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CAIRO.
together with part of his kaftan (or coat), which when wrapped round the body is believed to
be a cure for ague. Probably the clothes of this charitable Muslim prince are as worthy to
work miracles in healing as the wall of Knock chapel or the image of Our Lady of Lourdes.
Farther along the High Street, at the corner of the Musky, is the mosque and medreseh
of El-Ashraf Barsabay, who also built a mosque in the Eastern Cemetery of Kait Bay (see page
380); and a little beyond, in the Ghuriyeh, are the two mosques of El-Ghury, the last of the
Memluk sultans; that on the left hand (the tomb-mosque) is being restored with unusual skill,
while that on the right, so far untouched, is a cruciform building with richly coloured ceilings
and fine cornices. Farther still, with its minarets rising from the strange old gatewaj called
the Bab Zuweyleh, is the mosque of El-Muayyad, also a Memluk, with a fine bronze o-atc which
once belonged to the mosque of another prince of the same dynasty, Sultan Hasan. A vie*
of the eastern transept of the latter magnificent mosque, which stands in the Rumeyleh in front
of the Citadel, and is admitted to be the stateliest monument of Arab art in Egypt, is given in
the woodcut on page 381, where the large canopied fountain for ablution before prayers is in
the foreground, with the smaller fountain for the use of Turks at the right; while at the back
can be seen the sanctuary, with its niche, pulpit, and reading platform, and the doors on either
side which lead to the founder's tomb. If instead of proceeding to the Citadel wo turn up tin
prolongation of the Musky towards the eastern wall, we shall find on tho loft the peculiarly
sacred and unsightly mosque of the Hasaneyn, where the severed head of the martyred
Hoseyn, the hero of the Persian Passion Play, is believed to be buried; while on the other
side is the Azhar, the university mosque of Cairo—indeed the university of the Mohammadan
world, whose ten thousand students come from India and the west coast of Africa, and even
more remote regions, to learn Koranic exegesis and the decisions of the three hundred learned
ulema who teach them without payment. The Azhar was built by the I uimy khalif
Eb'Aziz in the tenth century, but has been several times restored or added to nil little
architectural beauty remains in it. There is, however, one beautiful arcade leading up to the
mihrab in the eastern colonnade, and some inscriptional friezes, which clearly date back to the
Fitimy period.
Continuing our walk through the Bab El-Ghureyyib, we shall find, beyond the huge
mounds of rubbish outside the city, a collection of tomb-mosques, forming the cemetery known
to natives as that of Kait Bay, but to Europeans as "the Tombs of the KhalifsA The tombs,
however, are not those of khalifs, but of that dynasty of Memluk sultans who built most of
the mosques within the city. The tomb-mosque of Kait Bay (see page 386), with its exquisite
fawn-coloured limestone dome and graceful minaret, deservedly gives its name to this Eastern
Cemetery; but the tomb-mosque of Barkuk (see page 383), in the same vicinity, is scarcely less
beautiful. Under one of its two noble domes the founder of the house of Circassian Memluks
sleeps after his career of conquest, the other covers the bones of his family, while his son and
successor rests hard by. The mosque of Barkuk is of the colonnade form ; the sanctuary on
the east is distinguished by a deeper rank of columns, and the pulpit, carved out of tine liiiKStone,
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