If You Ask Your Friend Who Is The
Person With A Black Turband, He Replies,
"A Christian.
Allah make his Countenance cold!"
If you inquire of your servant, who are the people singing in the next
house, it is ten to one that his answer will be,
"Jews. May their lot be Jahannam!"
It appears unintelligible, still it is not less true, that Egyptians
who have lived as servants under European roofs for years, retain the
liveliest loathing for the manners
[p.111]and customs of their masters. Few Franks, save those who have
mixed with the Egyptians in Oriental disguise, are aware of their
repugnance to, and contempt for, Europeans-so well is the feeling
veiled under the garb of innate politeness, and so great is their
reserve when conversing with those of strange religions. I had a good
opportunity of ascertaining the truth when the first rumour of a
Russian war arose. Almost every able-bodied man spoke of hastening to
the Jihad,-a crusade, or holy war,-and the only thing that looked like
apprehension was the too eager depreciation of their foes. All seemed
delighted with the idea of French co-operation, for, somehow or other,
the Frenchman is everywhere popular. When speaking of England, they
were not equally easy: heads were rolled, pious sentences were
ejaculated, and finally out came the old Eastern cry, "Of a truth they
are Shaytans, those English.[FN#35]" The Austrians are despised,
because the East knows nothing of them since the days when Osmanli
hosts threatened the gates of Vienna. The Greeks are hated as clever
scoundrels, ever ready to do Al-Islam a mischief. The Maltese, the
greatest of cowards off their own ground, are regarded with a profound
contempt: these are the proteges which bring the British nation into
disrepute at Cairo. And Italians are known chiefly as "istruttori" and
"distruttori"[FN#36]-doctors, druggists, and pedagogues.
Yet Egyptian human nature is, like human nature everywhere,
contradictory. Hating and despising Europeans, they still long for
European rule. This people admire
[p.112]an iron-handed and lion-hearted despotism; they hate a timid and
a grinding tyranny.[FN#37] Of all foreigners, they would prefer the
French yoke,-a circumstance which I attribute to the diplomatic skill
and national dignity of our neighbours across the Channel.[FN#38] But
whatever European nation secures Egypt will win a treasure. Moated on
the north and south by seas, with a glacis of impassable deserts to the
eastward and westward, capable of supporting an army of 180,000 men, of
paying a
[p.113]heavy tribute, and yet able to show a considerable surplus of
revenue, this country in western hands will command India, and by a
ship-canal between Pelusium and Suez would open the whole of Eastern
Africa.[FN#39]
There is no longer much to fear from the fanaticism of the people, and
a little prudence would suffice to command the interests of the
Mosque.[FN#40] The chiefs of corporations,[FN#41] in the present state
of popular feeling, would offer [p.114]even less difficulty to an
invader or a foreign ruler than the Olema. Briefly, Egypt is the most
tempting prize which the East holds out to the ambition of Europe, not
excepted even the Golden Horn.
[FN#1] In the capitals of the columns, for instance.
[FN#2] This direct derivation is readily detected in the Mosques at Old
Cairo.
[FN#3] The roof supported by arches resting on pillars, was unknown to
classic antiquity, and in the earliest ages of Al-Islam, the cloisters
were neither arched nor domed. A modern writer justly observes, "A
compound of arcade and colonnade was suggested to the architects of the
Middle Ages by the command that ancient buildings gave them of marble
columns."
[FN#4] "The Oriental mind," says a clever writer on Indian subjects,
"has achieved everything save real greatness of aim and execution."
That the Arab mind always aimed, and still aims, at the physically
great is sufficiently evident. Nothing affords the Meccans greater
pride than the vast size of their temple. Nothing is more humiliating
to the people of Al-Madinah than the comparative smallness of their
Mosque. Still, with a few exceptions, Arab greatness is the vulgar
great, not the grand.
[FN#5] That is to say, imitations of the human form. All the doctors of
Al-Islam, however, differ on this head: some absolutely forbidding any
delineation of what has life, under pain of being cast into hell;
others permitting pictures even of the bodies, though not of the faces,
of men. The Arabs are the strictest of Misiconists; yet even they allow
plans and pictures of the Holy Shrines. Other nations are comparatively
lax. The Alhambra abounds in paintings and frescoes. The Persians never
object to depict in books and on walls the battles of Rustam, and the
Turks preserve in the Seraglio treasury of Constantinople portraits, by
Greeks and other artists, of their Sultans in regular succession.
[FN#6] This is at least a purer taste than that of our Gothic
architects, who ornamented their cathedrals with statuary so
inappropriate as to suggest to the antiquary remains of the worship of
the Hellespontine god.
[FN#7] At Bruges, Bologna, (St. Stefano), and Nurnberg, there are, if I
recollect right, imitations of the Holy Sepulchre, although the
"palmer" might not detect the resemblance at first sight. That in the
Church of Jerusalem at Bruges was built by a merchant, who travelled
three times to Palestine in order to ensure correctness, and totally
failed. "Arab art," says a writer in the "Athenaeum," "sprang from the
Koran, as the Gothic did from the Bible." He should have remembered,
that Arab art, in its present shape, was borrowed by Al-Walid from the
Greeks, and, perhaps, in part from the Persians and the Hindus, but
that the model buildings existed at Meccah, and in Al-Yaman, centuries
before the people had "luxurious shawls and weavings of Cashmere" to
suggest mural decoration.
[FN#8] See Theophile Gautier's admirable description of the Mosque at
Cordova.
[FN#9] Joseph Pitts, of Exeter, declares that Cairo contained in his
day (A.D. 1678-93) 5 or 6000 Mosques, public and private; at the same
time he corrects Mr. Collins, who enumerated 6000 public, and 20,000
particular buildings, and M. de Thevenot, who (Part I. p. 129),
supplied the city with 23,000!
[FN#10] In Niebuhr's time, a Christian passing one of the very holy
buildings on foot was liable to be seized and circumcised.
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