| Transcript |
378
PICTURESQUE PALESTLNE.
tufy, he built the Citadel on a spur of Mount Mukattam, and enlarged the Fatimy walls so as
to include his new fortress in their circuit, and also a small suburb to the north of the original
wall of El-Kahirah. The city had now expanded from the square mile or less of the old
Fatimy enclosure to the size of the Cairo of to-day, excluding the modern quarter of the southwest,—that is, about three miles long and a mile to a mile and a half wide.
Most of these changes can be traced in the present city. A small part of El-Fustat
remains under the name of Masr El-'Atikah, separated from the city by the great mounds of
rubbish which indicate vanished suburbs. El-Katai' was partly burnt and partly neglected, and
little of it remains but the mosque of its founder, Ahmad Ibn-Tulun, which, with the site of
the old suburb, was included within the circuit of Saladin's walls. Of El-Kahirah the whole
growth can readily be traced. The oldest wall still stands on the north side, though the
magnificent gateways of the Bab En-Nasr, or "Gate of Victory," with its mighty square towers
and fine vaulting within, and the Bab El-Futuh, or " Gate of Conquests," flanked with massive
round towers, are not quite on their original sites, but were removed to enclose the ruined
mosque and mebkharehs of El-Hakim, the mad founder of the Druses. The cornice and
frieze, adorned with fine Kufic inscriptions, which run along the face of the gateway and the
faces and inner sides of the two towers, half-way from the ground, no less than its massive
and clean-cut masonry, distinguish the Bab En-Nasr among Arab monuments (see page 370).
The second wTall is still where it was on the eastern boundary of the city, and its other sides
may be traced by the names of demolished gates, as the Bab El-Bahr, the Bab El-Luk, and
the Bab El-Khalak; and the Bab Zuweyleh, also called Bab El-Mutawelly, still standing in
the heart of the city, is one of the most striking monuments of Cairo, though its walls and
inscriptions are daubed over with plaster, and its towers were lowered to make room for the
minarets of the adjoining mosque of El-Muayyad.
This second wall, thus mapped out, must have run from near the present bridge over the
Isma'iliyeh Canal, along the western side of the Ezbekiyeh (where the wall was standing in
1842), to near the Abdin Palace, where it turned up to the Bab Zuweyleh, and was prolonged to
the eastern wall. Since it was built the Nile has considerably changed its course, and now runs
much farther to the westward. Saladin's wall was a restoration of this in part, but his addition
(begun in 1170) round the citadel is in full preservation, like the fortress itself, though the
continuation round the site of El-Katai' on the south is demolished. The names of the gates,
however, show that the limits of the present city on the south are nearly what they were in
Saladin's day, and this wall must have run from the citadel to near the mosque of Ibn-Tulun,
enclosed it, and turned north to meet the old wall near the Bab El-Luk.
The limits of the modern additions are only too plain, but the " improvements " of the
reigning dynasty happily do not extend to the old Fatimy quarter, and indeed scarcely affect
Saladin's city except in prolongation and widening of the Musky, the opening of the broad
" Boulevard Mohammad 'Aly " to the citadel, and the laying out of the Rumeylah and the
spaces of Sultan Hasan and Kara Meydan in the usual European style. With these |
