Identifier: storyofcairo00stan (find matches)
Title: The story of Cairo
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Stanley Lane-Poole
Subjects:
Publisher: J. M. Dent
Contributing Library: Gumberg Library, Duquesne University
Digitizing Sponsor: Lyrasis Members and Sloan Foundation

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y or exile, of famine andinvasion, of learning and piety, to tell. On the right,northwards, the fine towers of Muayyad above theZuweyla gate recall a hundred deeds and legends of thatfamous portal, once the main entrance of the caliphspalace-city. Beyond them rise the minarets of theNahhasin, a perfect gallery of Saracen art, and againbeyond, the turrets of Hakims great quadrangle. Infront in the foreground stands Sultan Hasan, thelargest and most imposing of Mamluk mosques, anda little to the left one looks into the vast arcadedsquare of Ibn-TuliJn, with its queer corkscrew toweroverhanging the billowy mounds that reveal whereFustat lay a thousand years ago. Still more to theleft a line of arches shows where the aqueduct that hasbrought water to the Citadel for five centuries stretchesto the Nile, and behind we can look down upon thecluster of ruined domes and minarets of the southernKarafa—the Tombs of the Mamluks —and catch aglimpse of the old fortress of Egyptian Babylon and28
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29 The Two Cities the mosque of the conqueror *Amr. Looking overthe Mamluk minarets we can see the dim outlines ofthe cairns of Dahshur and the conspicuous form ofSakkaras step-pyramid, separated from the Saracendomes by only fifteen miles of space but five millenniumsof time; and as the glow of the sunset fades awaythe evening clouds gather in the west and the desertbeyond takes up their shades of grey and blue likea vast mid-African ocean. Here we realize Cairo for the first time as a city ofthe Middle Ages, and more than that, a city with anheritage from the dawn of history. It is true it hasnot the exquisite setting of the seven-hilled queen ofthe Bosporus; it is not even built about the Nile,which the silts of centuries have breasted away fromthe walls it once laved : but as one looks out from thebattlements of the Castle one perceives that there areother oceans than those of water, and that the capital ofEgypt can have no more fitting frame than the desertswhich are her shield a

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