Places of Legitimacy
June 29, 2006
Allow me a brief thought-experiment. Imagine that the American government was overthrown at some point in the future. Perhaps a military coup ushers into power a dictator, or some mega-corporation gains so much leverage that essentially its board of directors is running the country.. the continuity of our democratic system is broken. What would happen then to the national spaces in Washington DC? It is likely that a new leader would try to distance himself/herself from the White House and direct symbols of the American presidency. At the same time the new leader would have a craving for legitimacy that could only be met by re-using certain symbolic spaces that are charged with meaning for the American public. One can easily imagine a ceremony to recognize the new leader which would parallel the events of inauguration and the oath of office, and be held on the same ground. Perhaps the Capitol building would be deemed too charged with specific political meaning, and so it would be torn down.. but a new building is erected in its location.. the heir of that symbolic space.
What I am getting at is that certain physical places are connected to political legitimacy.. and a change in government may overthrow the time-honored use of a building, but that place will nevertheless inherit the past symbolic freight.
Cairo happens to be an impressive laboratory for the construction of legitimacy, as it has been the home to a long series of political upheavals. Cairo itself, it will be remembered, was the product of the Fatimid dynasty. This administrative city was located north of the old city of Fustat, and it contained at first a handful of important structures:
Early Cairo consisted of two palaces and a congregational mosque, the Azhar, all enclosed by a brick wall. The city had an unmistakably Isma'ili character. By the early eleventh century, Cairo possessed another congregational mosque, the Mosque of al-Hakim, which quickly assumed an importance equal to that of the Azhar in ceremonial life. [The Cambridge History of Egypt, Vol. 1, "The Fatimid State, 969-1171" by Paula A. Sanders, pg 166]
The "two palaces" mentioned above sat on opposite sides of a street known, appropriately, as "Bayn al-Qasrayn".. that is, "Between the two Palaces." When Salah al-Din overthrew the Fatimids he retreated to the Citadel.. but this street did not lose its symbolic importance. The last of the Ayyubids, the Sultan al-Salih Najm al-Din, built a madrasa along this street, the minaret for which is visible below:
Doris Behrens-Abouseif writes concerning what is left of this Ayyubid madrasa:
The madrasa of al-Salih was built on part of the site once occupied by the Great Fatimid Palace, that is, within the heart of the Fatimid city. To the passerby today only a minaret standing above a passage with an exquisitely decorated entrance is visible; the rest of the facade beneath the minaret is behind a row of shops. [89]
A part of that "exquisitely decorated entrance" is below:
In this case the madrasa stands hollow. Only its shell remains. One proceeds through the entrance not to enter a mosque, but to continue along a market street. The madrasa has been reconstructed from various clues:
The plan of the madrasa was reconstructed by Creswell, who found that it duplicated the plan he identified of the earlier madrasa which is today in ruins, of Malik al-Kamil on the opposite side of the street. [90]
The details of the architectural plans are not at issue for us here, but we catch a glimpse of multiple building projects in the exact place where the Fatimid Palaces were once located. Those palaces were themselves allowed to decay.. perhaps torn down.. but their space remained important.
The Ayyubids go, and in come the Bahri Mamluks in 1250. The Mamluks have an odd regime, which I will not even attempt to describe in full, but their former status as slaves made legitimacy a particularly important concern. What is one way to construct legitimacy? To construct buildings in places of legitimacy!
The first of the Bahri Mamluks to build here was Qalawun, but since his madrasa/mausoleum/mosque is under heavy reconstruction, I will skip this and look at the smaller structure of his son Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad, the entrance to which is below:
That entrance may look familiar.. If it looks something like an entrance to a church, you should be patting yourself on the back.. that is exactly what this is!
The most remarkable feature of the facade is the portal, a trophy brought from a church in Akko during the Crusades by al-Malik al-Ashraf Khalil... It is a Gothic marble portal with pointed arch, at the apex of which was added the word, Allah. [100]
It is at once a beautiful portal and a reminder of the continuing Muslim ability to beat back the Crusaders.
The minaret is covered with an intricately patterned stucco design.. like lacework running up and down the stone. As should be quite evident from the variety of minarets that turn up in these blogs, there was no single minaret pattern. In fact, it appears that some effort went into not repeating the designs of previous minarets.. and that effort to avoid repetition may be a key reason for the employment of foreign craftsmen when possible.
The qiblah is another example of intricate stucco work:
Behrens-Abouseif confidently asserts the presence of foreign craftsmen: "The prayer niche, which has no parallel in Cairo, is by a foreign hand. It shows similarities to Persian stucco work..." (101).
As for the internal design of the madrasa itself, can be discerned despite much deterioration.. It looks like a smaller version of the mosque of Sultan Hasan, with four large halls located under a great arch on each side of a square (a cruciform patter). The design can be glimpsed in the photo below, taken from in front of the qiblah.. (note four arches on each side of a square):
Right next door to this structure is yet another very large madrasa/khanqah/mausoleum, that of Sultan Barquq, who was the first of the Circassian Mamluks after their overthrow of the Bahri Mamluks toward the end of the 14th century. What does Sultan Barquq do? He builds a large structure next door to his predecessors along the street once known as Bayn al-Qasrayn.
I am going to save my full description of Sultan Barquq's religious complex for tomorrow's blog, but I want to point out that now a fourth successive regime has inititiated a high-prestige building project in this area. One could be tempted to think that there is something important about this space. As if the traditional expectations of the people so center on this ground that successive dynasties needed to prove themselves here. These buildings are not creating symbolic space, they are making use of symbolic space.. and gaining for their builders the legitimacy that inheres to places.
World Cup Wanderings
June 28, 2006
Walking downtown today I came across a small group of kids kicking a soccer ball around. It is a surprisingly rare site.. The New York Times recently ran an article on soccer in Brazil.. which thrives at all levels of society. The author, Larry Rohter, notes:
Of the 23 players on the national squad competing in Germany this month, only three come from a background that would be considered middle class here. Most of the players, whether they were born in cities or in the countryside, come from families that are humble, the preferred term for poverty here.
I want to ask: what holds Egypt back from becoming like Brazil? People here like soccer.. follow their local clubs.. sit out in cafe's watching the important games. What is missing (aside from the fact that there is only one Brazil). I think Egypt and the other Arabi countries represent a case where social values hinder the development of world class soccer. Let me just set down some observations by way of explaining that position:
- Urban space is not geared for soccer. The kids in the picture above found a small corner in which they could kick the ball around, but they are by no means on anything like a field. If you could see the busy streets here you would undoubtedly not want your children playing soccer on them!
- What there is in the way of green space is overwhelmingly private. This means the space for soccer is available almost entirely for the wealthy classes. I would bet that the players from all the Arab national teams (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia) come from significantly more wealthy backgrounds than their counterparts on a national team like that of Brazil.
- Nobody wears shorts here (OK, except for kids and tourists). Actually let me revise that: nobody wears shorts in public (again, except for kids and tourists). We are getting close to July, and it is quite hot.. but you do not see Egyptians, men or women, wearing shorts or tanktops. It is a sweaty country! But think for a moment about this: if social conventions do not allow for shorts and tanktops.. in public.. then how will one play soccer? The answer: in private clubs where shorts are fine.
Soccer seems to be a great example of the way social values turn and influence life in unexpected ways. In this case, barring the development of a Brazil-like national powerhouse.
[Here I am at halftime for the Brazil/Ghana match. I am a little disappointed, as Brazil is ahead by two points! I would have loved an African team to break into the top. I also thought Ghana played exciting soccer, and were more impressive than the 3-0 final score might lead one to think.]
Where's the ACLU When You Need It?
June 26, 2006
Every Thursday and Sunday Emily and I make our way over to ETC (Episcopal Training Center) where we each take an Arabic class. My lessons generally consist of discussion, where I endeavor to improve my colloquial Egyptian. On Sunday we were talking about apartments, and I mentioned that the elevator in our apartment plays a few seconds of the Qur'an as soon as one pushes a button to go up or down. Emily and I get a kick out of that, considering it something like local color.. We even missed it when it was gone for a couple of days! But my Arabic teacher.. who is a Coptic Christian.. was not so amused, and she thought it was rude that people act as if they are the only religion in Egypt.
That reminded me too of our experience on Friday (the day Muslims gather for a sermon and prayers.. like the Christian Sunday) when we took the metro to downtown. We got out at Sadat.. and it was strange how deserted the station felt. But the few people who were in the station were treated to a morning sermon. Imagine this for a moment: you are standing in a large subway station in a major city.. New York or Washington.. a fine example of public space.. and then on the loudspeaker comes the voice of Pat Robertson delivering a Sunday sermon. It would be an odd moment, surely.. for we are not accustomed to sectarian religious discourse in public places. But if you are a Coptic Christian in Egypt, everyday is filled with reminders that this country is Muslim.
So how would an American Evangelical Christian deal with this situation? I am betting that most would rebel and immediately find the Egyptian ACLU to try and get religion out of public places. They could make a reasonable argument, with the help of the Egyptian ACLU: this is our country, and we have a right not to be bombarded with publicly funded religious messages. Why should a Christian have to get into an elevator several times a day and have to listen to someone else's chanted scripture?
American Evangelicals would do well to consider more how they would react in a minority situation. I get the feeling, though, that their problem with the current Egyptian system would not be out of principle, but rather out of dismay that the wrong side has the power. In fact, I would have a hard time defining just how their positions about the visibility of religious symbols in public places differs from the Muslim reality here.. they just switch the religion. Would James Dobson and Rick Santorum really have a problem with a Christian sermon being broadcast in a public subway station? I doubt it.
Below is also another video.. this one showing a metro train arriving and then leaving. When we go to Arabic lessons.. just one stop away.. we invariably hop on the metro. There is alsoa brief view of Emily eating lime ice cream at the end of this video.. so immature viewers beware..
God's Fountains:
The Sabils of Cairo
June 25, 2006
Standing at a fork in the road which used to be the main thoroughfare of Cairo is a fancy building which those new to the Middle East may have difficulty identifying. We have stumbled onto a sabil, or public fountain. In this case it is the sabil (1744) of Abd al-Rahman Khatkhoda, a lieutenant governor of Cairo under the Ottomans.
The word sabil means "road" or "path" in Arabic.. and only later came to refer to a public fountain. The article by C.E. Bosworth in the Encyclopedia of Islam goes some way to explaining this strange word-evolution:
From the idea of doing something charitably or disinterestedly, fi sabil Allah [in the path of God], the word sabil acquired in later Islamic times the specific meaning of "drinking fountain, public supply of water provided by someone's private munificence and charity"... [see under sabil]
So t he idea of being "in the path of God" came to mean doing good works generally.. and a public fountain seems to have been one particularly clear example of such a good work.
As time went on these sabils became a popular way to create a landmark.. and obviously a lot of craftsmanship went into this small gem of a building. Under the Ottomans large-scale mosque construction slowed down considerably, but they added a number of these graceful smaller constructions to the urban landscape. Below is another picture to give a sense of the careful beauty of this building:
The inside of the building was no less handsome, being decorated with Ottoman Iznak tiles. The inside is being restored, and that is why some of the construction scaffolding is present in the photo:
The sabil is yet another structure that exerts some pressure on the modern imagination: why were these so popular? A world without city-wide plumbing and running water must needs be imagined. Was every household supposed to send someone to walk a few miles to the Nile and carry water back each day? That would be impracticable.. so people purchased water or got it free at these charitable fountains. The water itself would have been dispensed through the grating, which is the main identifying feature of a sabil.
In his account of Cairo, Ibn Battuta mentions some of the logistical realities of water provision:
It is said that in Cairo there are twelve thousand water-carriers who transport water on camels... [42, vol. 1, Gibb translation]
So when we think of these narrow urban streets, we have to think of them packed with water-carrying camels.
To the right side of this sabil is a doorway that leads to stairs.. The above photo captures the decorated lintel of this door. Within the small sabil is a living quarter for the person in charge of dispensing the water (this one actually has two living quarters), and on the top story of the structure is a small primary school.. where boys would come to learn the Qur'an. In the first picture above it is possible to see this open room, paneled with wood, where young students came to be instructed.
Compared to many of the buildings in Cairo, the above sabil is quite new.. I mean, 1744! Way recent. Then sometimes I remind myself that hey, all things considered that is still pretty old. Put this down in a state like Ohio and it will be the oldest thing standing anywhere. It was built a full generation before our Revolutionary War!
These sabils seem to be everywhere.. here is another (above and detail below) that is just a block or so away from the one examined above. It is also quite beautiful.. and more notably Ottoman in its details:
Many cities in the past have found ways to distribute water, but the religious tone in the Islamic urban system is striking. That religious tone still exists. On my way home from this trip I stopped to photograph a public water dispenser located in Ma'adi on Road 9. Two students were helping themselves to a drink (and had no idea what I wanted a picture of!):
To be noted here is the sign in Arabic posted to the left of those students. It is difficult to read at this size, but on top of that small sign there is a string of Arabic words surrounded by a yellow outline. That is a verse from the Qur'an about providing a drink. Then underneath that the sign reads: "We request from you the "Fatiha" for the owner of this sabil." The "Fatiha" is the first short chapter of the Qur'an. So the provider of this small, but obviously welcome, charity is directly asking for a prayer to be said in his behalf. I am not sure that these students offered anything of the sort.. but it is fascinating to note how even in our day of plumbing and bottled water, the religious side of the public fountain survives and thrives.
World Cup 2006 in Egypt
June 24, 2006
Four years ago I was at the beginning of a year-long residence in Cairo, and the World Cup was starting.. My roommate and I had a small television in our apartment. It had poor reception, but we could still watch the games. This time around the situation is somewhat different since the World Cup is not being shown on regular television. To see the World Cup one must subscribe to a special cable network.. which is quite expensive. This situation arose from the fact that the rights to the World Cup were auctioned, and this time around a private cable company bought exclusive rights to broadcast the games. So from Egypt to Morocco to Syria to Jordan.. (I think this even extends into Africa).. people have had to scramble to find ways to watch the matches, either subscribing to cable or renewing an old friendship with someone who has..
Last week I read about the games in Germany and how large screen televisions had been set up along a mile-long stretch of walkway outside a stadium.. People without tickets are able to stream to these public screens. Egypt has nothing like that.
The lack of easy access to the games has brought out some extreme statements in the press. A newspaper here quoted an official as saying:
I call upon human rights organizations to ask the UN to make watching the World Cup matches free for all people around the world as one of the basic human rights. The UN should stand up to FIFA...
I have been following the results pretty closely.. I have to admit. On occasion I see parts of the games, like when I get lunch at McDonalds and sit underneath their television. I could watch more if I simply went out to one of the nicer cafes. But truth be told, I am not a big fan of watching sports in a big crowd.. I am not sure I have ever done that even! This week Al-Ahram Weekly reported the words of a cafe owner:
He notes that even married couples come to watch the matches. "The wife eats in silence and the husband watches the match. It's as if they aren't sitting together. But at least he took her out.
My guess is that Emily would not be so easily satisfied, nor accept this silent wifely fate in the midst of a dramatic match. So I continue to follow from a bit of a distance.
A sub-plot that may not have been picked up in the media everywhere was the unfurling of the Israeli flag by the Ghanaian player John Paintsil, after a goal against the Czech Republic. Paintsil plays for a club in Israel, and his way of celebrating a goal was to pull out a small Israeli flag. An article in the Daily Star quotes an Egyptian paper:
Egyptians supported the Ghanaian team all the way until the 82nd minute, and regretted it after the Israeli flag...
The upshot of this act was a flurry of official complaints. Ghana's foreign minister has kept busy meeting ambassadors from the Palestinian Authority, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Algeria, and Morocco, apologizing to them. I am sure that was a fun day! It is never possible to fathom the depth of the distaste for Israel here. Pulling out the flag of a country other than the one for whom you are playing may be odd.. and I should think Ghanaian fans would raise their eyebrows at that.. But it is hardly the business of any other country, let alone a reason to take offense.
Much more offensive than the flag itself was the response of Arab papers. The Daily Star notes some of the printed responses:
The main question on Egyptian lips after the match was "why?"
Some papers described Paintsil as a "Mossad agent," others said "an Israeli had paid him to do it" but the most elaborate theory was offered by the top-selling state owned daily Al Ahram.
"The real reason," sports analyst Hassan El-Mestekawi wrote, stems from the fact that many Ghanaian players go through football training camps set up by an Israeli coach who "discovered the treasure of African talent, and abused the poverty of the continent's children" with the ultimate goal of selling them off to the European clubs.
"The training program for these children starts every morning with a salute to the Israeli flag," Mestekawi claimed.
That is all nonsense. Most offensive is the blithe implication that a soccer slave trade has been opened up by Israelis in Africa! Followed closely by the way Ghanaians themselves are infantilized in the scenario.
Be Nice to Tourists! again..
June 24, 2006
A new advertisement from the Egyptian government has now gone up in various places. This one again emphasizes the economic benefit that comes from tourism. The text reads:
200,000 work opportunities for us and for our children
with every million tourists who visit us.
Then at the bottom the situation is summed up: "Tourism is good for all of us." The pictures help to highlight the range of people who are helped by tourism. I can immediately identify a farmer, a tour guide, a cleaning person, a shop owner, a waiter, and a building restorer. Not visible in that square of pictures is anyone who looks like a politician or wealthy businessman.. instead they are all common people happy to be working. The message: "It could be your job that is supported by tourism, so be nice to those tourists!"
Cities in Rhetoric and Narrative
June 23, 2006
Recently I read an article by Michael Cooperson that is worth reflecting upon, entitled "Baghdad in Rhetoric and Narrative", in Muqarnas 13 (1996), 99-113. The article advances two interconnected points: first, that people experienced Baghdad through specific literary tropes; second, that the actual urban reality of Baghdad influenced the literature that came from there. I guess it is no surprise that I like this kind of argument since my dissertation represents a variation on it..
What does it mean for someone to experience Baghdad through specific literary tropes? Cooperson begins with a quite clear example. He notes Ibn Jubayr coming into Baghdad in 1184 and complaining:
This ancient city, though it still serves as the Abbasid capital, has lost much of its distinctive character and retains only its famous name. Compared to what it once was—before it fell victim to recurrent misfortunes and repeated calamities—the city resembles a vanished encampment or a passing phantom. [99]
Thus Ibn Jubayr complains.. but the real misfortune will come when in about 70 years when the Mongols invade and sack Baghdad. Ibn Jubayr actually offers us a portrait of Baghdad from a time when it is still relatively intact and flourishing. But "flourishing" was not the rhetorical trope through which this city was experienced.
Cooperson goes on to note the various layers of disappointment in written responses to Baghdad. Ibn Battuta in 1326 really had something to complain about.. but even that point was a heyday compared to what would happen when Timur came through the area about 70 years later. And when we move forward in time we find a poem by Abu Tammam, living in the early 9th century, who makes essentially the same complaint. Cooperson asks: "If a poet could mourn the city within fifty years of its founding, exactly when was the golden age the travelers refer to?" (99).
For Cooperson this represents one of four major topoi that governed the responses to Baghdad. What I dislike about the word "topoi" is the idea that these represent strictly literary or bookish responses to a place. As if this was a rhetorical tradition which writers could more or less separate from their lived personal experience. I like to talk about narratives and metaphors because then I know we are talking about something lodged in the human mind.. a part of the human cognitive response to place. Writers happen to be our best testimony to that cognitive response since they are dealers in words, and words are social tools for building up meaning.
Why stop at Baghdad? What seems exciting to me about this case study is that understanding something about medieval Baghdad also tells us something about contemporary London and classical Athens. Cities collect important narratives and metaphors.. like magnets collect iron—it is not something they try to do, it just happens. Nobody experiences these places free from associations.. I get frustrated with the lack of interest in drawing larger conclusions about humans and their habits of meaning construction.
The second point for Cooperson is the migration of social phenomena—not social details, but larger patterns—into literary works. This is the flip-side of the last argument. If "tropes" can work their way into actual experience, then perhaps actual experience can work its way into literary representations. Considering both of these sides, our conclusion should be that material culture and cognitive processes are constantly intertwining and influencing each other.. a situation which always reminds me of Coleridge and his description of the imagination and its work upon reality: it is like a water-spider. It pushes forward on its own impetus, but then lets itself drift backward with the flow. This constant back-and-forth between the cognitive and the material marks human experience. And I hope it marks this blog.
The Mosque of Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad (1318-35 AD)
June 22, 2006
The citadel also contains a beautiful mosque, built by Sultan Nasir Muhammad, one of the Bahri Mamluks whose long and prosperous reign marks a high point of Egyptian medieval history.. before the plague strikes in the mid-14th century and drastically lowers the population.
Maqrizi gives a short notice about the mosque:
This mosque at the citadel was built by king Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawun in the year 718 AH. Previously in this place had been an old mosque and beside it the kitchen of three earlier sultans. So Nasir destroyed all that and made use of it in this mosque. He made it the most splendid structure and worked inside it a lot of glorious colored marble, along with an exalted dome. He made upon it an enclosure [maqsurah] from iron, wondrous of craftsmanship. In the front of the mosque there was another enclosure of iron, designed for the prayer of the Sultan. So when its construction was completed, the Sultan sat in it by himself and called upon all of the official callers [to prayer] in Cairo and Fustat, along with all the preachers and [Quran] readers. He ordered the preachers, and each of them gave a sermon in front of him. The callers [to prayer] stood and gave their call and the readers read [from the Quran]. Then Nasir chose the preacher Jamal al-Din Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Qastalani as the preacher of his new mosque. He chose 20 callers [to prayer], appointing them in [the mosque]. He set for it readers of the lessons and a reader of the Holy Book. He also set for it in the way of dedicated properties whatever was superfluous of his expenditures. So it became the most exalted of the mosques of Egypt, and the greatest of them. To this day it is here that the Sultan of Egypt prays the Friday prayer and where the Chief Judge of the Shafi'ites preaches and prays on behalf of the people. [2: 325]
There is a qualitative difference between the kind of information available to an archeologist, and that available to someone working with texts. I always think the textual scholar gets the best deal. There is plenty of interesting imformation to be gleaned from the material remains of a site.. but there is nothing that adds life to a site like language. In this case we get the enjoyable spectacle of an audition for all the preachers and prayer-callers and Quran-readers of Cairo.. the winner getting a royal appointment in the new mosque. This is where I find Maqrizi enjoyable.. adding details of life to enliven what is otherwise just stones.
The minarets of the mosque are striking, both for the zig-zag pattern on the stone and for the green, white, and blue tiling on its top. It is a unique decorative strategy.. and Doris Behrens-Abouseif has a nice summary of the reason:
We know that a craftsman from Tabriz came to Cairo during the reign of al-Nasir Muhammad and that he built other minarets covered with faience, as was then the fashion in Persia. Not only the faience mosaic technique, but also the bulb shape, seems to have come from Tabriz. [109]
The original dome covered with green tiles fell down in the 16th century.. This is a later replacement which manages to give some sense of the original look.
In the 16th century the Ottomans (who took over in 1517) also carted off most of the marble from the citadel. So the "glorious colored marble" that is praised by Maqrizi is mostly gone. On a couple of walls there were some ruined remains of what the originally rich marbled interior must have looked like:
Not too much left there.. admittedly.
The columns inside the mosque are one of its most memorable aspects.. In front of the qiblah there are quite large columns constructed out of Aswan granite. It is rare to be in an Egyptian mosque and to be struck by the magnitude of the columns.. which is a common feeling in Egyptian temples. But this time the mosque's columns really are huge. There is a good reason for that: they were taken from an ancient Egyptian temple somewhere.
These large columns were not the only items pilfered from earlier structures. Note the small column in the rear of the picture above.. it is different, and seeminly jerry-rigged to fit into its position. That is the case with many of the smaller columns: they all look a little different. The reason again being that they have been removed from their original context.
The two capitals above again highlight the mix-matched interior style of this mosque. Both of these capitals are Coptic designs, the one on the right even featuring a cross! These were both once part of a church.. but then re-used in this mosque.
I am of course sad about the loss of Egyptian temples and Coptic churches.. but this mosque has a quite pleasing feel to it. It sins against our taste for uniformity of style.. (when Muhammad 'Ali constructed his large mosque in the 19th century, it was all uniformity).. But allowing a structure to be pieced together.. and letting the various influences have their own voice, seems like a unique part of medieval Islamic structures.. and literature, at that. Remember also that Persian tiling up on the minarets and the dome!
A Visit to the Citadel
June 21, 2006
Sitting above Cairo is its citadel, striking for the pure bulk of its construction. It struck me the other day when I was at the ruins of Fustat that the building was overwhelmingly with brick.. and that style of construction would not have demanded much in the way of quarrying for stone. The citadel.. well, that's another story. Its thirst for stone led to the dismantling of some of the smaller pyramids at Giza..
To understand the citadel one has to keep in mind Cairo;s pattern of urban growth. Every new ruling party disdains to live in the same place as the last ruling party. Their tactic is to open a new administrative palace outside the main city.. which also receives its own name. Over time the businesses and population migrate to the new center. Cairo was the administrative center for the Fatimids.. and it eventually became the name for the entire urban conglomerate. When the Fatimids fell, and Salah al-Din took over, he did not stay in Cairo, but began construction on the brow of a hill to the south.. and this became the citadel.
Maqrizi has an interesting account of the citadel's construction:
The reason for its construction was that the Sultan Salah al-Din Yusaf ibn Ayyub, when he removed the Fatimid state from Egypt and possessed its command alone, did not move out of [his old residence at the] House of the Minister and continued to fear for his life from those left of the Shi'a Fatimids in Egypt as well as from Malak al-'Adil the Sultan of Syria... [There follows an account of some political maneuvering.. I love the presence of Fatimid "dead-enders" in the account!]
It is said that the reason which called him to choose the location of the citadel is that he hung some meat in Cairo, and it went bad after one day and one night. Then he hung the meat of another animal in the current location of the citadel, but it did not go bad except after two days and two nights. So he ordered at that time the erection of the citadel there.
The prince Baha' al-Din Qaraqush occupied himself with its construction. He began building the citadel and he also built the walls of Cairo, which he extended, in the year 572 AH. [In the process of this extension] he destroyed what was there in the way of mosques, removed tombs, and destroyed the small pyramids which were at Giza facing Fustat, along with many other places. He transported what he discovered there in the way of stones and built with them the walls, the citadel, and the bridges of Giza. He meant to make the walls enclose Fustat, the citadel, and Cairo. The Sultan died before he could complete his design for the walls, the citadel, and the bridge. [2: 202]
The citadel is quite hard to navigate. Many parts that look interesting are closed to visitors. Extraneous museums dedicated to the police and the military are present.. which require new constructions and the closing off of more space. I was particularly heartbroken at my inability to see the 'Well of Yusaf" which was noted as one of the wonders of Egypt.. The result is this vast center that is largely impenetrable for a visitor. I would think that this area could have been turned into a fascinating (and expensive) guided tour that would descend into the depths of this literal city on a hill.. a bit like all those "underground" city tours in places like New York or Paris.
The most striking contemporary aspect of the citadel is the giant mosque of Muhammad 'Ali (1830-48 AD), whose spires have become a part of the iconography of Cairo. And I admit that from a distance this has now become a welcome sight to me. but the mosque itself looks terrible close up. Unless size truly is all that matters, this one is amazingly bad.
Noticeable first is the complete break that this mosque represents with Egypt's architectural past. The design is wholly Turkish. Doris Behrens-Abouseif notes:
It is, however, paradoxical that while politically Muhammad 'Ali acted quite independently of Istanbul, architecturally during his reign style came closer to that of Istanbul than ever before, including its Western, particularly French, influence. Muhammad 'Ali's Cairo set out to abandon the Middle Ages and begin the modern Western Age, in effect, to surpass Istanbul. [168]
Fittingly, Behrens-Abouseif ends her book on the Islamic architecture of Cairo with this mosque. It closes the door on the past.. not with a glorious new start, but with a shudderingly bad imitation of Istanbul.
One thing that has always puzzled me is why the paneling on the mosque looks so dirty and plain bad. Apparently alabaster was used.. which is pretty.. but "inappropriate for architecture as it deteriorates quickly" (170).
In the Turkish scheme there are two main units that make up the mosque. There is the courtyard.. pictured above.. which is recognizable from earlier mosques for its colonnades and the fountain for ablution in the center. But then on the qiblah side.. the side facing Mecca.. there is a gigantic structure that now stands as the actual mosque. In earlier mosques the qiblah side was larger.. sometime even with a dome.. but it was recognizably a part of the courtyard. No more.
It is to the interior that people flock. Note the ornate minbars (pulpits) in the above picture. The whole thing is just too much. But mysteriously people love it instead of feeling rage.
I should clarify here that I love Turkish architecture. Some of the most stunning mosques in the world are in Turkey. The Turkish iznak tiles are some of the most beautiful creations ever.. My problem is with this particular mosque.
The Pregant Wifi Holding the Shoes
June 20, 2006
Here is Emily at the mosque of Muhammad 'Ali.. on top of the citadel. And she is kindly holding our shoes so that I can take pictures. Does anyone wonder why I love her so much?? (and I am not talking about her holding the shoes!)
Love of Country/Love of Family:
A Review of The Open Door
June 20, 2006
This next review of a classic Egyptian film is on The Open Door (1963), the film version of a novel by Latifa al-Zayyat that Emily read last month. Its major fault was the bombastic music that assaults the listener from the opening credits.. which someone thought was appropriate to the patriotic themes.
The plot centers on the growth of a young woman, played by the delightful Faten Hamama. She has to reject two quite different, but negative, suitors.. which also means breaking away from the expectations of her parents. She finds her freedom finally in service to her country, and her love-match (on the cover of the DVD, above) is also a patriot. Because of her brother's involvement with the resistance, we are never allowed to forget the changing political situation of Egypt, and her personal "open door" is paralleled by the "open door" that lays in front of Egypt.
There would be two ways to describe this parallel between personal life and national events. We could say that her life "symbolizes" the Egyptian revolution and the struggle of the Egyptian people. To my mind this makes it sound as if the central female character gains meaning through its connection to the background of national events. My preference would be to call this a metaphoric parallel.. allowing for a transference of emotions. Those emotions are transferred from the primary personal relationship.. which is always what makes us respond.. and ends up imbuing historical event with personal feelings.
I don't know.. that may sound like an academic point. But I think it is important to recognize that national events are given meaning by their association with personal emotions.. by their association with concepts like marriage and family and motherhood.. I think a careful look at propaganda from different nations will turn up a consistent attempt to associate national values with primary personal emotions. It is generally not the case that personal events are given meaning by being turned into symbols for national events.
Which leads me to say that national events are not inherently important to human beings. Humans lived thousands of years without nation states, so obviously there is nothing terribly central about the human connection to a state consisting mostly of people one never meets. No one is born knowing what is important about a nation.. but everyone is born knowing what is important about a mother. States become important only as primary human emotions get read onto national values. One important way that happens.. one way that nationalism gets built.. is through works such as this one.
My idea continues to be that the 60s.. at least until the "catastrophe" of the 1967 war with Israel.. was a time of pretty intense optimism and nation building. That connection with optimism virtually defines what is "classic" about Egyptian films from this time.
It is worth remembering that these are films from the 60s. As I watch them, though, I compare them to American films in the 40s. That is partly a result of black & white film.. but it is also curious that the 40s was the period of "classic" American cinema.. or the "golden age of film." But by 1963 things were different. This is the year of Fellini's 8 1/2.. and in the following year would come Dr. Strangelove and the Beatles' Hard Day's Night. Which I guess is to say that for us these years mark a time of breaking up the "classic".. and that gives "classic" Egyptian films an oddly out of place feel, when considered from the vantage point of international cinema.
The Final Resting Place of Imam Shafi'a
June 19, 2006
This is a different kind of monument than I have yet featured in this blog. It is not primarily a mosque (although a mosque is connected), but a mausoleum where the legist Imam Shafi'a (767-820 AD) was buried, whose name became attached to one of the four major legal schools in Sunni Islam. He came to live in Fustat and taught at the mosque of 'Amr ibn al-'Aas. This mausoleum, however, was not built until 1211 AD.. and to understand that time gap one must remember the presence of the Shi'a Fatimids in Egypt from 969-1171 AD. In the years after the fall of the Fatimids, the official re-introduction of Sunni Islam was high on the agenda of the rulers. The first of whom was Salah al-Din (or Saladin).. the founder of a madrasah (school) here in honor of Imam Shafi'a. A few years later this domed mausoleum itself was built. Honoring this foundational figure became a way to reassert Sunni identity in Egypt.
The mausoleum is located in the Qarafah.. which is the large cemetery to the south of what is today Cairo. It was the cemetery for Fustat, and thus the place where the earliest Muslims would have been buried. Getting to the mausoleum today means driving past many modern Muslim burials.. some open, like this.. and others located inside covered structures. Even odder is the fact that these cemeteries are inhabited by large numbers of poor people.. and so they get the name "cities of the dead."
If you enter the mausoleum expecting a tomb.. well, you won't be disappointed. There is stands behind what seem like brass bars and illumined by the fluorescent green light that seems standard for these things.
Once inside, the mausoleum became one of my favorite structures in Cairo. The interior is endlessly complex. Although much of the painting in the high dome was restored at a later date, Doris Behrens-Abouseif indicates that the "wooden frieze running along the walls" is original (87). This wooden frieze can be seen at the bottom of the following picture:
Behrens-Abouseif also notes that the "marble column with Imam Shafi'a's name and date of death, topped with a turban-like structure, is original" (87). This is a striking thing to be located in the middle of the mausoleum:
While I was in the mausoleum I learned that many women come to here to pray for fertility. It is of course a great mystery why this place would be associated with anything like fertility.. Maybe this marble column somehow stirs up hope?
Through the grating below you can glimpse a couple of women who have come to the mausoleum.
One of my thrills in coming to see the mausoleum was my knowledge that Ibn Jubayr, the medieval pilgrim, had also been here. The domed structure was not built yet, but the school must have been newly instated by Salah al-Din. Here is Ibn Jubayr's description (in Broadhurst's translation):
The tomb of the Shafi'a imam—may God hold him in His favor—a shrine superb in beauty and size. Over against it was built a school the like of which has not been made in this country, there being nothing more spacious or more finely built. He who walks around it will conceive it to be itself a separate town. Beside it is a bath and other conveniences, and building continues to this day. [40]
That final statement informs us that Ibn Jubayr was here at the beginning of the history of this complex.. when the expenditures were still endless, patronage at the highest levels. He saw this complex when it was all new.. when much was still to come.
Fustat: The First Cairo
June 18, 2006
The first Muslim city in the vicinity of Cairo was Fustat.. and it naturally formed near the mosque of 'Amr ibn al-'Aas. It became a major population center. People tend to move where the money is, and new rulers are always the biggest spenders. Eventually this first city was supplanted by the growing metropolis to the north, and the buildings of this older city went to ruin. Its ruins now lie exposed for anyone who cares to see what is left of this oldest city.
Al-Maqrizi records an interesting account of the founding of Fustat.. which purports to explain the name:
Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam heard from Yazid ibn Abi Habib that 'Amr ibn al-'Aas, when he conquered Alexandria and saw its finished houses and buildings, felt anxious about dwelling in them. 'Amr said: [smaller] residences once were enough for us. So he wrote to [the Caliph] 'Umar ibn al-Khutaab, God be pleased with him, and asked him permission for dwelling there. So [the Caliph] 'Umar asked the messenger whether any water intervened between him and the Muslims [with 'Amr]. The messenger said: "Yes, Prince of Believers, when the Nile flows." So the Caliph 'Umar wrote to 'Amr that he did not want him to settle with the Muslims in a place where water intervenes between them in either the winter or summer. So 'Amr withdrew from Alexandria to Fustat..
Fustat got its name because 'Amr ibn al-'Aas, when he wanted to head to Alexandria for battle with the Greeks who were there, ordered the taking down of his tent (fustat). But in the tent was a dove with young chicks. So 'Amr said: This is certainly forbidden to us, and he ordered that [the tent] be left just as it was and he put in charge of it the overseer of the castle [conquered there]. When the Muslims returned from Alexandria they said: "Where will we settle down?" They said: "At the tent (fustat)" because of the tent of 'Amr which they left behind... [1:296]
From those humble beginnings sprang a great city..
Reading ruins is a skill that I have never mastered. I find it difficult to look at the outlines on the ground.. the ruts that must mark where water flowed.. and to imagine a living world. I always wish I could do a little better.
Of course at times it is fairly obvious what was once here.. In this case there is a grinding stone.. or millstone? Definitely a sign that business was going on.
My favorite moment came when I climbed up onto a small terrace and came across a couple of rooms with the remains of a beautiful floor. It would have been expensive then.. even as now. It could well have been the home of a merchant.. or a judge.. undoutedly with a family. But whatever dramas took place on this floor are now gone forever. Archeology never quite gets you to words, and words are the only way to preserve these human events that give meaning to life.
The First Mosque in Cairo:
The Mosque of 'Amr Ibn al-'Aas (641-2 AD)
June 17, 2006
The excitement of visiting this mosque lies in the knowledge that this was the place where the Muslim forces set up their capital after the conquest of Egypt. The capital at the time of the conquest was Alexandria, but.. so the story goes.. the Muslims did not want to be separated by a large body of water (the Nile) from the other forces in Arabia, the Levant, and Iraq. This city was named Fustat, or "tent", supposedly after the tent pitched by the commander of the Muslim forces, 'Amr ibn al-'Aas. As was the pattern, this was more of a garrison than anything we would recognize as a city.. but in time it became a vibrant city.. and in time this city would expand to the north and become Cairo.
But as to the actual structure standing in this place.. it is not historically important. Doris Behrens-Abouseif provides an overview:
The mosque of 'Amr in its present form is of no particular interest for the art historian, for its configuration is the result of a series of enlargements, restorations and reconstructions that include only one wall from the medieval period, and even that is not original but a ninth-century addition. For the historian in general and the urban historian in particular, the mosque's importance today is that it indicates where 'Amr's house, built near the original mosque, once stood. [47]
But while that is somewhat depressing to the visitor, the mosque does make for an enjoyable visit. If not for its historical features, then for the fact that it presents a textbook case of a mosque in terms of structure and use.
An enjoyable aspect of the mosque is the informality of the structure. There is nothing to steal.. no expensive silver chalices or ornate pews.. it is just an open space. Often I have stepped into a mosque from a crowded street and immediately felt a sense of calm. Locals obviously appreciate this as well.. men sit reading the Qur'an.. or even sleeping. In a world without parks and public space, the mosque is a welcome relief.
The one essential item in a mosque.. the one thing without which there is no mosque.. is the qiblah informing believers of the direction of prayer. The earliest mosque would have had some kind of simple marker.. Behrens-Abouseif reasons about the original qiblah (based on a note from a medieval Egyptian historian):
The presence of four columns suggests that a flat niche might have existed, composed of two pairs of columns with an arch drawn between them. [47]
The present qiblah is a long ways from that earliest version. Notable about this later one is the mimicry of marble designs through paint. We can note also the names Allah and Muhammad in the circles on the right and left..
Along the ground is this series of repeating prayer carpets.. each helpfully pointing in the direction of the qiblah. These mark out spaces for Muslims as they arrive for prayer.
One other important element of a mosque is the minbar, or pulpit. It is from here that the preacher gives the Friday sermon. The triangular shape is distinctive.. and seen everywhere.. but I cannot say where that comes from. The definition of a Jami', or congregational mosque, is that a Friday sermon is delivered from it.. at one point each city or neighborhood only had one such Jami'.. but I think that has been watered down.
This wooden wall separates the women's area of the mosque from the men's area. The fact that these kinds of walls are always movable.. i.e. not physically built into the mosque itself.. tells me that these kinds of divisions between the sexes do not go that far back in time. I am curious.. I could also be that in the past women generally did not come to mosque in the same numbers? But at any rate it is enough of an issue now to warrant an actual barrier.
Each of those books look different.. but they are all Qur'ans. These are something like a pew Bible in a church. Visitors can feel free to grab a Qur'an and look through it.. read a favorite sura. I have never found a mosque that has an impressive variety of books on display. Qur'ans and commentaries on the Qur'an is about the limit. Even in a mosque where a famous writer/poet has been buried.. one does not see the complete works of that writer, but the same rows of Qur'ans.
The courtyard now follows a familiar design.. a central station for ablutions stands in the middle. The floor is again of marble.. and it is obvious that a lot of money has been spent restoring this first mosque. It is down near Coptic Cairo, where a lot of tourists come to see the Christian sites.. so maybe someone felt that there needed to be a tourist-worthy Islamic site nearby?
The Ulama and the Shape of the City
June 17, 2006
The Ulama, or learned people, are a group that I have always had a hard time getting my head around. Chapter 3 ("The Urban Society") of Ira Lapidus' book Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages has gone a long way toward clearing up the identity of this class of people for me.
First, who were these learned people?
The ulama were that part of the Muslim community learned in the literature, laws, and doctrines of Islam. They were judges, jurists, prayer-leaders, scholars, teachers, readers of the Koran, reciters of traditions, Sufis, functionaries of mosques, and so on. Their essential duty was to preserve the knowledge of the divine will, and to sustain the community as an Islamic community... [107]
Moreover, the ulama were not a distinct class, but a category of persons overlapping other classes and social divisions, permeating the whole of society. [108]
The important point is that they were by no means a single coherent group. One way to define "learned people" in America would be the group of people who have doctoral degrees or who teach in higher education. In medieval Islamic cities there would be some who were "learned" in this kind of official sense.. those who had studied with the best teachers and received diplomas (ijazaat), but these would be joined by a vast group of others who had won a level of community respect by different routes. In this way the ulama are somewhat closer to what people mean when they refer to the "cultural elite" (used in a derogatory sense). I think people imagine a group of people who control culturally important positions.. ranging from journalists to politicians to liberal university professors to pop singers.. all conspiring to uphold a version of the world. The ulama in medieval Islamic societies would be something like that, only without the hostile edge.
Lapidus provides some evidence supporting the idea that this cultural elite was not the butt of medieval talk radio, but actually defended by a substantial portion of the population:
Scattered but numerous episodes in the chronicles reveal the solidarity of the common people with the ulama. Renowned divines inspired deeply felt religious passions in the populace at large, but more to the point, mass demonstrations and fighting on behalf of their sheikhs and qadis exposed the depths of those loyalties. [113]
Earlier in this chapter Lapidus had discussed three other patterns of association in the medieval Islamic city: neighborhoods, trade groups, and fraternal associations. With the exception of neighborhoods (which could be organized according to regional origin, and often functioned in almost a tribal fashion) these cities were empty of public associations. Trade groups did not develop into the guilds one associates with medieval European cities. Nor did alternative fraternal organizations rise to a place of dominance.
It is from the vantage point of this vacuum of civic organization that Lapidus would have us understand the role of the ulama:
Moreover, what organized means there were for handling the community's affairs were informal circles and clienteles, and the schools of law built around the ulama. No special interests within the city were so well organized as to stand apart from these wider relationships or fail to be represented in them. Nor were there special agencies to deal with the affairs of the city as a whole. There were no municipalities, and as we have seen, no regular bureaucracy to deal with city-wide concerns. For these reasons the ulama had a unique social role to play... [114]
I have often wondered why Arabic historical accounts of cities so often take the form of endless brief biographical notices. I recently encountered an historian who wrote that one reason for these biographical collections was the demand of hadith collectors to know the character of those who passed down traditions.. and thus these basic biographies were collected into reference works. Another reason surely must be the basic conception of a city in terms of its ulama. When medieval Arabic historians came to imagine their city, they did so in terms of this web of the cultural elite..
This social structure not only influenced the written versions of medieval Islamic cities, but even their physical structure.. and this is where I found Lapidus particularly insightful:
But in the markets, in the public part of the city, amorphous form resulted from the absorption of physical features by the style of social life. All institutions, shops, mosques, schools, and administrative offices were thoroughly intermingled to accommodate the demand for easy access and constant change of activities, from trade to prayer to teaching and so on. Only in societies where functions and personnel are more clearly separated will there be a consequent differentiation of physical entities to accommodate the separate functions. Cities need boulevards when people must travel a great deal for their affairs. Factories and churches and homes and schools will be apart when life itself is compartmentalized. The Muslim city had the physical form of the bazaar because it was appropriate to the fluid pattern of social interchange and of daily living. [114]
That manages to hit on one of the main themes of this blog, namely, the interconnection between cognitive structures and physical structures. The way we think is the way we live. In this case, the undifferentiated system of social organization.. dominated by the vague class of ulama.. comes to shape the physical pattern of the city.
What does one end up with? A system which collapses many of these functions into a single space. That is exactly what is confusing about walking around and trying to imagine the life of a medieval structure.. First, what was it? It was a mosque, but also a mausoleum.. and a school, and a center for teaching the law.. and it was economically supported by a number of nearby shops whose revenue was dedicated to the mosque. The space becomes intertwined.. but that is because I keep wanting a church to be a church.. a school a school.. a market a market.. but the whole point of this system was that there was no such differentiation. Spaces were as hard to define as the ulama themselves.
Al-Aqmar Mosque (1125 AD)
June 15, 2006
Perhaps the most famous mosque in Cairo is named al-Azhar ("the flourishing"). A second name for the mosque of al-Hakim was "al-Anwar" ("the Illuminated"). Another mosque located on the medieval Qasaba, or main north-south road through Cairo, has a similar epithet: al-Aqmar (the Moonlit). Like those two larger mosques, it was built during the 200 year long Fatimid reign.. during which time Egypt was ruled by a Shi'a dynasty.. hard to imagine given that Egypt is so strongly Sunni in its orientation today. But there can be no doubt about it: it is right there in stone:
In the center of the medallion are the words: "Muhammad and Ali".. a combination that can only come from a Shi'a.. and which is something of a heresy for Sunnis. But there it is on the front of this mosque!
This pairing can be found elsewhere also, like on the unique corner:
On the top right of this niche is a circle that says "Muhammad".. and then to the left of the niche (and impossible to read in this photo) is another circle that reads "Ali." This decorative space is being used to make a theological point.. and that is something which must be regained for the modern visitor, as otherwise the small mosque simply slips in with all the nearby mosques which come from a later period.
The photo of the corner brings up another point about this mosque. Unlike the mosque of Ibn Tulun or the mosque of al-Hakim, this smaller mosque did not have the luxury of a broad empty space. It needed to fit onto the street. In this case we see architects having to settle an important building on a streetscape, and that leads to certain choices.. such as the decoration of the wall that faces the street, but the leaving blank of a wall that would presumably once have had another building next to it. And so in the photo one can see a decorated front wall giving way to a rather plain side wall.
With the mosque of al-Hakim we noticed the highly decorated monumental portal.. but now it is as if the portal has taken over the entire front of the mosque.. something which is possible in the case of a quite small mosque.
The mihrab and the need for it to face Mecca posed another challenge for streetscape architecture. The visitor enters the mosque, but then has to do a quick shift to get orientated in the right way. When seen from above, the small court of the mosque fits ungainly with the angle of the street, giving the building itself an odd shape.
The inside of the mosque is harder to get excited about.. and in fact there is little of historic value inside. The mihrab at the back is (like the one in the mosque of al-Hakim) entirely of white marble.. Some of the history is given by Doris Behrens-Abouseif, who notes that the mosque was already in ruins by the end of the 14th century, and she goes on:
The mosque was again restored in the nineteenth century during the reign of Muhammad 'Ali by Amir Sulayman Agha al-Silahdar, who also built the mosque across the street from al-Aqmar. [74]
That makes sense: if you are building a new mosque you want to make sure that the one next door is not a dump. Real estate brokers would understand. But the result is a rather modern looking interior.
We can end with the view from the roof of al-Aqmar, looking further down the road at the large mosques still to be visited by this blogger.
Private Lives in Cairo:
Domestic Architecture
June 14, 2006
The picture above seems to say something quite important about Egyptian life. Here are four empty benches, right out front of a busy little street. One might expect that these benches would be crowded as people spot a place to relax.. but that is rarely the case. These benches are usually empty. What is more, they are not historical features of the cityscape.. unlike the sabils, or public water dispensers.
My sense is that Cairenes are uneasy with the publicly private world that sitting on a bench entails. The streets are for walking and working.. with cafes for sitting and chatting. But there is no such thing as private space within the public sphere. The emotions and freedom which I feel when I imagine a small green park within a city.. where I can sit and read and watch people.. those emotions are strongly assosciated here with home and its private space.
I should mention that there are benches along the Corniche, as well as a few parks with rows of benches.. but these are overwhelmingly populated by young couples. In other words: people who do not have their own private space and so must meet in special public places. Parks are for courtship, and that is a far cry from the multi-purpose use of public space as we know it in the west.
This brings me to a description of Bayt Suhaymi, which is located right beside these benches. According to our guide, this was the house of a shaykh at al-Azhar (just down the road). Students showed up here for Qur'an readings and the shaykh kept a household numbering 201 people. I tried to get a line on the breakdown of those people (i.e. how many wives, how many children), but failed.
What is immediately striking, walking through this 19th century house, is the complicated separation of public and private. Downstairs is a main entrance that leads to a beautiful room with a marble fountain in the center. Then a little further on is a large room with plenty of chairs.. Perfect for a meeting of important men.
Then there are tight staircases leading from these rooms to the upstairs portions of the house. The second floor consists of a string of rooms connected to each other, but maintaining resolute privacy from the public world downstairs. There are no grand staircases making a display of the transition between a reception room and more private areas of the house.. as we might expect in grand western houses.
My biggest surprise came with our entrance to the truly gorgeous room which was the private residence for the shaykh and his wives. The room was lined with Turkish tiles.. which is definitely the style of decoration I would choose. But again, it seemed strange to reserve such beauty for the absolute most interior room of the house. Few people made it to this place.. I am sure.. Which seems a waste of so much beauty:
The outdoors would of course have been a bit more accessible. The primary focal point of the house was not the narrow street, but the internal courtyard in the center of the house. Toward this peaceful area the large windows faced, lined with wooden lattice work. This focus on an internal court matches what I have seen in both Morocco and Syria.. and so I would call this a characteristic of Middle Eastern living arrangements.
It is striking in the above picture that even though the courtyard is all part of the same house, the upper stories are still equipped with the wooden lattices (mashrabiyyas).. which are easy to look out from, but hard to see into. These lattices work as architectural veils for women who are looking into the public area of the house.. where students or acquaintances could be walking around.
Just as in religious architecture, the lintels of doors tend to be specially decorated. The same kinds of medallions and abstracted designs show up. Above the main reception room a brilliantly painted ceiling hovered over the visitor:
One point about which I am curious is the use of poetry in private settings. Such poetry reminds me of the fragments of Islamic ceramics which feature drinking and general merry-making.. I see those fragments and wonder about their possible setting. But it is the old problem of uneven preservation. Lots of mosques make it to our time.. but very very little in the way of private residences and palaces. By the nature of the case, a family's private domestic world tended not to be preserved.. whereas a mosque quickly acquired public value. But the existence of these private worlds suggests a place for the secular arts. Doris Behrens-Abouseif mentions that inscriptions of poetry can take the place of Quranic inscriptions in these buildings.. which leaves open an interesting approach to Arabic poetry: as an art form which especially found its home in the private setting..
Princess Aziza: Another Egyptian Film
June 12, 2006
We got through another Egyptian film a few nights ago. This was another early one.. from 1960, starring Soad Hosni. The plot involves a teacher who moves into a new apartment, right next to a beautiful girl with a fanatically jealous brother. After trying to steer clear, the teacher strikes up a dangerous relationship.. and then has to convince the bullying brother to let him marry his sister. Even after the marriage, there are still problems, as the brother refuses to relinquish his sister's rightful inheritance.. and she in turn refuses to sleep with her new husband until he stands up to her brother.
The pleasure in this film comes from the cultural details which infuse the film with something like a loving nationalism. There is no attempt to make life seem "American".. there is rather the employment of classical Hollywood techniques to render a world of which Egyptians were quite fond. My favorite scene was the one where the "Chief" (the brother) comes back to his home after time in prison.. and the whole neighborhood is celebrating. It is a vibrant portrait of community in small urban neighborhoods. The ending brings with it a fair amount of cultural shock, as the unassuming teacher has to push around his wife and literally beat up her brother.. and then the rebellious new wife slinks back to the house to be obedient: he has shown he can act like a man. But these are the kinds of cultural details which make the film more interesting to watch than an American Hollywood classic.. there is always a motivation that one did not suspect.
What I find myself wishing for in Egyptian film is a little more artistic ambition.. to cross into some territory that is really challenging. That is, I am asking for the director to step forward as an author. But that may be the secret here: this is a successful national studio system which did not breed Truffaut or Fellini, but which did produce a sizeable wave of triumphantly Egyptian films. The creative spark was kept employed for nationalistic purposes..
Opera House
June 12, 2006
I had a meeting today at the Ministry of Culture.. which is a tall building amidst a group of buildings dedicated to cultural concerns.. The best known may be the modern opera house. There is also a nice view from here over to the Cairo Tower.. a tower for which I have heard scant praise from anyone, but a landmark nevertheless.
Getting It Right:
The Step Pyramid at Saqqara
June 11, 2006
The Step Pyramid at Saqqara, built by King Djoser, was built in the 27th century BC.. which means it is getting up over 4,600 years old. It is the grand-daddy of the pyramids.. which does not mean that it had no precursors, but that it marks the point where tomb construction took a monumental leap upward. Some of the uncertainty involved in that leap are evident in the design of the pyramid itself, which was not executed in a single stroke.. but groped after. You can see it in the stones of the pyramid:
Those are not the monumental rectangular stones of the pyramids at Giza.. these are irregular piled stone-bricks. Right there in the cutout one can see the change of plans.. the incorporation of a lower level in a broader more comprehensive plan. That is exactly the allure of the Step Pyramid: you can see the ancient Egyptians thinking and experimenting. It was no wonder of the world, but it was a precondition for those wonders.
It is not only the above ground stones that carry a sense of drama.. but also the subterranean labyrinth of tunnels.. what were they doing? Unfortunately it is not possible to visit these underground paths. Had I been lucky enough to visit this site in the 19th century, these tunnels would have been the main point of interest. In his Description of Egypt Edward William Lane briefly describes the appearance of the Step Pyramid, but then gets down to business describing in detail what is underground..
What was under there? A sample of what Mark Lehner describes in The Complete Pyramids:
Galleries VI-IX contained a remarkable collection of stone vessels. Stacks of plates and cups—mostly of alabaster but also of other fine stones—added up to a staggering total of around 40,000 vessels. Many bore inscriptions revealing that the majority were not made for Djoser, but probably belonged to his royal ancestors... The Step Pyramid was not only a vocabulary of forms passed on to the future, but also a repository of the past. [90]
That is what we should expect of imaginative leaps forward: they are both summations and beginnings at the same time. That also represents two contrary interpretive tendencies: either to emphasize the past and context so heavily that the forward looking creative impulse is buried.. or to praise a unique accomplishment without reference to its ties to the past. The former is the mistake of scholars, the second that of popularizing journalists.
No one these days seems to mind not going underground.. perhaps because there is now so much to see above ground. This monumental entrance would have taken Lane by complete surprise.. it was nowhere to be seen. This is all reconstruction, and almost from scratch. The French archeologist Jean-Philippe Lauer was the man who dedicated years of his life to fleshing out the vague hints contained in the fragmentary remains, ancient Egyptian representations, and analogies with other early sites.
The goal was not to recreate the site as a whole, but to rebuild significant portions so that the visitor can get a taste for the whole. From the above sample of the inner court, one can imagine the entire wall. You can also see from the shapeless rubble behind the rebuilt wall just how little the excavators had to go on. Just as in the Temple of Hatshepsut at Dayr al-Bahri, this complex is a work of the archeologist's imagination.. which I don't mean in a denigrating way. I feel only respect that someone could take such meager clues and construct something so challenging..
In the middle of that same courtyard are the markers for the heb-sed festival, in which the king in the thirtieth year of his reign would run around these markers.. and be rejuvenated. In the subterranean labyrinth is even a representation of King Djoser making this run. The outer layer of these markers was clearly a modern creation.. and how little was really left is visible in the center of the markers. Without ancient representations, we would have no idea how these markers looked.. or even that we were supposed to be finding anything like markers.
Here again is fairly elaborate reconstruction.. nothing to which the shapeless mounds of rubble could have led anyone. It is the clever application of difficult visual images to rubble on the ground that we have to thank for this clarity..
Not every fragment got the grand treatment.. and one can still glimpse pieces lying on the ground, fenced off.. as if still puzzling, but holding out the hope that someone sometime will know what to do with all these things.
It is nothing short of miraculous how a determined lover of a site can take something fragmentary in the extreme.. an empty desert not worth commenting upon.. and build an order that is so compelling that few visitors even realize the extent to which what they are looking at has been recreated.
The First Religious Literature
June 10, 2006
In our attempt to get to all the pyramids in Egypt (we have a little work to do on this front) today Emily and I got to Saqqara. One of the stops here includes the pyramid of Teti.. The pyramid itself is not too impressive.. by this time the Egyptians had figured out how to do a pyramid on the cheap. You construct it with relatively simple and untroublesome materials (i.e. not large cut-to-fit limestone blocks) and then only use nice limestone to case the outside of the pyramid. So although these pyramids undoubtedly looked wonderful at their inauguration.. they weather badly. The picture below is the mound that remains of Teti's pyramid:
But underground it really is wonderful.. since the Egyptians had also by this time begun to carve what are known as the pyramid texts on the walls of the burials chambers. These texts consist of spells and snatches of what might pass for theology.. an immense intellectual effort heaped upon the acquisition of eternal life for the king. We look at the great pyramids and marvel at the human labor that must have gone into these constructions.. but we should also marvel at these elegant texts, which also reflect untold human labor.. mental labor, that is. In fact, here, for the first time, human beings enunciate in written language the hope for a future life.. not a future life for all human beings.. or even all Egyptians (nothing democratic about this hope!). It may seem strange, but this is where so much that we take for granted about human life (and the afterlife) began..
In the internal chamber there is a basalt sarcophagus.. with its top broken, of course.. marking the place where some ancient robber broke into the tomb. On the ceilings above are white stars on a black background.. and the wall in the rear has pyramid texts on the top, with the palace facade design that graces everything from king's tombs to coffins decorating the bottom half of the wall.
On the way out I also noticed the distinctive pink granite that comes from Aswan far in the south of Egypt.. another reminder of the physical resources and time that went into the construction of even this small-seeming pyramid.
Despite the tendency of some to define ancient Egyptian art and monuments as an expression of "Egyptian" identity and history.. it is much easier for me to see it as an expression of a broadly human identity.
Granted: modern Egyptians are genetically related to the creators of these works. But human beings are created by cultural systems, and if a cultural system changes, the human beings will be different too. To put this another way.. a non-Egyptian boy who was raised from infancy in ancient Egyptian culture would be much more the heir and rightful claimant of ancient Egyptian culture than a modern Egyptian who shares a certain percentage of genetic material with those same ancient Egyptians.
Granted also: these works fall within the borders of the modern nation state of Egypt, and so that state is entitled to their profits. But that is far cry from a right for the state to monopolize these works.. and not as works equally accessible (or equally inaccessible) to human beings in every nation. To walk into the inner chambers of the pyamid of Teti.. and to see the hieroglyphs running up and down the gray walls.. is to contemplate the twisted paths that our mental development has taken.. the weird directions it took to get to what seems perfectly normal to most: human beings will live after death.
If we are lucky we will even be around for the offerings brought to us by the living (the following picture is from a private tomb.. not the pyramid of Teti):
Emily in Saqqara
June 10, 2006
Being a Woman in Cairo
June 10, 2006
It's not a topic I had previously devoted a lot of time thinking about.. but with Emily here it has taken on more urgency. I have been impressed with how comfortable it is to be married here.. it fits in with everyone's expectations and any talk about having children is warmly received. It is hard to imagine a more "pro-family" environment than this one.. nor one more protective of what many Americans hold dear.
But I witnessed the uncomfortable side on the one day that I went on a trip without Emily.. I was in a bookstore and asking an attendant about where volume three of a four volume set could be found.. when a woman, looking about college age, walked into the store. She had no head covering and wore jeans that were tight but would look quite normal anywhere in America. I had only seen her out of the corner of my eye.. and only to note that she was the likely cause of my attendant suddenly deserting me. Eventually the attendant got back to helping me find the missing volume, and as we began again to peruse the shelves, he looked out the large window, and there was this same woman.. standing on the corner with her back to us.. waiting for a car. The attendant looked back at me and stepped back for me to look at the woman.. and informed me that she was 100% Egyptian and asked me whether I liked her.. I did not understand a lot of what he was saying, but it was one of those situations where the content was clear. As she got into a private car, he watched her drive away. There was no disapproval in this attention.. it was all approval.
It seems to me that in the Middle East the onus is on the woman for how she appears. Men will stare and ogle because that is what men do. It is a given. If you are a secular bookstore attendant, you ogle the young Egyptian woman and enjoy it. If you are a conservative Muslim, you blame the woman for making you want to look at her. Either way, life is hard for the young woman.. and no wonder she gets around by private car! I think in America there is a great deal more self-censorship incumbent upon men. Ogling is plain rude.. and if you have a religious problem with the women on the street, then you should get to another street. This self-censorship is the foundation that allows for a good deal of comfort for women. If half the effort that went into covering women went into telling men not to stare.. why, it would be an easier world.
The Mosque of al-Hakim
(990-1003 AD), pt. 1
June 9, 2006
The northern entrance to medieval Cairo was Futuh Gate.. and unlike many of the old gates and much of the wall itself, Futuh Gate survives. If one looks immediately to the left, from the above picture, one sees the following:
The turreted wall in the foreground represents a continuation of the main defensive wall. Behind that rises a minaret that is part of the mosque of al-Hakim, another early mosque. Interestingly, originally the mosque stood just outside the defensive walls, but when those walls were rebuilt at the end of the 11th century, they incorporated the mosque.
Despite the fact that this picture presents an ablution fountain and small structure made from red marble, the original mosque would have featured simply an open courtyard. Also, the floor would not have been polished white marble.. but more likely gravel (all the big marble floors I have seen or read about in mosques, from the Umayyad mosque in Damascus to the Haraam in Mecca to al-Azhar in Cairo, are fairly recent additions).
The important architectural feature to note in the above picture is the slight rise in the center of the wall, which marks a transept leading directly to the qiblah. A small dome is located directly above the qiblah.
The idea of a "transept" was somewhat hard for me to imagine, but it is nothing more than a long hall leading to the qiblah. The hall is also rather ornate, as it features three large chandeliers and marble columns on the side. These are not the original chandeliers, but we know from al-Maqrizi that there were indeed chandeliers in this hall.
The prayer niche, with its marble paneling and gold did not strike me as medieval. Looking back at Doris Behrens-Abouseif's book, I see that she notes: "In the nineteenth century [the mosque] was restored by Shaykh 'Umar Makram, who added a prayer niche inlaid with marble" [65]. I take it that this is what she is referring to.
A number of the original stucco windows survive. I always find these windows beautiful, but they are also not what a westerner expects. When it comes to churches we immediately imagine stained-glass windows.. which feature lots of glass interspersed with thin lead moldings. The windows are also ornate in medieval Islam, but as they use stucco for the grill, they appear quite different.
Along one of the minarets these crenellations can be seen. The rest of the mosque features a quite ordinary looking design running around its top, and no doubt that was a product of later restoration. But these are perhaps a clue to the original appearance of the mosque. (Remember the ornate crenellations for the mosque of Ibn Tulun.)
Here is the meeting place between the new and the old. In the imagination one must continue with the crenellations on the right..
The minarets for this mosque are once again a controversial feature. There are two main minarets, each encased in a turret. It seems that the eccentric al-Hakim decided to hide the two minarets, which had been built by his father, behind castle-like towers. So, believe it or not, inside that square turret lies the original minaret, nicely preserved but invisible. Reasons can only be guessed at, but Jonathan Bloom in an article in Muqarnas ("The Mosque of al-Hakim in Cairo" vol. 1) finds a political motivation:
At the turn of the [11th century] a decline in Egyptian-Meccan relations presumably led al-Hakim to terminate any association that had been established between the new mosque and Mecca or Medina. Rather than simply tearing the minarets down, he made the extraordinary decision to cover them up. That way he could remove their visual reference to Mecca and still retain their practical function as beacons or watchtowers. [28]
This makes more sense when considered alongside Bloom's earlier comment:
Thus at the time of the building of the Hakim mosque, only two, or perhaps three, mosques in the entire Muslim world are known to have had more than one minaret. [22]
In which case this innovation of two minarets would have called to mind the mosque in Mecca or Medina.. which al-Hakim may have had reason to avoid. In any case, we find two beautiful minarets which for almost their entire history have been encased in a stone turret..
Doris Behrens-Abouseif adds to the strangeness when she concludes that the original turrets were much higher and covered the entire minaret, not even, mercifully, letting the tops stand out. And she ventures an interesting idea:
The fact that the original minarets were only hidden, not pulled down, may have been the architect's device to preserve these two masterpieces of stonework, which are unparalleled in Cairo's minaret architecture. [64]
So we wind up with a possible case of preservation.. al-Hakim's intentions are subverted and the minarets are preserved. I don't find this implausible since something similar has gone on in the case of the mosque of ibn Tulun, where the original minaret has been refurbished.. but again not torn down. It seems there is alive in these centuries a sense of historic importance, at least when it comes to monuments of the Islamic history.
Another unusual feature of the mosque is the level of decoration present on the portal, or entranceway. The picture above is a detail of some of that decoration.
In this fuller picture some of the monumentality of the portal is visible. Bloom calls this kind of monumental portal a feature of Fatimid mosque architecture (24). He also quotes Creswell:
Down to the end of the 3rd/9th century... no mosque had a monumental entrance. All mosques, large or small, were entered by simple rectangular doorways in the enclosure walls. [24-5]
Bloom's article is particularly important as it points out that much of what we take for granted in a mosque is actually the result of historical development. What could be more "Islamic" than a minaret? What is unexpected about an ornate portal? Since these things become standard within the tradition, they do not catch the visitor's eye, but to understand the importance of this mosque.. what makes it not just an early mosque, but an important early mosque.. it is necessary to see these features as the innovations they were.
Sawaras Square in Maadi
June 6, 2006
Maadi is a quiet section of Cairo.. although sometimes that is hard to believe. The following video captures the traffic that flows through Sawaras Square, about three blocks from our apartment. This is nothing compared to Tahrir Square in the downtown.. but it also does not count as a quiet slow area.. at least anywhere outside of Cairo.
Emily's New Barbie
June 6, 2006
As soon as Emily read an article about this doll, she wanted one. You will notice that the doll comes with its "abaya" or body cover. This is the "outdoor fashion" for the doll.. or as the Arabic specifies more fully: "her clothes for outside the house." If a young girl is going to imagine her grown-up doll going outside, then she will need to have a covering. Despite the covering, the doll promotes many of the same beauty and body ideals as a Barbie doll.. and the "indoor fashion" is hardly differentiated from wester dress. It seems a case of following western ideals, but putting an Islamic cover on it.
The above picture is of our very own doll.. sitting now on our makeshift book shelf. We can perhaps write it off as a possible first toy for a child?
Life in Baghdad (not Cairo)
June 6, 2006
The sheer number of blogs tends to be what the media finds fascinating.. To me it is more interesting to think about the real generic differences between them. One variety of blog I think of as the "clearinghouse" blog. In these cases there is a personality that acts as a filter for the information out there on the internet. I am a compulsive reader of Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish not because I agree with everything he says, but because I appreciate his humane and open personality.. and for the threads of conversation that he picks up, along with the links to sources I never would have found.
Today Sullivan posted some paragraphs from a blogger in Baghdad.. After all the mounting bad news, this I found more depressing somehow than everything else. It is a snapshot of what the US is up against.. that is, a version of Islam that has gone very wrong. I don't know how it could be put better or more bluntly than this native of Baghdad.. I fear also that these are the forces we have strengthened by our actions..
Reading the Constitution:
The Qur'an
June 5, 2006
As we ride the metro, there seems to generally be a handful of men with a small book open in front of them.. or even holding a laminated small sheet.. these are always Qur'ans. The men read silently or speak the cadences of their book with barely audible voice. Getting used to the presence of the Qur'an, whether as a chanted voice in the elevator or as a prominent presence in bookstores, is one of the requirements of life in the Middle East. In the past I have told people that life in the Middle East is a lot like Bible College.. in terms of the ubiquity of religious practices and the assumption of a set of common values.
This time I have an extra stimulus for noting the setting and use of the Qur'an: I will be teaching a course on it next spring. I am delighted at the opportunity because I love the Qur'an, and consider it a great book.. which also challenges a lot of our ideas about what a "book" is. I also think the class offers a chance for me to get right what has frustrated me in several of my own attempts to get a decent class on the Qur'an..
It was here in Cairo, as part of the year-long CASA program, that I took a class on the Qur'an taught by a learned Egyptian. He was a quiet and decent man, and obviously knew the Qur'an well enough to back up any of his opinions with a quotation.. that is to say, he had a fluent familiarity with the Qur'an that I can never hope to emulate. He was quite clear about our inability to understand the Qur'an: without knowing the interpretations and history of thought concerning the Qur'an it was impossible for us to comment on it.. and so he told us what to think about different issues. He used the metaphor of the American constitution: the Qur'an is the constitution that governs Muslim life. Just as a legal document such as the American constitution must be framed through a tradition of legal opinions, so the Qur'an.
That constitution metaphor stuck with me.. and I let it revolve in my head for a bit. But I don't think that the justices on the American Supreme Court.. or even the aggregate of judges that sit in the higher courts.. hold any monopoly on the Constitution of the United States, nor on a founding document such as the Declaration of Independence. In fact, I can easily imagine a point (at which may be on the verge of arriving) in which the plain words of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights become distorted by the twists of legal thought. Non-legal- scholar-me could stand up and use those plain words as my own. My opinion would not bring about a big change in the way laws are enforced through the land.. but I can still know something about what I am saying.. something more than a judge on the Supreme Court.. and perhaps draw sympathetic voices.
It would sound crazy to my Qur'an teacher.. I am sure.. but I think there is a similar freedom when it comes to the Qur'an. That is to say, it is possible to read those words and grasp them for oneself.. and damn what other people say it has to mean. Which is not to open the gates to saying anything one wants.. but simply to recognize that this is not a closed book that must be approached via centuries of commentary.. or even through the traditions embodied in Hadith. That is my highest hope for a class on the Qur'an: that students, even as they get a sense of its history, would also find a freedom to approach it as a book not just with Islamic concerns.. but with more broadly human concerns. None of this is revolutionary.. it is what we expect when it comes to teaching any classic work, whether the Bible or Shakespeare.. but with the Qur'an it seems much harder to allow this freedom.
Words are strangely powerful.. they have the tendency to evade efforts to contextualize which invariably seek to control their meaning. A society can put an immense effort into controlling a book, and some shop owner or field hand will one day look up and say: but look what it says here in plain language! They may well be wrong.. and perhaps historically those words were used in a very different situation.. perhaps they are even a mistranslation.. but there the words are on the page, and they are suddenly available. I think we could call this the vertical ability of words. And nothing could be more Quranic than to emphasize that vertical ability: think of the verb anzala: revelation descends from above.
Watching Omar Sherif:
A Man in Our House
June 4, 2006
Under Emily's influence I have been a bit more exploratory of late when it comes to contemporary Egyptian things.. and one result has been a viewing of this gem from 1961. Watching it is a bit awkward, however, as it captures Egypt at a point when it is optimistic and proud of its recent past. The central character of the story is Ibrahim Hamdy (Omar Sherif), who is an anti-government insurgent taking part in protests and then assassinating an important official.. the rest of the movie is concerned with his relationship to an ordinary Egyptian family with whom he finds refuge after his escape from custody. Two members of this family, the student Mohie and his cousin Abdel Hamid are arrested (correctly) by the government on suspicion of aiding the fugitive.. and are subjected to some tortures that must have looked harsh, but which look mild compared to the things we have read about in the last few years.
It is an awkward view since items like this run in the papers now:
In one case on May 25, the Associated Press saw more than a dozen plainclothes police grab a protester, Mohammed Sharkawy, 24, as he walked away from a fading demonstration in which he had silently held up a placard saying "I want my rights back."
The police punched and kicked Sharkawy in the street before taking him to a police station. That night Sharkawy was allegedly sexually assaulted in the police station, and another protester, Karim El-Shaer, was assaulted in a second police station, according to a statement made by their lawyer the next day. ["Nazif blames protesters for police violence, saying activists attacked the police", no byline given, in The Daily Star, an insert in the International Herald Tribune]
These demonstrations are in response to the rebellion of members of the Judges Club who are fighting for an independent judiciary. A second awkward piece of news is the hunting of individuals thought to be behind the bombings in Sinai.. the papers a couple of weeks ago featured their faces, some of the pictures obviously taken after they had been roughed up a bit.
The Egyptian government is taking a pretty stern view both of protesters and fugitives connected to violent acts.. Yet this movie is unrelentingly positive about both of these elements. The pre-revolutionary government is portrayed as out of touch with the people.. and certainly uncaring about their rights or the niceties of law.. and that is what legitimizes the actions of a hero such as Ibrahim Hamdy, who leads protests, kills an official, lives as a fugitive, and finally carries out an attack on a military installation.. in which he finally dies.. yet still gains the favor and help of an ordinary Egyptian family. There was so much optimism in the air in Egypt in 1961 that it seemed inconceivable an Egyptian government would do anything similar.. that someone could carry around a placard reading "I want my rights back."
Some Views of Talaat Harb Square
in Downtown Cairo
June 4, 2006
Sole Survivor: The Mosque of
Ibn Tulun, pt. 2
June 3, 2006
Cairo appears to the visitor as a city with a crumbling, but preserved, past. Compared to the state of other great Islamic historic cities.. Baghdad comes to mind.. this is largely true. Cairo is a special place when it comes to the sheer number of monuments from the past that have survived. It is also a city with multiple pasts, as new regimes came and opened up new administrative cities outside the population center.. in the end Cairo simply swallowed all these smaller cities whole. The following passage from al-Maqrizi gives a sense of the original environment for the mosque of Ibn Tulun.. and allows himself to show some nostalgia:
When the ruins took over in the time of the ordeal, he ordered the building of a wall to hide the ruins from the sight of the Caliph, when he went from Cairo to Fustat, what was between [the cities of] 'Askar and Qata'i and the road. He ordered the construction of a wall, the end of which was at the mosque of Ibn Tulun...
In the caliphate of Amr bi-Ahkaam Allah, he ordered his vizier... to delay the coming of al-Ma'mun ibn al-Bataahi. Then over the course of three days it was announced publicly in Cairo and Fustat that whoever had a house or place among the ruins, that he should build it up. Whoever was unable to build it up, he should sell or rent it without transporting anything from the rubble. Whoever delayed after that had no right and no connected income, and abandoned the ability to build on all that with no recourse to any right. The reason for this public announcement was that when the prince of armies Badr al-Jamaali advanced in his utmost Majesty and established his residence in Fustat, the people began to transport what was at 'Askar and Qata'i from the debris of the structures so that ruin came to most of what was there, and what was between Cairo and Fustat in the way of structures became a forlorn ruin. Nothing remained there except some gardens. So when the vizier called for the people to build what remained [from this area] and the debris of 'Askar having been transferred, as has already been seen, this area became vacant (that is, the area running between the shrine of Sayyida Nafisa to the mosque of Ibn Tulun, and from the Qantara al-Sadd and the Majdam Gate in the walls of the Qarafa cemetery).
There does not remain now from 'Askar anything standing except Mount Yeshkur which has on it the mosque of Ibn Tulun and some of what was around it.. Whenever I have passed this vacant area between the mosque of Ibn Tulun and Kawm al-Jaarih where 'Askar was located, I have recalled what was there in the way of exalted residences and great homes.. and mosques and markets and baths and gardens and amazing ponds and the marvelous hospital.. and how it was all destroyed until not a single trace remained from it.
That last paragraph is the "money-quote" where al-Maqrizi's personal feeling for his city comes through.. his sense of loss for the what has passed away. The story as it unfolds in the first two paragraphs is somewhat complicated, but the general idea, I hope, stands out clearly (I cut some names and details in an attempt to bring out the gist): these once important satellite cities gradually became abandoned and eventually had to be more or less condemned because of their unsightly presence.
The sole survivor from that period in Egyptian history is the mosque of Ibn Tulun. So as we stood upon the minaret, looking out upon the rest of Cairo, we were in some ways standing upon an island. It is like a single odd piece the remains from an intricate puzzle that has been erased.. and the single piece that remains worked into a wholly different puzzle. There are many such fragments in Cairo.. pieces caught and suspended in a different environment than anyone at the time could have guessed.
The Mosque of Ibn Tulun
(876-9 AD), pt. 1
June 2, 2006
The Mosque of Sultan Hasan was monumental, but the mosque of Ibn Tulun is simply large. It was built almost 500 years before Sultan Hasan, and there does not appear to have been much worry about space.. no need for the consolidation of independent properties necessary for a later mosque in the heart of the city.
Ibn Tulun is the oldest mosque in Cairo that remains in anything like its original form. But, like ancient Egyptian ruins, this mosque has acquired a complex history. The domed structure in the middle of the mosque, housing the fountain for ablution, is from the late 13th century, the striped masonry giving away its later date.. and resembling nothing else in the mosque.
The minaret is also a problem, as it seems to combine two distinct styles. Its top is distinctively Mamluk and its bottom seems to be early Samarran.. having something of a zigurrat-style.. which would push it back into the 9th century. A fair amount of controversy has accrued to this minaret, the main arguments for which are recounted by Doris Behrens-Abouseif. Her conclusion appears quite reasonable: namely, that this is a composite structure, the original minaret having become dilapidated, it was updated in the 13th century along with many other aspects of the mosque.. and thus it stands as an odd composite structure.
For the visitor, the unique minaret comes to symbolize the sense that Ibn Tulun is different than any other mosque to be encountered