The Limits Of My Plan, However, Compel Me To Place
Only The Heads Of The Argument Before The Reader.
May I be allowed to
express a hope that it will induce some learned traveller to
investigate a subject in every way worthy his attention?
The desecrated Jami' Taylun (ninth century) is simple and massive, yet
elegant, and in some of its details peculiar.[FN#11] One of the four
colonnades[FN#12] still remains unoccupied
[p.97]by paupers to show the original magnificence of the building; the
other porches are walled up, and inhabited. In the centre of a
quadrangle about 100 paces square is a domed building springing from a
square which occupies the proper place of the Ka'abah. This
"Jami'[FN#13]" Cathedral is interesting as a point of comparison. If it
be an exact copy of the Meccan temple as it stood in A.D. 879, it shows
that the latter has greatly altered in this our modern day.
Next in date to the Taylun Mosque is that of the Sultan al-Hakim, third
Caliph of the Fatimites, and founder of the Druze mysteries. The
minarets are remarkable in shape, as well as size: they are unprovided
with the usual outer gallery, they are based upon a cube of masonry,
and they are pierced above with apertures apparently meaningless. A
learned Cairene informed me that these spires were devised by the
eccentric monarch to disperse, like large censers, fragrant smoke over
the city during the hours of prayer.
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