Chapter VI: Saladin’s Castle

CAIRO at the beginning of the thirteenth century was a very different city from the Fátimid royal compound. It covered a much larger space, included a number of new buildings of a character unknown in Egypt before, and it possessed a citadel. All these changes were due to Saladin, though he did not live to see them completed. To trace in detail the causes which led to the invasion of Egypt by the Crusading king of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Franks by the armies of Nur- ed-din, sultan of Damascus, would carry us far away from our proper subject. The principal element in the political situation was the partition of the Fátimid province of Syria between two new and aggressive powers, the Crusaders and the Seljúk Turks. The gradual infiltration of Turkish officers into the Baghdád caliphate had ended in a great invasion of this race, led by the Seljúks, who not only subdued the whole of Persia and Mesopotamia in the middle of the eleventh century and made the ‘Abbásid caliph their tool, but overran the Fátimid dominions in Syria, which had always been loosely held, took possession of Damascus in 1076, and were only prevented from invading Egypt by the bribes and warlike preparations of the Armenian vezír Bedr el-Gemály. The Seljúk empire broke up at the close of the century; but its Syrian fragment, under the brilliant leadership of the Atabeg Zengy and his son Nur-ed-din, was little less formidable to the Fátimid authority than the undiminished empire of the Seljúks. Meanwhile a fresh complication was introduced into Syrian politics by the beginning of the Crusades, the recovery of Jerusalem by the Christians in 1099, and the establishment there of the Latin Kingdom. Step by step the Fátimid garrisons were driven south. The Armenian Afdal, Bedr’s son, after attempting negotiations, fought a series of campaigns in Palestine, but the advance of the Crusaders was not to be stayed. Tripolis fell in 1109, Tyre followed in 1124, and after a long interval Ascalon, the last Fátimid outpost, surrendered in 1153. The Crusaders now touched the Egyptian frontier, and their fortresses at Karak and Montréal, by the Dead Sea, intercepted communications with Syria.

Of the two powers, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Turkish Sultanate of Damascus, neither was strong enough to crush the other. Egypt was the key of the situation. If either power could obtain possession of the Nile, it would take its rival on the flank and win the mastery. The natural combination would of course be between the two Muslim states of Damascus and Cairo; but religious sectarianism barred the way. Nur-ed-din was a zealous Muslim of the orthodox school, and would have no traffic with Shí‘a heretics. The vezírs Ibn-es-Salár and Talái‘ did indeed open a diplomatic correspondence with the king of Damascus, but received little encouragement. It was not till his hand was forced by the actual presence of a Crusading army at Cairo that Nur- ed-din at last sent his troops to Egypt. The interference was due to the quarrels of rival vezírs who were struggling over the remains of the Fátimid power. One of these, Sháwar, expelled by Dirghám, appealed to Nur-ed-din, and Dirghám sought the alliance of Amalric, the king of Jerusalem, who had already invaded Egypt to claim the yearly subsidy—_annua tributi pensio_ as William of Tyre describes it—which the decrepit Fátimid government had recently paid as blackmail to its Christian neighbour. Sháwar returned in 1164 supported by a Syrian army commanded by Shirkúh, with his nephew Saladin on his staff. Dirghám, defeated at Bilbeys, made another stand at Cairo, where he held the Fátimid city whilst Sháwar and the Syrians occupied Misr. Popular as Dirghám had been—he was a brave Arab, who had fought the Crusaders at Gaza and commanded the Barkíya battalion of the Fátimid army—he ruined his cause by laying hands on the _wakf_ (pious benefactions) to meet his military necessities. His followers fell away, and the caliph withheld his countenance. The final scene was tragical:—

“Driven to bay, for the last time he sounded the ‘assembly.’ In vain ‘the drums beat and the trumpets blared, _ma-sha-llah!_ on the battlements’; no man answered. In vain the desperate emir, surrounded by his bodyguard of 500 horse, all that remained to him of a powerful army, stood suppliant before the caliph’s palace for a whole day, even until the sunset call to prayer, and implored him by the memory of his forefathers to stand forth at the window and bless his cause. No answer came; the guard itself gradually dispersed, till only thirty troopers were left. Suddenly a warning cry reached him: ‘Look to thyself and save thy life!’—and lo! Sháwar’s trumpets and drums were heard, entering from the Gate of the Bridge. Then at last the deserted leader rode out through the Zuweyla Gate: the fickle folk hacked off his head, and bore it in triumph through the streets; his body they left to be worried by the curs. Such was the tragic end of a brave and gallant gentleman, poet, and paladin.”

As soon as Dirghám was disposed of, the treacherous Sháwar turned upon his deliverers, and called in the aid of Amalric to drive away the Syrians. After a prolonged conflict, an armistice was eventually arranged, and both armies, Christian and Syrian, retired from Egypt without immediate result. But the invasion was the beginning of a permanent occupation. On their return to Damascus the Syrian troops described the weakness of the Fátimid rule and urged upon Nur-ed-din the importance of the conquest of Egypt. The cautious sultan was slow to move, but when the news came that Amalric was again intriguing with Sháwar, the Syrian army set out a second time for the Nile and crossed it just as the Crusaders came up (1167). Amalric, however, succeeded in getting possession of Cairo, and made the treaty with the caliph which was the occasion of the memorable audience of the two knights described above (p. 131). Shirkúh, on the other hand, overran Upper Egypt, and Saladin held Alexandria for seventy-five days. Then another truce was arranged, and the two armies went back respectively to Syria and Palestine. The Franks, however, left a Resident at Cairo and manned the guards of the gates, quartering a garrison in the mosque of el-Hákim; and the representations of these spectators of the weakness and distraction of the government of Egypt brought Amalric back in the following year with the definite intention of annexing the land. This breach of faith, followed by a barbarous massacre at Bilbeys, so alarmed the Egyptians that they sent urgent entreaties to Nur-ed-din—the caliph even plied him with the touching argument of tresses of his wives’ hair—and for the third time, at the beginning of 1169, Shirkúh and Saladin arrived in Egypt. This time they stayed for good. Amalric retired without even giving battle; Sháwar, after plotting the murder of his rescuers, was arrested and executed; Shirkúh was appointed vezír, and on his death two months later Saladin was invested with the robe of office in March 1169.

As vezír of the Shí‘a caliph and at the same time viceroy of the orthodox king of Damascus, Saladin’s position was clearly untenable, and though he carried on the business of state for two years in this anomalous situation it was obvious that the Fátimid caliphate must come to an end. The last of the Fátimids was dying, and the opportunity was taken to make the necessary change. At the Friday prayers on the 10th of September 1171, the ‘Abbásid caliph of Baghdád was duly proclaimed in the mosques of Cairo. A similar ceremony is described by an Arab traveller from Spain twelve years later.

“In one of these Friday Mosques,” says Ibn-Gubeyr, “the Sermon was preached to-day. The Preacher herein followed the Sunny rite, beginning his sermon with an invocation conjointly for the Companions, the Followers and their fellows, also for the Mothers of the Faithful, who are the Wives of the Prophet, and for his two noble uncles Hamza and el-‘Abbás;—further, he preached so fine a sermon and so moving a discourse that hard hearts were humbled and dry eyes shed tears. He delivered his sermon robed in black, as is the ‘Abbásid rule; for he wore a black cloak over which hung a _taylasan_ or veil of fine black linen, such as in Spain would be called an _ihrám_; his turban also was black, and he was girt with a sword. As he ascended the pulpit, he struck a blow on the step with the ferule of his scabbard, when he first began to go up, such as the congregation might hear, and as though it were a call to silence, and in the midst of his ascent he struck another blow, and when he reached the top, a third; after which he pronounced the blessing, turning first to the right and then to the left, standing there between two black banners that had white marks on them, which were fixed in the upper part of the pulpit. On this occasion, further, he invoked a blessing first on the ‘Abbásid caliph, who is en-Násir-li- dini-llah, the son of el-Mustady, and next he prayed for the restorer of his power, Yúsuf, son of Ayyúb, who is the Sultan Saladin, and then for his brother and heir apparent, Abu-Bekr, who is named Seyf-ed-din (Saphadin).”[59]

The congregation who first heard this bidding-prayer in 1171 showed little surprise, and there was scarcely a murmur. The Shí‘a propaganda had probably been attended with little success in Cairo, and the bulk of the people retained their leanings to the orthodox creed, in spite of two centuries of dominant heresy. At least, the revolution was accomplished without a shock. The last of the Fátimid caliphs passed away without hearing of his deposition. His relations were kept in luxurious captivity, and his slaves and household dispersed. The palaces were too magnificent for Saladin’s modest wants, and he quartered the officers of his army there, and himself occupied the House of the Vezírs. The great library of 120,000 books, which had been studiously collected since the dispersal of the earlier library a century before, was given to the learned chancellor, Kády el-Fádil. The treasure was distributed or sold. The palaces and every memory of the Fátimids gradually disappeared, save their mosques, and orthodoxy once more reigned supreme in Egypt.

The career of the great champion of Islám was made chiefly outside Egypt. Of Saladin’s reign of twenty-four years—for reign it was from the beginning, though nominally subject to the king of Damascus for the first five years—he spent but eight at Cairo, and his greatest triumphs, as well as his few reverses, took place in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Palestine. When he left Cairo on the 11th of May, 1182, and the great officers of the court came to his stirrup to bid him farewell, as the cavalcade halted by the Lake of the Abyssinians, a voice was heard above the music and the singing: “Enjoy,” it cried in the classical lines of an Arab poet,

“Enjoy the perfume of the ox-eyes of Nejd;

After to-night there will be no more ox-eyes.”

The evil omen came true: there were no more ox-eyes in Egypt for him, and Cairo saw him never again. He conquered the land of the Euphrates; held kingly state at Damascus, which he had annexed after the death of Nur-ed-din; won his great victory at Hittín over the Crusaders; recovered Jerusalem, sacred to him as well as to Christians, and brought all the Holy Land to his feet; and fought the long duel with the chivalry of Europe which wavered about ‘Akka for two years, and ended in the running fight with Richard of England that has made Saladin a household name even in Europe. After the last dash upon Jaffa and its repulse, the treaty of peace was signed, and in the following March, 1193, Saladin died and was buried at Damascus.

“The Holy War was over; the five years’ contest ended. Before the great victory at Hittin in July, 1187, not an inch of Palestine west of the Jordan was in the Muslims’ hands. After the Peace of Ramla in September, 1192, the whole land was theirs, except a narrow strip of coast from Tyre to Jaffa. At the Pope’s appeal all Christendom had risen in arms. The Emperor, the Kings of England, France and Sicily, Leopold of Austria, the Duke of Burgundy, the Count of Flanders, hundreds of famous barons and knights of all nations, had joined with the King and Princes of Palestine and the indomitable brothers of the Temple and Hospital, in the effort to deliver the Holy City and restore the vanished Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Emperor was dead, the Kings had gone back; many of their noblest followers lay buried in the Holy Land: but Jerusalem was still the city of Saladin, and its titular king reigned over a slender realm at Acre. All the strength of Christendom concentrated in the Third Crusade had not shaken Saladin’s power. When the trials and sufferings of the five years’ war were over, he still reigned unchallenged from the mountains of Kurdistan to the Libyan desert, and far beyond these borders the King of Georgia, the Catholicos of Armenia, the Sultan of Koniya, the Emperor of Constantinople, were eager to call him friend and ally.”[60]

Brief as was Saladin’s residence at Cairo, none of its rulers has left more lasting traces of his influence. It is to him that the capital owed the form and extent it has borne ever since, until comparatively recent times. Its most conspicuous feature, the Citadel, was Saladin’s creation, and its most pervasive architectural form, the Medresa, was his introduction. All these changes were due to his initiative, and when, after eight years, he went away, and thenceforth continually called upon Egypt to send its contingents to his yearly campaigns, he left behind him officers and kinsmen who carried out the great works he had begun. These works were partly defensive, and partly religious. The defensive works were the Citadel, the new wall, and the great dike, and all three are original features. Hitherto the various rulers of Egypt had contented themselves with building official or royal suburbs, each half a mile or so further to the north-east. Even the Fátimid “city” of Káhira, as we have seen, was an official and palatial residence of the caliphs, not a metropolis of Egypt. Saladin was the first to elaborate a comprehensive plan of a great capital. Instead of following the example of earlier sovereigns and building a new suburb, he resolved to unite the existing inhabited districts within one great wall, and to crown the whole by a citadel. The burned city of Misr was then struggling to rise from its ashes, like the phœnix, and renew its youth: Saladin resolved to help it. The scattered settlements upon the site of the ruined faubourgs were also to be gathered in, and the port of Maks was to be joined to its city by a wall, as Peiraeus was to Athens. The enclosing wall was to be of stone, and to prolong the defences of Bedr the Armenian to Maks on the west and to the hill of Mukattam on the south, and thence to run round the remains of the old Town of the Tent till it touched the Nile.

The great scheme was never completed: its author was busy on his Syrian campaigns, and probably his representatives at Cairo had enough to do to raise men and money for his support without carrying out more building than was absolutely necessary. It is also possible that further reflection convinced him or his deputies that the plan of enclosing so decayed a town as Misr was hardly worth the cost of a couple of miles of wall. What was actually accomplished was this: the wall of Bedr on the north was prolonged from its terminus at the canal to the Nile, where the fortified tower of Maks was erected; on the east the old wall was prolonged southwards to the Bab-el-Wezír, near the wall of the new Citadel;—the Sultan’s death stopped the work before a junction had been made, and the south and west walls were not even begun. A large part of Saladin’s walls still stands: though often lost among houses, they can be traced between the canal and the Iron Gate (Báb-el-Hadíd, formerly called the Bab-el-Bahr, or Nile Gate, beside the fort of Maks, which has disappeared), where the contrast between the last square bastion of the Fátimid wall and the neighbouring rounded bastion of Saladin’s curtain, with its bosses, watch-towers, and loopholes, is clearly marked. The same characteristics are seen on the east wall which separates the city from the Káit-Bey cemetery, until a modern style appears at the Bab-el- Wezír.[61] A portion of the wall at the N.E. angle, with the Burg ez- Zafar, lies outside in the desert, showing that here only has the modern city shrunk within its twelfth century limits.

The walls were but a development of the earlier enceinte of Bedr. The Citadel was a new idea. It may have been partly inspired by Saladin’s dislike to the palaces so intimately associated with the schismatic caliphs, for though he did not live to dwell in the Citadel, except for a brief visit, there can be no doubt that he intended to make it his residence, as his successors did. But the obvious explanation of the fortress is to be found in his Syrian experience. There every important city had its _Kal‘a_ or castle, and nothing could be more natural than that Saladin, looking with a soldier’s eye at the jutting spur of Mukattam, should at once have recognized it as the proper place for a citadel. It is true that whilst commanding Cairo from its height of 250 feet, the fortress is itself commanded by higher positions on Mukattam; but this would hardly injure its efficiency in days of stone-slings and short-ranged mangonels. It was a strong enough position for twelfth century engineers, and no pains were spared to make it impregnable from beneath, in case of an insurrection in the city. The work was begun in 1176-7 under the direction of the eunuch Karakúsh, one of Saladin’s most faithful emírs, who in spite of great services and warlike deeds has by a strange freak of fortune come to be associated with the ribald antics of Karakúsh, the Oriental Punch. It was not till six years later that the founder’s inscription was set up which still surmounts the “Gate of Steps” (Bab-el-Mudarrag) in the original (west) part of the Citadel, where we read how “the building of this splendid Castle,—hard by Cairo the Guarded, on the terrace which joins use to beauty, and space to strength, for those who seek the shelter of his power,—was ordered by our master the King Strong-to-aid, _Saláh-ed-dunya wa-d-din_ (Saladin), Conquest-laden, Yúsuf, son of Ayyúb, Restorer of the Empire of the Caliph; with the direction of his brother and heir the Just King (el-‘Adil) Seyf-ed-din Abu-Bekr Mohammad, friend of the Commander of the Faithful; and under the management of the Emír of his Kingdom and Support of his Empire Karakúsh son of ‘Abdallah, the slave of el-Melik en-Násir, in the year 579” (1183-4).

The smaller pyramids of Giza were used as quarries for the stone, and the masonry was executed in part by Frank or European prisoners taken in Saladin’s wars. The Spanish traveller Ibn-Gubeyr, who visited Cairo in 1183, saw the building in progress. “Both the workmen,” he says, “whose forced labour is employed for building the Citadel and their overseers are Christian prisoners of war of the Franks; their number is so great as cannot be reckoned, and but for them there would be no means of carrying out these works, for only they can support the toil and heavy labour of sawing the marble, dressing the great blocks of stone, and of quarrying the fosse which encompasses the wall of the Citadel, which fosse is cut like a ditch in the solid rock with crowbars, a wonder of wonders for ever. Elsewhere there is another building of the Sultan which is being carried out by the Frank prisoners who work here; but even those of the Muslims, who give their service in these and similar public works, must do it at their own cost, for there is no pay given to any who work here.” Corvée labour was no new thing in Egypt, however strange it may have appeared to a visitor from Spain.

The Citadel was not finished till 1207-8, when Saladin’s nephew el-Kámil was king. As the chief residence and stronghold of every successive ruler down to 1850, it has been frequently altered and enlarged by several of the Mamlúk Sultans, and finally by Mohammad ‘Aly Pasha, and none of the mosques or vestiges of palaces on it belongs to Saladin’s age. The old mosque was built by en-Násir in 1318; the more conspicuous mosque with slender Turkish minarets was begun by Mohammad ‘Aly in 1824. The “Hall of Yúsuf,” believed to be Saladin’s, was part of a Mamlúk palace. The interior towers are not original, and the gateway opening on the Rumeyla was built in the middle of the 18th century. Still there is much remaining of the original structures, besides the famous “Well of the Winding Stairs,” 280 feet deep, which was excavated by Karakúsh. Saladin’s walls are still preserved in a large part of the enceinte, though it needs some architectural knowledge to distinguish them from later additions and restorations, and some of the internal passages and constructions date from the foundation. The prevalent use of round, slightly truncated, and well-projected bastions, commanding a long stretch of the curtain, the absence of interior chambers or low loopholes in the curtain, and the _arc brisé_ or square openings, besides certain technical peculiarities in the masonry, reveal the original work, and associate it with the Franco-Syrian rather than the Byzantine school.

The last work of defence was the great dike of Giza on the west bank of the Nile. Ibn-Gubeyr describes it as a gigantic undertaking. “The Sultan,” he says, “to his glory and as a lasting work that shall serve the need of the Muslims, has begun to build a great dike of arches to the westward of Misr, and at a distance from it of seven miles. This forms a continuation of the embankment which, beginning opposite Misr, runs along the side of the Nile like a hill that has been flattened on the ground: after traversing which you come at the end of six miles to the dike continuing it. This dike consists of forty arches, each of the largest size of bridge-arches, and runs in the direction of the delta which extends thence to Alexandria. It is a wonderful work, and such as only a king of great foresight would emprise, as a precaution against sudden attack by an enemy from the Alexandrian frontier at the time of the inundation, when, the land being under water, the usual road becomes impassable for troops. The dike thus forms a causeway available at all seasons of need.”[62] The object of this defence is evident. Saladin had not forgotten the history of the successive Fátimid invasions from the Libyan side, when there was nothing to stop them from marching straight to the Nile, and he determined to be forearmed. Ibn-Gubeyr mentions that there were fears of an attack from the Almohades, who after subduing all Morocco and southern Spain, had conquered Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli in 1158, till the frontier of their victorious leader ‘Abd-el-Mumin actually touched the western border of Egypt. Saladin did well to take precautions, though the threatened invasion never came.

These defensive works against external enemies were accompanied by other measures taken with a view to internal order and content. It must not be supposed that the new régime had no difficulties to contend with. However well disposed the mass of the people may have been towards a ruler who showed himself so magnanimous, generous, and yet indomitable as Saladin, the traditions of two centuries were not to be uprooted in a day. The partisans of the Fátimid family were numerous and active. Before the death of el-‘Ádid, there was a formidable rising of the black troops, abetted by the caliph himself, and Saladin had hard work to put it down. The Sudánis were at last driven to bay and slaughtered for two days till they cried quarter, when they were banished the city. The part called el-Mansuríya, outside the Zuweyla Gate, that had been covered with their barracks, was utterly burned down, and the site turned into gardens; so that a few years later, when Saladin rode from the palace to the new Citadel, he passed between trees and flowers, and standing at the mosque of Ibn-Tulún he could see the Gate of Zuweyla with no building intervening. Other conspiracies followed, supported by the Franks who threatened Alexandria, and stern measures were needed before the new sultan felt his power secure. So long as there was a strong party sympathizing with the captive survivors of the fallen dynasty there would always be danger.

How zealous the Shí‘a still were may be judged by the scene described by the Spanish traveller in the famous shrine which preserved the head of the martyr Hoseyn, in the mosque adjoining the Great Palace of the Fátimids. “The Head is preserved in a chest of silver buried underground, over which a mighty building has been erected such as any description thereof must fail to portray, for the understanding cannot compass it. Its walls are tapestried with brocades of various kinds, and it is set round with what are like great columns, the same being white candles, though some are of smaller size, the most being set in candlesticks of pure silver or of silver gilt. Above are suspended silver lamps, and the whole of the part above this is set with the like of golden apples, and so arranged as to resemble [the chapel at Medina where the Prophet is buried called] er-Roda; and by the beauty and magnificence thereof it rivets the sight, for herein are all kinds of rare variegated marbles wonderfully wrought in mosaic work such as no imagination can depict, nor can he who would describe it attain thereto with any description. The entrance to this chapel is through a mosque that is the equal of it in regard to the pleasure of the eye and the rare sight that it affords, for all its walls are of marble after the fashion above described. To the right of the chapel (where the Head is), and to the left of it, are two chambers, through which you enter the same, and each of these is in every particular similar to this last, and curtains in brocade stuff of wondrous workmanship are here hung on all sides. But the most curious of the many things that we saw was on entering this most blessed mosque; for a stone is set in the wall facing him who enters, which is so extremely black and lustrous that the whole person is reflected therein, as though it were in an Indian steel mirror newly polished. And we saw the people kissing this blessed tomb (where the Head of Hoseyn is buried), embracing it with their arms and prostrating themselves upon it, after which they would lay their hands on the pall that covers it and then, crowding one on another, circle round, praying, weeping, and supplicating Allah—to whom be praise—for the blessing that pertains to this holy grave, humbling themselves before Him in such fashion as melts the heart and overcomes the feelings of the spectator; for this is a wonderful matter and a sight that is awful in its aspect. May Allah cause us to benefit by the blessing vouchsafed to this holy Oratory!”[63]

Such a demonstration, recalling the hysterical emotions of the Persian Passion Play, shows that twelve years after the deposition and death of the last Fátimid caliph Shí‘a fanaticism was still ardent in Cairo. Saladin’s mode of dealing with it was characteristic of his statesmanship. Despite his gentle and chivalrous nature he was quite capable of fierce persecution “for righteousness’ sake.” A Muslim of the Muslims, rigidly orthodox, and deeply imbued with the puritanical ideas of the theologians with whom he loved to converse, he had no toleration for heretics and infidels. The grievous confiscation and destruction which the Copts and their churches suffered in the orthodox reformation showed that Saladin’s magnanimity did not extend to matters of faith. But in the case of the Shí‘a he had to deal with a more powerful and dangerous movement, which had two centuries of dominance behind it, and he met it not by overt persecution but by a counter propaganda. The people of Cairo must be taught the true religion, and then there would be little fear of heresy. At the time of his accession there was not a single college in Egypt where orthodox theology was taught. This want was at once supplied, and Saladin began the foundation of those _Medresas_ or theological colleges which have ever since been the leading architectural feature of Cairo.

In 1176 he established the first _Medresa_ ever built in Egypt. It was next to the shrine of the Imám Sháfi‘y, the founder of the school of orthodoxy to which most Egyptian Muslims have since belonged. The tomb- mosque may still be visited in the wilderness of graves to the south of Cairo, but the college has long disappeared. In 1183 the shrine is described as “a magnificent oratory of vast size, and strongly built, standing opposite to a Medresa,” so large and so surrounded by buildings as to resemble “a township with its dependencies. Over against it is the _hammám_ with all other needful offices, and the building and additions are still going on at a cost not to be counted. The Sheykh Negm-ed-din el-Khabushány himself oversees it, being imám of the mosque, a pious learned man. The sultan of the land, Saladin, has munificently supplied all that is required therefor, commanding that the buildings shall be well cared for and beautified, and all expenses set down to him. . . . We met this Khabushány and gained the blessing of his prayers—his fame had reached us even in Andalusia. We visited him in his mosque and also at his private dwelling within the precincts, a small house with a narrow court, and here he offered up prayer for us when we left. In all Egypt we did not meet his equal.”[64]

Besides the Sháfi‘y College, Saladin built a medresa close to the stronghold of the enemy, the shrine of Hoseyn, turned the old palace of Mamún into the Seyf-ed-din college for the Hanafy divines, and built another for the Sháfi‘is and a fifth for the Málikis in Misr. In recording his benefactions one must not forget his hospitals. Everyone knows the Maristan or hospital of the Mamlúk Sultan Kalaún in the Suk- en-Nahhasín, but it is not generally known that this noble institution was anticipated by Saladin. To quote Ibn-Gubeyr again:—

“Among the famous institutions of this Sultan which we saw was the Maristán or Hospital, which stands in the city of Cairo. It is one of the great palaces there, spacious and magnificent, and the Sultan has been prompted to the meritorious deed of establishing this hospital solely by the hope of gaining favour with God and recompense in the world to come. He has appointed here an administrator, a man of knowledge, in whose charge a provision of drugs has been placed, with power to compound potions with these according to diverse recipes, and to prescribe them. In the chambers of this palace couches have been placed, which the sick folk make use of as beds, these being fully provided with bed clothes, and the administrator has under him servants who are charged with the duty of inquiring into the condition of the sick folk morning and evening, and these last receive food and medicines according as their state requires. Opposite this hospital is another, separate therefrom, for women who are sick, and they also have persons who attend on them: while adjacent to these two hospitals is another building with a spacious court, in which are chambers with iron gratings, which serve for the confinement of those who are mad, and these also are visited daily by persons who examine their condition and supply them with what is needful to ameliorate the same. The Sultan himself inspects the state of these various institutions, investigating everything and asking questions, verifying the statements with care and trouble even to the uttermost; and in Misr also there is another hospital, exactly after the pattern of the one just described.

“Between Misr and Cairo stands the great mosque called after its founder, Ahmad ibn Tulún, which is one of those from ancient times used for the Friday prayers. It is admirably built and very spacious, being at the present day set apart by the Sultan as a dwelling-place for strangers from the Western lands, where they may abide and hold their assemblies, the Sultan having provided monthly rations for their support. And one of the most remarkable matters related to us is this which we heard from a person cognizant of the facts, namely, that the Sultan allows the strangers entirely to govern themselves, and lays no hand on any one of them, for they elect from among themselves their governor, and to his rule they conform, submitting to his judgment in all cases of disputes that arise in their affairs. They are people who seek to live in piety and peacefulness, being solely occupied in the worship of the Lord, and thus, through the favour of the Sultan, they may gain grace enabling them to hold the better part in the way of righteousness. Indeed there is no one either of the great mosques, or of the lesser mosques, or any one among the diverse chapels that are built over the tombs of saints, neither any of the various colleges or schools, but is the object of the grace of the Sultan, and aid in money from the public treasury is freely given to all who frequent these places, or have their abode there by reason of necessity, in relief of their needs.”

The institution of the Medresa by Saladin marks a conspicuous change in the architecture of Cairo. Hitherto the mosques had been of one form only, that of the _Gámi‘_ (commonly pronounced _gama_, and meaning a place of assembly) or congregational mosque, where alone the Friday prayers (_gum‘a_) and sermon take place. The form was specially adapted to the meeting of large congregations. There was the ample east end or sanctuary, where a considerable number of worshippers could kneel under cover; and in case of a great crowd, as on certain festivals, there was the great open court where a multitude could prostrate themselves towards the _kibla_. The arcades round the court served for professors to hold classes, and as shelter for fakírs and mendicants; but these are no essential parts of the gámi‘, which, as its name implies, is a place of congregational worship. There were only four such buildings when Ibn- Gubeyr visited Cairo, and these were the gámi‘s el-Azhar, el-Hákim, Ibn- Tulún, and ‘Amr. The few others that existed, such as el-Akmar and es- Sálih Talái‘, and perhaps two or three less important and probably ruined, though built in the gámi‘ form and used at one time for congregational worship, fell into disuse when the death of their founders or some other cause removed them from the list of fashionable churches. New gámi‘s were always being built from time to time, as we shall see in the next chapter, and they always formed, and form, the leading mosques of Cairo; but they were not by any means the only kind of mosque.

The word mosque itself comes, through the old Italian _meschita_ (Span. _mesquita_) and later _moschea_, from the Arabic _Mesgid_, which means a place of worship, but does not imply a congregation. Comparatively few mosques were known as mesgids, and such as bore the name were small buildings used chiefly for private prayer.[65] Another term, more commonly employed, is _Záwiya_, which means properly an ingle or nook, but in its application to mosques differs hardly at all from mesgid, unless the not unusual assignation of a záwiya as a hospice for poor students or devotees constitute a difference. Both the mesgid and the záwiya were comparatively insignificant edifices, and it may be doubted whether any ordinary visitor to Cairo has noticed a single example of either, except as a decorative feature in a by-street.

The buildings which everyone knows and which everyone calls “mosques” are really colleges, _medresas_. They include most of the famous architectural gems of the city—such as Sultan Hasan, Barkuk, Ibn-Muzhir, Násir, Kalaún, and so forth, and they differ altogether from the gámi‘ both in form and object. They were not intended or used for congregational worship, but were expressly built for the purpose of theological training; and this purpose radically influences their form. Instead of the great open court where vast congregations could muster on Fridays, there is only a small central square, and in most cases this was originally covered by a flat roof of painted planks and joists, with perhaps a small cupola or skylight in the centre. The sides, instead of being surrounded by long arcades or cloisters, are formed of four transepts each spanned by a single lofty arch. The transept towards the east, forming the liwán for prayer, is deeper than the other three, and is furnished with mihráb, pulpit, tribune, and other accessories for worship; since worship takes place there, or may do so, though not as a rule the regular Friday congregations of the gámi‘. Each of the four transepts was originally assigned—or ready to be assigned—to one of the four orthodox schools, Sháfi‘y, Máliky, Hánafy, and Hánbaly, and in each there might be found a group of students following the instruction of the professor of the particular school. These professors and students often had lodgings in the college, and there were also a variety of lecture rooms, libraries, laboratories, and other adjuncts built in the spaces that intervened between the cruciform interior and the rectangular exterior. The subjoined sketch representing the later medresa of Sultan Hasan (1359) will give a general idea of the arrangement.

This then was Saladin’s method of counteracting heretical tendencies by building and endowing a number of orthodox colleges—state-supported theological seminaries or divinity schools. The idea was not his own: he brought it with him from Syria, where his former sovereign Nur-ed-din had been zealous in founding similar colleges for Hanafis at Damascus and other cities; and Nur-ed-din himself only followed the example of the pattern of the age in Asia, the great Seljúk Sultan Melik Shah, whose vezír, the scarcely less famous Nizám-el-Mulk, the friend of ‘Omar Khayyám, had established the splendid Nizamíya college at Baghdád. The introduction of colleges into Egypt, however natural and inevitable in the pupil of such masters, was little less than a revolution in culture as well as in architecture. The old stigma of heresy removed, and these new colleges founded, the wave of intellectual commerce once more flowed to Cairo from all parts of the Muslim world. The chief control in Egypt during Saladin’s long absence was vested in his brother or son, subject to the counsels of his chancellor, the Kády el-Fádil, an Arab of Ascalon, a learned scholar and a wise man, whose very ornate dispatches concealed a vast amount of sound sense. Under his influence foreign students began again to frequent the mosques of Cairo, and Egypt rejoined the comity of Islám. Professors from remote cities of Persia or even from beyond the Oxus met the learned men of Cordova and Seville. In 1176, for example, there arrived “a stranger from Xativa in distant Andalusia, drawn eastward by the fame of the revival of learning: it was Ibn-Firro, who had composed a massy poem of 1173 verses upon the _variae lectiones_ in the Korán, simply ‘for the greater glory of God.’ This marvel of erudition modestly confessed that his memory was burdened with enough sciences to break down a camel. Nevertheless, when it came to lecturing to his crowded audiences, he never uttered a superfluous word. It was no wonder that the Kády el-Fádil, chief judge and governor of Egypt under Saladin, lodged him in his own house and buried him in his private mausoleum. The presence of such philosophers tempered with cool wisdom the impetuous fire of the predatory chiefs. Many of the great soldiers of that age delighted in the society of men of culture. Nur-ed- din was devoted to the society of the learned, and poets and men of letters gathered round his court; whilst Saladin took a peculiar pleasure in the conversation of grave theologians and solemn jurists.”[66] “I found him,” wrote ‘Abd-el-Latíf, the Baghdád physician, “a great prince, whose appearance inspired at once respect and love, who was approachable, deeply intellectual, gracious, and noble in his thoughts. . . . I found him surrounded by a large concourse of learned men who were discussing various sciences. He listened with pleasure and took part in their conversation.” It was not the least of Saladin’s titles to fame that he brought the collegiate mosque to Cairo. The training of the medresa may have been narrow and bigoted, but it was the system of the whole Muslim world, and its adoption put Cairo in touch with the thought of the other leading centres of Islám.