If You Are Ever In Cairo, And Sink Into Depression, Go To The
"Blue Mosque" And See If It Does Not Have Upon You An Uplifting Moral
Effect.
And then, if you like go on from it to the Gamia El Movayad,
sometimes called El Ahmar, "The Red," where you will find greater
glories, though no greater fascination; for the tiles hold their own
among all the wonders of Cairo.
Outside the "Red Mosque," by its imposing and lofty wall, there is
always an assemblage of people, for prayers go up in this mosque,
ablutions are made there, and the floor of the arcade is often covered
with men studying the Koran, calmly meditating, or prostrating
themselves in prayer. And so there is a great coming and going up the
outside stairs and through the wonderful doorway: beggars crouch under
the wall of the terrace; the sellers of cakes, of syrups and lemon-
water, and of the big and luscious watermelons that are so popular in
Cairo, display their wares beneath awnings of orange-colored
sackcloth, or in the full glare of the sun, and, their prayers
comfortably completed or perhaps not yet begun, the worshippers stand
to gossip, or sit to smoke their pipes, before going on their way into
the city or the mosque. There are noise and perpetual movement here.
Stand for a while to gain an impression from them before you mount the
steps and pass into the spacious peace beyond.
Orientals must surely revel in contrasts. There is no tumult like the
tumult in certain of their market-places. There is no peace like the
peace in certain of their mosques. Even without the slippers carefully
tied over your boots you would walk softly, gingerly, in the mosque of
El Movayad, the mosque of the columns and the garden. For once within
the door you have taken wings and flown from the city, you are in a
haven where the most delicious calm seems floating like an atmosphere.
Through a lofty colonnade you come into the mosque, and find yourself
beneath a magnificently ornamental wooden roof, the general effect of
which is of deep brown and gold, though there are deftly introduced
many touches of very fine red and strong, luminous blue. The walls are
covered with gold and superb marbles, and there are many quotations
from the Koran in Arab lettering heavy with gold. The great doors are
of chiseled bronze and of wood. In the distance is a sultan's tomb,
surmounted by a high and beautiful cupola, and pierced with windows of
jeweled glass. But the attraction of this place of prayer comes less
from its magnificence, from the shining of its gold, and the gleaming
of its many-colored marbles, than from its spaciousness, its airiness,
its still seclusion, and its garden. Mohammedans love fountains and
shady places, as can surely love them only those who carry in their
minds a remembrance of the desert. They love to have flowers blowing
beside them while they pray. And with the immensely high and
crenelated walls of this mosque long ago they set a fountain of pure
white marble, covered it with a shelter of limestone, and planted
trees and flowers about it. There beneath palms and tall eucalyptus-
trees even on this misty day of the winter, roses were blooming, pinks
scented the air, and great red flowers, that looked like emblems of
passion, stared upward almost fiercely, as if searching for the sun.
As I stood there among the worshippers in the wide colonnade, near the
exquisitely carved pulpit in the shadow of which an old man who looked
like Abraham was swaying to and fro and whispering his prayers, I
thought of Omar Khayyam and how he would have loved this garden. But
instead of water from the white marble fountain, he would have desired
a cup of wine to drink beneath the boughs of the sheltering trees. And
he could not have joined without doubt or fear in the fervent
devotions of the undoubting men, who came here to steep their wills in
the great will that flowed about them like the ocean about little
islets of the sea.
From the "Red Mosque" I went to the great mosque of El-Azhar, to the
wonderful mosque of Sultan Hassan, which unfortunately was being
repaired and could not be properly seen, though the examination of the
old portal covered with silver, gold, and brass, the general color-
effect of which is a delicious dull green, repaid me for my visit, and
to the exquisitely graceful tomb-mosque of Kait Bey, which is beyond
the city walls. But though I visited these, and many other mosques and
tombs, including the tombs of the Khalifas, and the extremely smart
modern tombs of the family of the present Khedive of Egypt, no
building dedicated to worship, or to the cult of the dead, left a more
lasting impression upon my mind than the Coptic church of Abu Sergius,
or Abu Sargah, which stands in the desolate and strangely antique
quarter called "Old Cairo." Old indeed it seems, almost terribly old.
Silent and desolate is it, untouched by the vivid life of the rich and
prosperous Egypt of to-day, a place of sad dreams, a place of ghosts,
a place of living spectres. I went to it alone. Any companion, however
dreary, would have tarnished the perfection of the impression Old
Cairo and its Coptic church can give to the lonely traveller.
I descended to a gigantic door of palm-wood which was set in an old
brick arch. This door upon the outside was sheeted with iron. When it
opened, I left behind me the world I knew, the world that belongs to
us of to-day, with its animation, its impetus, its flashing changes,
its sweeping hurry and "go." I stepped at once into, surely, some
moldering century long hidden in the dark womb of the forgotten past.
The door of palm-wood closed, and I found myself in a sort of deserted
town, of narrow, empty streets, beetling archways, tall houses built
of grey bricks, which looked as if they had turned gradually grey, as
hair does on an aged head.
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