces into panels small enough, and sufficiently easy in their setting, to permit of slight shrinking without injury to the general outline. The little panels of a Cairo door or pulpit may expand without encountering enough resistance to cause any cracking or splitting in the surrounding portions, and the Egyptian workmen soon learned to accommodate themselves to the conditions of their art in a hot climate.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

Wood is the prevailing material employed for the fittings and furniture of a mosque. The furniture is, however, of a much more restricted character than that of a Christian church or cathedral. Where the ministers and congregation sit cross-legged on the floor, and in a service where there is no music and therefore no choir or organ, we cannot look for carved chancel-stalls, _misereres_, choir-screens, organ-lofts, or other points of decoration in our more ornate churches. The niche towards Mekka takes the place of our altar, and though it is sumptuously adorned with marbles and mosaic, it does not afford the opportunity for wood-carving which is found in our chancels. Nevertheless, the Mohammadan church has its points of wood-carving. These are the pulpit, the lectern or Korān desk, the doors of the recesses or cupboards which contain the various objects required by the ministers of the mosque; and although there is no choir-screen, in the splendid sense familiar in our cathedrals, the sanctuary or eastern arcade of the mosque is sometimes railed off from the court by a turned wooden screen. And as many of the mosques of Cairo have chapels, where the founder or members of his family are interred, the Muslim artist would sometimes employ his skill in carving the wooden casing of the tomb with elaborate arabesques, arranged in intricate panels.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

The form of a Cairo pulpit, termed in Arabic منبر _minbar_ (pronounced _mimbar_), is seen in fig. 34. It represents a pulpit, now in the South Kensington Museum, which bears the name and titles of the Mamlūk Sultan Kāït Bey, who reigned in the last third of the sixteenth century, but the precise mosque from which it came is not known. As one Sultan would sometimes place a pulpit in the mosque of another, and Kāït Bey was especially generous in this kind of restoration, it is possible that the pulpit did not come from any of his own mosques; and the tradition is that it belonged to that of El-Muayyad, which, however, has a pulpit of its own, bearing its founder’s name. Wherever it originally stood, the pulpit is an admirable example of the typical Cairene _mimbar_. It consists of a staircase, entered through folding doors, and enclosed by high sides, and terminating at the top in a sort of niche, surmounted by stalactites and a copper cupola. The position of the pulpit was always on the left side of the niche, as you look out towards the court, and the doors were turned to face the congregation. The _mimbar_ is only required during the Friday (or Muslim Sunday) prayers, when the weekly sermon is preached by the Imām or Khatīb of the mosque, who is a layman selected from the people of the neighbourhood, and in no special sense a priest. Standing on the topmost step but one, and holding in his right hand a long wooden sword, which is kept for the purpose behind the doors of the pulpit, he delivers the oration of the Friday Service. The reason for the position on the second step is rather curious: Mohammad the Prophet always preached from the top step, and the Khalifs, his successors, modestly descended each a step lower than the preceding, in order to reserve the post of honour to the most worthy. But when two or three steps had thus been descended, it was discovered that the process if continued long enough would land the preacher in the bowels of the earth, and it was accordingly decided to reserve the top step for Mohammad himself, and to preach from the next lower on all future occasions.

Fifteenth Century. (_South Kensington Museum._)]

The ornament of the pulpit is generally elaborate. Some of the more modern pulpits are indeed very plain, and constructed merely of panelled and painted wood. On the other hand, one _mimbar_, erected by Kāït Bey in the mosque of Barkūk, in the eastern burial-ground of Cairo, is of solid stone slabs, admirably carved with arabesques and geometrical designs (fig. 16). But most of the pulpits are like that of Kāït Bey, engraved in fig. 34, and are covered with carving and inlaid with ivory and ebony. The amount of work involved in the complicated arrangement of little panels, each of which is supported in a frame of wood beading, which is itself chiselled and sometimes made in two or three envelopes, must have been very considerable; and the carving of the panels with arabesques of varying designs, no two of which are alike, in work of the best period, must have involved incredible toil and ingenuity. It may be taken as a rule, which is exemplified in most arts, that the older the work is, the simpler, freer, and more varied it is; while complexity, intricacy, and a tendency to repetition, are signs of a later style.

FIG. 37.

FIG. 35.

FIG. 38.

CARVED PANELS OF LAGIN’S PULPIT, ONCE IN THE MOSQUE OF IBN-TULUN. A.D. 1296.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

The specimens engraved in figs. 35-43 will convey a fairly complete conception of the character of this typically Cairene mode of carving. The panels figs. 35-40 originally formed part of a pulpit which the Mamlūk Sultan Lāgīn erected in the mosque of Ibn-Tūlūn in the year 1296 A.D., when he undertook the restoration of this ancient mosque. In the present day there is a very inferior pulpit there, and this must have been introduced when the fine work of which these panels formed part was taken away, by whom we do not know. The removal must however have been effected in comparatively recent times, for when Mr. James Wild, the present Curator of Sir John Soane’s Museum, was in Cairo, about 1845, the older pulpit was still standing; and he made a drawing of the geometrical arrangement of the panels, which is still preserved in his sketch-books, and which was turned to advantage some years ago, when the fragments of the pulpit sides were acquired by the South Kensington Museum from M. Meymar. This sketch shows that the side included one large circular geometrical arrangement (comprising eight large octagonal panels, carved alternately with stars and arabesques round a central star), and four half-systems of the same plan, two of which were placed so that their diameters coincided with the edge of the balustrade or border of the pulpit, while the other two touched the back. The balustrade was of open lattice work, something like the narrow open panels in the Kāït Bey pulpit engraved in fig. 34, and the length of the base and back of the triangular portion of the side, occupied by the carved panels, was 15 feet 9 inches. The doors were filled with carved geometrical panels, with the usual arrangement of two horizontal panels, filled with Arabic inscriptions, one above and one below each door, and a longer inscription on the lintel. The pulpit did not arrive in England in its original shape, but consisted merely of a collection of loose panels, which Mr. Wild, with the help of his sketch, arranged in a square, which now hangs on the walls of the Museum (no. 1051); with the exception of a few pieces which remained over, and some of the horizontal panels, two of which contain the name of the Sultan Lāgīn and the date of the erection of the pulpit, A.H. 696, while others are filled with scroll-work. Two of these are engraved in figs. 39 and 40; one has an arabesque scroll, and the other the inscription الملك المنصور حسام الدنيا والدين لاجين “The victorious king, sword-blade of the State and Church Lāgīn.” When the Museum acquired the magnificent collection of M. de St. Maurice, in 1884, I was able to identify the fine panels which the late owner had fitted into the frame-work of a modern and ill- proportioned door as portions of the same pulpit, and some of these are engraved in figs. 37 and 38.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

The panels of Lāgīn’s pulpit show the Cairene carving in its boldest and finest style. Later arabesques may be more delicate and graceful, but no carvers in Egypt excelled those who made this pulpit, in freedom of design and skill of execution. As is usual in the best Saracenic work, no two designs of this pulpit are absolutely identical: some fresh turn, some ingenious variation in the lines of the arabesque, show the independence of the artist from servile copying. The panels are enclosed by two thin lines of light-coloured wood inlaid in the darker wood of the panel, but the borders are not carved in the manner usual in later work, nor is there any ivory inlay.

The next dated examples are the carved panels from the mosque of El- Māridāny, a Mamlūk Amīr of the court of En-Nāsir ibn Kalaūn, which was built in the year 739 of the Hijra, A.D. 1338. These panels are partly comprised in the top of a French table belonging to the collection of M. Meymar, now in the South Kensington Museum, and the setting and beading is modern; but the geometrical panels are fortunately intact. Horizontal panels, which must have been originally placed above and below the carved doors of this pulpit, or over the little doors of the side cupboard (such as is seen open in fig. 34), present the following inscription twice over:—

ذخر الارامل والمنقطعين | كهف الفقرا والمساكين |

العبد الفقير الى الله تعالى | الطنبغا الساقى الملكى الناصرى |

“Provider for the widowed and destitute, Refuge of the poor and miserable, The humble servant of God most high, Altunbugha, the cup- bearer, the [Mamlūk] of El-Melik En-Nāsir,”—which shows that not only was this Amīr a Mamlūk, or retainer of the Sultan En-Nāsir, but that he held the office of cup-bearer, which was among the most influential and coveted posts in the court. The carving of the arabesques on the geometrical panels of El-Māridāny’s pulpit is more delicate and intricate than that of Lāgīn’s, and inlaid borders (consisting in a double ivory line, separated by others ornamented with a scroll pattern) are enclosed in a series of thin wooden beadings. Like Lāgīn’s carvings, those of El-Māridāny are executed in two reliefs; the principal lines of the design being more prominent than the scroll-work of the background, which, however, is still in sufficient relief.

Fourteenth Century. (_South Kensington Museum._)]

Nearly contemporary with the pulpit of El-Māridāny are the panels, figs. 41 and 42, which are taken from one of M. de St. Maurice’s doors in the South Kensington Museum. In the case of a modern application of the original panels it is not always safe to assume that all the pieces belong to the same pulpit; and especially doubtful is the connection between the geometrical panels and the horizontal inscriptional friezes above and below, which are more likely to be selected because they fit the present scale of the door, than because they belonged to the same pulpit as the geometrical panels they accompany. In the present instance the horizontal panels give the name of the Sultan Zeyn-ed-dīn Hasan—

النصر الدائم والجاه القائم لمولانا السلطان

الملك العادل الناصر المظفر زين الدين حسن

the peculiarity of which lies in the substitution of the surname _Zeyn- ed-dīn_ for the Nāsir-ed-dīn, which is invariably applied to Hasan on his coins and public buildings. The inscription, however, is no forgery, and there is no other Sultan Hasan to whom it could apply. The only question is whether it belongs to the geometrical panels in whose company it is found. If it does not, which I am far from asserting, at least the geometrical panels belong to a period very nearly coinciding with the reign of Sultan Hasan (1347-1361). Mr. Wild has preserved a sketch of the pulpit of the mosque of Kūsūn, now destroyed, which contained panels of the same curious octagonal shape, with very obtuse angles, like those in fig. 42.[42] The Amīr Kūsūn was one of the Mamlūks of En-Nāsir, Hasan’s father, and his mosque was built in 1329. It does not necessarily follow that the pulpit was set up at once; a temporary pulpit may have served at first. But the similarity of the panels (fig. 42) to those sketched by Mr. Wild seems to indicate that if the St. Maurice door is not actually made up from the fragments of the vanished _mimbar_ of Kūsūn, the pulpit that was thus desecrated undoubtedly belonged to a period nearly coinciding with the death of that Amīr in 1341. If the panels with Sultan Hasan’s name on them belong to the rest, the pulpit must have been built after his accession in 1347, in which case it may have been placed in Kūsūn’s mosque by Sultan Hasan, in accordance with a not uncommon practice. The work is very like El- Māridāny’s, but even more delicate, and there cannot be a long interval between them. It should be stated that the outer beading enclosing both these and the Lāgīn panels is absolutely modern. It is reproduced in the engraving only to show the position of the panels towards one another. The original panels are inlaid with a line of ivory inside which is a border of dots.

Fourteenth Century. (_South Kensington Museum._)]

After the time of El-Māridāny’s carvings, the style of work seems to have gradually deteriorated. Sheykhū’s pulpit, in his mosque built in 1358, is good, but ordinary; El-Muayyad’s, in 1420, shows a decided falling off in the execution. With the pulpit of Kāït Bey, fig. 34, we come to the end of the history of this description of wood-carving in Cairo, so far at least as dated specimens are within our reach. The art may have continued for some generations longer, but it had already lost much of its character and beauty. In form and arrangement, and also in general effect, the pulpit of Kāït Bey may challenge comparison with almost any other; but when we come to look closely into the work it becomes apparent that the art of the carver had undergone a serious process of deterioration. The designs are mechanical, hard, and prone to repetition: they will not bear comparison with the panels of Lāgīn or El-Māridāny. This is no doubt partly due to the substance used. The wooden panels are merely shells to contain smaller ivory panels of the same outline, and the latter alone are carved. Ivory is less easily worked than wood, though capable of even more delicate treatment; but the artists who were accustomed to work in wood must have found the ivory difficult to handle in the same flowing lines. Ivory carving of this type is usually somewhat hard in treatment, as may be seen in the beautiful but somewhat stiff panels of a mosque door engraved in fig. 69. These, however, belong to a much better period than those of the Kāït Bey pulpit, as may be seen at a glance; and it is indisputable that in the time of Kāït Bey the carving had changed character for the worse. This is the more remarkable, since the reign of this Sultan was famous for the multitude of admirable architectural works promoted by himself. The stone carving of the time is perhaps unequalled in any other period of Cairene art. Perhaps the whole energy of the carvers was absorbed in stone work, and the softer material was neglected. After the dominion of the Mamlūks was transferred to the Pashas appointed from Constantinople, the art of carving pulpit panels seems to have died out. The ordinary Turkish mosque of Cairo has a painted _mimbar_, of the same shape as its carved predecessor, but with red-ochre and green painting, of no special character, in place of the intricate geometrical panelling of the best period.

Thirteenth Century.]

The _kursy_, or lectern, a V shaped desk, on which the Korān was placed for reading, was sometimes constructed, like the pulpit, of geometrically arranged carved and inlaid panels. An example may be seen engraved in Prisse, Pl. 18, where the fine carved kursy with open work at the top belonged to the mosque of Barkūk in the eastern cemetery. Carved panelling of the same style is also sometimes employed for the wooden casing of the tombs which occupy the founder’s chapel in a mosque. The ordinary Muslim tomb is simply an oblong erection of stone, with a short pillar at each end, one of which has the representation of a turban carved upon it. Even the graves of the greatest of Mamlūk Sultans were constructed after this simple model. Such is the tomb of Kalaūn, the plainness of which is partly concealed by the clumsy lattice screen of heavy baluster-work which encloses the grave and the relics of the Sultan. The tombs of Sultan Hasan, Barkūk, and indeed of most of the sovereigns of Egypt, are of this unpretending character. So long as there was room inside for the occupant to sit up and say his Catechism to the examining angels, Munkar and Nekīr, the outside of the grave was of small consequence. The real tomb of the Sultan was the mosque, with its glorious dome, which rose above the humble stone grave. But in some instances the grave itself was a subject for artistic treatment. The tomb of Es-Sālih Ayyūb, built in 1249, is the earliest example of the carved panel-work with which we are acquainted.[43] It is fifty years earlier than Lāgīn’s panels, described above; and evidence of priority, apart from the known date of erection, is presented in the simplicity of the arabesque designs, as seen in the cut (fig. 43), which is taken from a paper squeeze made under my eye in 1883. Another mode of ornamenting a tomb, which appears to have been usual at an earlier date still, was by a frieze of wooden planks surrounding the oblong grave at its upper edge. This is the method employed for the tombs of the members of the ‘Abbāsy family, buried in the chapel behind the mosque of Sitta Nefīsa. Each grave consists externally of a square stone box, standing about four feet from the ground, and ornamented only by a band of wood, carved with inscriptions, about six inches in width, running round the four sides at their upper edge. The dates of these tombs range from A.H. 640 (A.D. 1242) to A.H. 768 (A.D. 1366).[44] The ornament here is simply inscriptional. But there is at least one instance of a more elaborate decoration of a frieze of this kind. The grave of a sheykh, in one of the cemeteries which surround Cairo, was formerly ornamented by a wooden frieze, carved not only with inscriptions but with exceedingly soft and delicate arabesques. One of the sides is represented in fig. 44. It is made of some soft yet close-textured wood, which has evidently offered little resistance to the friction of the desert sand, the effects of which are seen in the singularly soft appearance of the surface, which looks as though it had been intentionally rubbed with emery paper. Each side of the frieze is made of four long parallel strips, with intervening panels of various lengths; and the tenons by which it was mortised to the next side are seen in the cut. The back of the frieze is carved with a large bold arabesque design which belongs in style to the period of Ibn-Tūlūn, or a little later. A Kūfy inscription over the door of the mausoleum indicates an earlier interment of the year 304 (A.D. 916), and it is safe to assume that the original carving belonged to this earlier grave. Thus the frieze was carved on materials that had been seasoned for perhaps three centuries, and this will explain the somewhat large surfaces having escaped the effects of the sun. The carving is unusually fine: a border of Korānic inscription at the top is supported by an exquisite arabesque scroll-border, and the main band of the frieze is ornamented with panels of arabesques surrounded by inscriptions in high relief, on a ground of arabesque scrolls. The inscriptions here are partly from the Korān, partly benedictory to the deceased, whose name they give, together with the date of his death, which is legible in the right-hand bottom corner of the engraving, A.H. 613 (A.D. 1216).

A.D. 1216. (_South Kensington Museum._)]

Thus far we have seen no Cairo carving that traverses the law of the Mohammadan religion against the reproduction in art of the forms of animate creatures: arabesques, and scrolls of endless variety, have been the staple of the ornament. These are the characteristic features of Cairo carving. But it would be a mistake to imagine that the prohibition against the representation of living things was universally observed. We shall see when we come to discuss the early metal-work of Egypt, and also the textile fabrics, that figures are at certain periods the rule, not the exception. So in wood-carving, though not to the same extent, if one may judge from existing examples, the law about figures was not always observed. Panels carved with representations of birds exist in the South Kensington Museum and in the Arab Museum at Cairo. But the most remarkable example of figure carving in Cairo is found in the doors of the Māristān, or mosque-hospital of the Mamlūk Sultan Kalaūn, the father of En-Nāsir Mohammad. M. Prisse d’Avennes fortunately studied these extraordinary panels when they were better preserved than they are now, and from the squeezes he then took he was able to restore the designs to the almost too perfect outlines presented in his plates (nos. 83 and 84), from which the engravings, figs. 46-8, are taken. There are eight panels altogether, of pine wood, and each is carved with representations of the sports, amusements, and occupations of the Arab, or rather of the Persian, for there can be no doubt that the source of these admirable designs was the art of Mesopotamia, where the traditions of ancient Persian and Assyrian art still survived in the metal-work of the artists of Mōsil and other towns.

(_Cairo Museum._)]

In the centre of the first panel we see on a ground of rather crude scroll-work a centaur, winged like an Assyrian beast, and wearing a crown exactly resembling the tiara that is found on similar centaur huntsmen on the figured metal-work of Mōsil. He has stretched a bow and is discharging an arrow at a unicorn behind him; a corresponding unicorn paws the ground on the opposite side. The scene is just what we find through the whole range of Mesopotamian design, from the oldest Assyrian bas-reliefs downwards.

(After Prisse d’Avennes.) Late Thirteenth Century.]

In the second panel a peacock stands in the middle, in a geometrical figure formed of a lozenge and quatrefoil combined. Large leaf scrolls winding round form a sort of division in the band of figures, and the sections thus marked off are filled with (on the left) two running servants, holding ewers and glasses, and (on the right) a player on the square lute and a seated figure with drinking-vessels. Simple scroll borders enclose the central band above and below.

In the vertical panel, which is divided into various compartments by the curling lines of the scroll-work which forms the background, is a kneeling figure in the act of rising, with a slain deer flung over his shoulders and held in position by one arm thrown round its neck and the other round its hind-legs. Over this figure two eagles are perched, breast to breast, but with beaks averted; and on either side of these, in exaggerated proportions, are two long-tailed cockatoos, fronting inwards, but with heads averted like the eagles; over the cockatoos are a corresponding pair of deer, each with an eagle on his back, with wings spread, having just alighted on his prey; and, to crown the panel, is a central representation of two combatant ducks,—their webbed feet clearly visible—beak to beak. These upper designs are matched, below the cockatoos, by similarly arranged figures: to balance the eagles and deer, a pair of winged Assyrian monsters or centaurs, resembling that on the first panel described above, with the same three-pointed crown; and underneath these, in the centre, to correspond with the ducks, a pair of long-eared rabbits confronted. These figures are depicted in a spirited style that has no parallel in Eastern carving, at least in Egypt or Syria; and they mark a distinct epoch in the history of Cairo art.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

As has been already said, there is but one source to which these remarkable carvings can be traced. The artists who engraved the hunting scenes, the water-fowl, the drinking-bouts, of the bowls and other vessels of bronze and brass made at Mōsil or in the neighbouring cities—the artists, in short, who had inherited the traditions of animal design from the workmen of the Sassanians, the Parthians, and the Assyrians, these were the men who inspired, if they did not actually execute the carved panels of Kalaūn. The birds face to face refer no doubt to the cockfights which the Persians included among their favourite sports, and the adoption of the duck instead of the cock has its explanation in the name of the Sultan for whose hospital these panels were carved; for Kalaūn was a slave from Kipchak, and his name means “duck” in his native Tartar tongue. It is strange that so admirable a style of decoration did not find wider acceptance among the founders and architects of mosques in Cairo. No near parallel to these carvings of Kalaūn can be found in any mosque of the period, still less in any of later date. A few pieces carved with parrots and peacocks have been noticed, but these, since they are separated from their original surroundings, may have come from the same source as the panels still remaining at the Māristān of Kalaūn.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

It is perhaps rash to speculate upon the causes which led to the sudden adoption and as sudden abandonment of a remarkable and characteristic style of carving; but in the present case there is some evidence that may help us to an explanation. In the chapter on metal-work we shall have to describe a similar sequence of adoption and abandonment with respect to the figured style of Mōsil, which closely resembles the style of Kalaūn’s carvings. The chased bowls and caskets, covered with representations of hunting and drinking scenes, beasts of the chase, and the like, made their appearance in Cairo about the end of the first quarter of the thirteenth century, so far as existing specimens allow us to judge. The style was brought from Mesopotamia by the princes of the family of Ayyūb, of which Saladin was the most celebrated member. The Ayyūbis passed through the country watered by the Tigris and Euphrates before they arrived in Syria, or attempted to worm themselves into the sovereignty of Egypt. Saladin and his kinsmen were the officers of the great Sultan Nūr-ed-dīn, of Aleppo and Damascus, who came of the stock of the Beny Zenky of Mōsil. The Beny Zenky had been among the earliest to adopt the novelty of a figured coinage: they adorned their money with the saints and holy personages of the Byzantine coinage, or with symbols taken from Persian astrology, in place of the sternly simple inscriptions which covered the faces of the coins of the orthodox Khalifate. These innovations were carried into Syria by Nūr-ed-dīn, who entertained as few prejudices on the subject of representations of living things as the rest of the Kurdish and Tartar princes, who now ruled the best provinces of the Khalifs of Baghdād. Saladin (though a very pious and orthodox prince) brought the heretical novelty to Cairo, where he carved his own cognizance, an eagle,[45] on the wall of the Citadel which he built on a spur of Mount Mukattam. There is a brass and silver casket of Saladin’s grandnephew in the South Kensington Museum, covered with figures of huntsmen, &c., which shows that the Ayyūby kings of Egypt continued to patronize the art introduced by their great kinsman. So, too, the earlier Mamlūks found no spiritual injury to result from the representation of men and animals on their cups and perfume-burners, their trays and bowls. Evidence of this will be found in the chapter on metal-work; and the lion, the cognizance of Beybars, the most powerful of the early Mamlūk Sultans, occurring on coins, doors, and walls, shows that this indifference to a minor regulation of the Arabian prophet extended to more forms of art than one. Beybars’ lions or chītahs on his coins and bronze mosque doors, Beysary’s eagles on his perfume-burner, El-Ādil’s hunting-scenes on his coffret, Kalaūn’s centaurs and drinking-bouts on his hospital doors, all point to a general acquiescence for awhile in this flagrant disregard of what had always been held a binding precept in Islām. But with the reign of En- Nāsir, Kalaūn’s son, a new style of metal-work came into fashion: rosettes of flowers and leaves, arabesques, and scrolls, and the rest of the legitimate materials of the Mohammadan artist, obtained a hold on Cairo work in all branches that was never again lost. At precisely the same time, the figured carving, which seemed to promise so fine a field for mosque and palace decoration, was abandoned in favour of the small carved and inlaid arabesque panels, which have already been examined in detail. It is not unreasonable to ascribe the change in the wood-work to the same cause as that which operated in the metal-work; and this seems to have been natural enough. The barbarous Kurds and Tartars, who had swarmed over the lands of the Khalifate, and entered Egypt, might for a while, by dint of sheer imperious insistance, make a form of art popular which was nevertheless unorthodox; but as the barbarians settled down in the cities of the Muslims, which they did so much to beautify, they must have gradually become assimilated to the people they governed, and their first ignorant indifference about so vital a part of religion as the prohibition of images of animate things must have given place to a proper iconoclastic feeling, or at least they must have learned to weigh more accurately the sentiments of the pious on the subject. Thus the imported art of figure carving, which was the temporary _protégé_ of the Tartar princes, before they knew better, gave place to the arabesque and geometrical ornament which had long before been settled upon as most consonant with the letter and spirit of Mohammad’s precept. The figure art was foreign to Cairo; it was heretical; and it was little suited to the small panelling which was a condition of the carver’s art in so hot a climate: the large panels of Kalaūn’s doors have suffered severely from the heat, and the size is against all the precautions of joinery in hot climates. On the other hand, carved panelling, in small sizes, worked into intricate geometrical patterns, formed the native art of Cairo, was exactly adapted to the conditions of climate, and offended no law of God or man. It was clear that the figure carving had no chance against so well accredited a rival.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

When we say that the small arabesque carving described in detail, and illustrated by specimens from numerous pulpits, was a native Egyptian art, we may be thought to be going too fast. The evidence is certainly incomplete for so definite an assertion, it will be said; and until we know something more about early Egyptian carving, say in Fātimy times, it is hardly reasonable to expect a cautious student to assent to any proposition about “native” arts in Egypt. But I believe that the evidence for the indigenous nature of the particular style of carving referred to is strong enough to warrant the appellation of native art. It is to be noted that in no other Mohammadan country do we find the same character of wood carving except in isolated examples, which may be due to Cairene influences. Damascus carving is absolutely different in style; it consists in rich flowery decorations in high relief, and not of arabesques in small geometrical panels and comparatively low relief. Persia has nothing of the kind, nor, so far as we know, has the opposite region of Mauritania. The carved panelling of Cairo seems to be peculiar to Egypt. This is in itself a strong argument for an Egyptian origin of the art. But there is other evidence, which, if at present not so complete as could be desired, still offers a considerable presumption as to the history of the art. The finest specimens of carved geometrical panelling are found, not in the Mohammadan mosques, but in the Christian churches of the Copts, in Babylon, near Old Cairo. The screens of these Coptic churches are often one broad expanse of elaborate inlay and carving in wood and ivory, arranged like the mosque pulpits in geometrical panels of small size. The designs are naturally founded more or less upon the cross, which is also inlaid very frequently in the screens; but the character of the work is very similar to that of mosque pulpits, and in some instances, the designs of the carving are as nearly identical as the originality of the Cairo artist would permit any two designs to be. A glance at the lectern engraved in Mr. A. J. Butler’s admirable work on the Coptic churches of Egypt,[46] will show the identity of the two, and there is every probability that the workmen who made the Coptic screens and lecterns made also the Muslim pulpits. It is historically ascertained that the Copts were the most skilful of the artists of Egypt, and were employed by the Mohammadans to execute some of their mosques; and when the excellence of the carvings in the Coptic churches is considered, it is not unnatural to assume that this was among the arts which the Copts lent to their Muslim masters. The question of date is not so easily settled. It is of course necessary to the absolute establishing of this view of the origin of Cairo panel- carving that examples of Coptic carving should be found earlier than any in the mosques, but in this respect the evidence is not convincing. Mr. Butler states, for example, that the screen of the convent of Abu-s- Seyfeyn, near Cairo, dates from A.D. 927, and the priest of the convent said that it was nine hundred years old. But Coptic priests are bad authorities on such a point, and the comparison of style which Mr. Butler institutes with the restoration pulpit of the mosque of Ibn-Tūlūn tends to give a thirteenth instead of a tenth century date. But there are various structural arguments which, in the opinion of Mr. Butler, who speaks with the highest authority on Coptic art, prove that some of these carvings go back as far as the tenth century at least, while the doors at El-Adra, in the Nitrian valley, are stated to be certainly of the eighth century; and if this be accepted, there can be no further question as to the origin of the art of panel-carving and inlaying in Cairo. The Coptic churches are mostly earlier than the tenth century, and must have had screens from their foundation; and there is no reason to suppose that the screens have been often renewed, or that it was impossible to carve as well in the tenth century as in the thirteenth; indeed the fine stucco designs of Ibn-Tūlūn, which was built by a Coptic architect in the ninth century, point to a skill in working plaster ornament even then. It was, moreover, natural that the Copts, the old inhabitants of Egypt, should have early discovered the method of defeating the warping tendencies of their hot climate by means of a minute subdivision into panels. Taking these various considerations, it is not so rash as it seemed to assume that the art of carving panels in the style characteristic of Coptic screens and Muslim pulpits was native to Egypt, and was the special property of the Copts.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

The Coptic churches also contain some examples of figure carving, somewhat resembling the hunting figures of Mōsil metal-work. A noble triforium screen in the church of St. Barbara, and another in the church of St. Sergius (Abu-Sargah), in Old Cairo, are decorated with warrior saints and beasts much after the model of the horsemen of Mesopotamian art. There may of course be a connection between these and Kalaūn’s panels, described above, but it is not necessary to trace the two to the same source. There can be no doubt of the Mesopotamian origin of Kalaūn’s carvings; but those of St. Sergius may not improbably be directly derived from Byzantine models, with which they show more affinity than with the Mōsil style. Had these carvings been derived from the Mesopotamian school, we should expect to find a prevailing hunting character, interspersed with scenes of festivity, wine-cups, and musical instruments; instead of which the subjects are principally warrior saints of the Byzantine style, and the beasts that accompany them may be due as much to the animal decoration of the Lower Empire as to the hunting-scenes of Persian art. The St. Barbara carvings, however, closely resemble Mōsil work, and have even the winged centaur. It is, after all, merely a question of the immediate source, of the Coptic figure carvings, for it can hardly be doubted that the Byzantine figures and beasts were the offspring of the Sassanian and Assyrian style, as much as the figured metal-work of Mōsil and Cairo and the carvings of Kalaūn. There is always much that is hypothetical in the attempt to trace the origin of any special art; many influences combine to form a style, and it is contrary to experience to ascribe the whole of the elements that go to make up a style to one source. But whatever may be the subsidiary influences in Cairo carving, we cannot be wrong in ascribing the development of arabesque panel-carving to Coptic workmen, and the employment of figures to the influence of Mesopotamian models, either directly, or through the medium of Byzantine examples.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

The wood-work in the mosques of Cairo is principally of the carved and panelled style; pulpits, lecterns, doors, are subjects for panel-work, inlaid and carved, in geometrical patterns; inscriptional friezes, when of wood, are carved and generally painted or gilt; and the casings of the tombs, when there are any, are panelled like the pulpits. But there is another manner of treating wood which is commonly adopted in mosques: this is the open lattice-work which, from its most familiar application, in the projecting windows of houses, is commonly known to us as _meshrebīya_ work. The earlier mosques show us a style of lattice which is much less graceful than what is usually understood by meshrebīya work. This oldest lattice consists in a frame of stout quarterings, divided into compartments of a couple of feet square, each of which is filled with a number of upright balusters, square in parts and round in others. The effect of such a screen, as seen in the enclosure of the tomb of Kalaūn, is clumsy and heavy. A more usual kind of lattice is the wide open grille, resembling the cross-bars of a prison window, and having no pretensions to elaboration. The ordinary graceful lattice-work of the meshrebīyas is not common in mosques, though occasionally the sanctuary is screened off by such a lattice, and in one of the Coptic churches a screen of this kind forms a cheap but graceful substitute for the more elaborate wood and ivory carving.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

It is in the houses of Cairo that this lattice-work is seen in its greatest profusion and variety. Fig. 12 gives several excellent examples in a single street. The number of such streets is daily diminishing, partly in consequence of the dread of fire, which used to leap from window to window in the old city with frightful rapidity, and partly because the modern Cairenes are enamoured of the unsightly architecture and plate-glass of Europe (which is unhappily seen introduced in the foremost window in fig. 12). The South Kensington Museum is peculiarly rich in examples of fine lattice-work. The two best are from a single house in Cairo, which was in course of destruction, after being condemned by the Ministry of Works as unsafe, when I was in Cairo, in 1883; and I was thus enabled to purchase for the Museum the complete room (no. 1193), and the meshrebīya (no. 1194), without violating any standing monument of Cairo art. The lattices of these two windows are of a fine period, probably the early part of the eighteenth century, and the small compartments of the larger one are filled with turned lattice of a singularly delicate character, which gives the effect almost of lace when viewed from inside with the light shining through. One of these panels is represented in fig. 49. There are now more than forty different specimens of lattice-work in the South Kensington Museum, and most of them present some variety in the design. It would not seem that there was much opportunity for variety of effect in the mere combination of short turned bobbins of wood in a lattice screen; but the Cairo workmen found out an infinity of changes that could be rung on their simple materials. The engravings, figs. 49-58, which represent ten different styles in the South Kensington Museum, will show how variously the component parts of a lattice may be arranged. The essential feature of the work is a series of oval turned balls connected together by short turned links, which fit into holes in the balls. It is in the arrangement and number of these links, of which 2000 are often contained in the space of a square yard, that the variety of design is effected. Sometimes the balls are supported by four links or arms forming a cross, sometimes by six or eight, like a star; and the distance between the balls may be extended, so as to permit of a smaller nob at the crossing of the arms, a modification that produces a singularly delicate and lace-like effect. Sometimes these intermediate balls are so distributed as to form a pattern upon the ground of the wider design, as in fig. 58, where the finer interlacing forms the outline of a lamp suspended in the more open lattice. The lamp is the most usual design in such interlaced meshrebīyas, but Solomon’s seal and other simple designs are also found, and sometimes an Arabic inscription is formed by the skilful arrangement of the lattice. An example of interlacing cypresses may be seen in the South Kensington Museum, (no. 1471-1871,) and of a Coptic cross formed by the lattice-work (1492-1871). The meshrebīya no. 140 (1881), has an interlacing inscription

نصر من الله وفتح قريب وبشر المومنين يا محمد

“Help is from God, and approaching victory, and give glad tidings to the Faithful, O Mohammad!” The meshrebīya from the St. Maurice collection, (no. 892-1884,) shows several examples of interlacing designs, Solomon’s seals, hanging lamps, and the Kūfy inscription [Inscription] (رأس الحكم مخافة الله) “The chief of wisdom is in the fear of God.” Another piece of lattice-work, of a finer and more elaborate character than is commonly seen, has the inscription in fine Kūfy letters, الله وملاىكه صلى على النبى “God and his angels bless the Prophet,” formed by pieces of thicker wood, inlaid with ivory lines.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

CARVED AND INLAID LATTICE-WORK.]

This more elaborate style of _meshrebīya_ work deserves special mention. It is more particularly used for the open panels of the balustrade of pulpits, of which narrow examples are seen in fig. 34, but it is also found in the upper panels of the partition screens of mosque sanctuaries, and in other positions. The principle of construction is the same as in ordinary lattice-work, but the component parts are carved, and sometimes inlaid with ivory. A fine example in the St. Maurice collection is engraved in figs. 59 and 60, in which the front and back are quite different in treatment and effect. The lattice, instead of comprising oval balls and round links, is composed of hexagons joined by triangles and turned links, and the hexagons and triangles are carved and inlaid. On one side the triangles are inlaid with carved ebony triangles pointing the opposite way to the triangles in which they are set, and the hexagons are studded with dark wooden bosses. On the other side the triangles are carved with trefoils, and the hexagons with sixfoils, each set in ebony and ivory borders. Work of this description is uncommon.

Turned lattice-work may unquestionably be included among the native arts of Cairo, though it was also made elsewhere. According to M. Prisse, this craft is not practised now in Cairo, and the modern specimens come from Arabia, notably Jedda. It is unfortunately true that very little of this work is now done in Cairo, but it is not wholly extinct, and in the earlier half of the century it was still a considerable industry, though Lane records that the work was then inferior to the old style. The Egyptian turner sits cross-legged to his work, and uses a primitive lathe, which he causes to revolve with a bow, employing his toes as well as his fingers.

Lattice _meshrebīyas_ form the principal wood-work in a Cairo house; but there are other uses of wood to be described. The delicate carved and inlaid panelling which is usual in mosque pulpits is seldom employed in houses, though probably the old palaces of the Mamlūks, had they been preserved, would have displayed examples of such work as rich and elaborate as any in the mosques. The panelling generally seen in the doors of the wall-cupboards (which surmount the divan in Cairo rooms, and consist of a central cupboard with double door, surrounded by little arched recesses for pottery and other ornaments), and also used in the interior doors of rooms, is of a simple kind, intended more to guard against the warping effects of the heat than to serve as an ornament to the room. Nevertheless, the effect is sometimes very pleasing, as in some of the doors engraved in figs. 61-4, where the panels are ingeniously arranged in a sort of L pattern, reminding one of some of the designs of Saracenic metal-work, or in chevrons, or in a hexagonal figure with a central star, or, finally, with a Coptic cross (fig. 64), which indicates that the door in question belonged to a Christian house.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

This simple panelling of the door and wall-cupboard, and the fine lattice-work of the _meshrebīya_, constitute the most conspicuous ornaments in wood of the ordinary Cairo room; but there is yet another manner of treating wood, which holds an important place in the better chambers, and also in the mosques. This is seen in the ceilings, which are often the most beautiful part of a room, and are elaborately decorated in both mosques and houses. The coffered ceiling of the finest class consists of, first, the beams of the roof, which are suffered to appear in their natural position, with that true appreciation of the principles of good decoration, in which structural features are turned to account, instead of being hidden, which characterized the Cairo architect. The beams are of rough pine trunks, of considerable thickness, and are either left in their natural round or half-round shape, or more generally are covered with thin boards, which are frequently made in a square form. The latter is the common plan in the mosques, but in houses the round outline of the beams is often preserved to within a couple of feet of the end, when stalactites mask the transition to the square. The beams, whether round or square, are covered with a coating of canvas saturated with plaster, like the Italian _gesso_, and decorated in colours, generally red and blue, with gold and white to give light; and the deep hollows between the beams are divided into small coffers and similarly coated and painted, or the bare planks are similarly painted, with arabesques and other designs of great beauty. All this work, Mr. Wild informs me, is done on the ground, and only put up in its place when finished.

FIG. 63.

FIG. 64.

PANELLED DOORS.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

The whole effect of this kind of ceiling,—with its contrasts between the heavy beams and the delicate patterns between them, and the gleam of gold in relief against the deep-toned blue and red decoration,—is exceedingly rich.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]

Another mode of decorating a ceiling is by nailing thin strips of wood on the planks that constitute the roof, in a geometrical design, and covering the whole with a thin surface of plaster, on which various arabesque and floral ornaments are then squeezed while the material is soft, and the whole is then painted and gilt. The cut, fig. 67, represents a ceiling in the St. Maurice collection, acquired by the South Kensington Museum. The design is raised by means of strips of wood about half an inch thick, and these strips are gilt, with lines of red to shade the gold; the intervening arabesques are in plaster, gilt, with edges of red and blue. The general effect is very handsome. Sometimes the ceilings are made in this _appliqué_ style with no decoration in the interstices. Such is the example (fig. 65), which comes from a comparatively modern and poor class of room. The strips of wood are nailed on the planks in a geometrical pattern, with a few bosses to form centres, and the whole is tinted with red ochre. This and the preceding ceiling (fig. 67) belonged to meshrebīyas, and the style was only employed for ceilings of small size, where no heavy beams were required, such as those over meshrebīyas and over the durkā‘as of small rooms. It should be noticed that a somewhat similar style of _appliqué_ work is used for the bases, as well as for the ceilings, of meshrebīyas. In the illustration (fig. 12), the corbelling of the nearest meshrebīya is covered with rosettes and stalactites, all of which are first cut out with a chisel and fret-saw, and then nailed on to the window. Fret-work is also used for the pendentive eave which surmounts all good meshrebīyas.

(_Cairo Museum._)]

The furniture of a Mohammadan house is so limited, that it is not difficult to sum up the chief wooden objects. An ordinary room in Cairo contains,—beside such structural wood-work as the lattice-window and the panelled wall-cupboard, and the simple shelf that runs round above the latter, supported by common gallows-brackets,—nothing but divans, supported on a frame, which is not ornamented, and perhaps a little table (_kursy_), and a desk for the Korān. The _kursy_ (which must not be confounded with the lectern of mosques, also called Kursy) is generally of inlaid ivory or mother-of-pearl, but some are of turned wood, as in the engraving fig. 66, which is from a table preserved in the Cairo Museum. Portions of the stalactites are broken off, but the design is sufficiently preserved for us to judge of the effect, which is heavy, and inferior to the mother-of-pearl tables with which we are more familiar. The reading-desk is of the crossed-leg or camp-stool order, and is generally inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which covers the greater part of the surface of the table, and is fixed with glue. The ordinary Cairo patterns are very simple, and consist in stars and geometrical designs; but the Syrian tables, of the same shape and material, are carved with figures on the mother-of-pearl, and touched with red and green paint. In both kinds the mother-of-pearl is set off by black wedge-shaped pieces of horn or bituminous composition. Rarer objects are the thrones or chairs of carved and lattice-work, used formerly for a bride’s robes. A seat of lattice-work (_dikka_) also stands in the entrance of many houses for the door-keeper.

The age of the wood-work, other than carved, is not easy to determine. The meshrebīyas, exposed to the weather, do not seem able to last very long, and we shall be probably right in assuming none of them to be older than the seventeenth century. The more elaborate and squarer form of meshrebīya, used in mosques, is of course older than this, and may date from the fourteenth century. The ceilings vary in date with the mosques or houses to which they belong, but they are not found in mosques earlier than the fourteenth century, and no Cairo houses can be ascribed with certainty to even that period.

(_South Kensington Museum._)]