Gleanings from Maqrizi I:
The Khanqâh of Khawand Tughay
July 30, 2009
Maqrizi's Khitat is a vast topography of Cairo as it existed in the first half of the 15th century. He proceeds by splitting the city of Cairo into different sorts of buildings and then working through them chronologically. My current work involves translating what Maqrizi has to say about some of these buildings, especially the ones that still survive.. and which I have photos of. As I translate I keep running into interesting things, so I will use these occasional "gleanings from Maqrizi" posts to put a spotlight on something interesting from 15th century Egypt.
This khanqâh (Sufi monastery) is in the northern cemetery. I spent an afternoon aiming to hit the really big royal institutions, but I noticed on the map that this was actually the earliest structure in the cemetery, having been built in 1348 AD. You can see it in the photo below toward the upper left (and behind it you can see the domes for the much larger structures):
The external details of the khanqâh are not faring too well.. but it's still possible to make out design details like this:
Some of the use of different colored stone comes through and the fine carved Arabic script is intact. But from some of the stone filler visible in the opening you might guess that the inside of the khanqâh is more challenged.. and you would be correct:
I couldn't get in there, but there was not going to be much to see on the interior.
What turned out to be most fascinating about this crumbling site is that it was built by a woman, referred to as Umm Anuk (Mother of Anuk) or Khawand Tughay. Maqrizi has this to say about her:
Al-Khawanda the elder, wife of Sultan Malik al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawun and mother of emir Anuk. She had once been among the Sultan’s group of slave girls, but he freed her and then married her... Marvelously lovely and dazzlingly beautiful, she experienced more happiness than any other of the wives of the Turkish kings and enjoyed a life of comforts that came to no other in her position. The Sultan did not continue in his love of any wife except her.
I love especially that last line, with its implication that other wives were discarded, but this beautiful woman hung on to the end. Her husband was the powerful Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad (final reign 1310-41 AD).
As is evident from the way these mosques, madrasas, and khanqahs always carry the name of a founder, these buildings were meant to preserve a name and a reputation. In addition, they were used to pass on wealth. Maqrizi mentions, for example, that this Khawand Tughay arranged for her serving women to have positions at this khanqah.. providing security for them after her death. The inability to pass down wealth in the Mamluk system pushed anyone with money to establish pious foundations (waqfs) that were untouchable by the state, but which could be used to support family or favorites as administrators or in other positions at a structure like this. So the construction of a Khanqah like this was not simply an act of self-presentation for posterity, but also a genuine act of beneficence.. a kind of stone will.
Maqrizi has nothing but good things to say about Khawand Tughay, but it seems that there were stories passed around about the experience of taking her on the hajj:
The judge Karim al-Din al-Kabir made the hajj with her and gave steady attention to her state. He carried greens for her in clay chests mounted on the backs of camels. He brought along milk cows and these accompanied her the length of the road in order to have fresh milk and cheese. For lunch and dinner he fried the cheese for her. How remarkable is this man who established the daily serving of greens and cheese—these two being the lowliest of what is mentioned, so what might follow that?
Maqrizi here, as elsewhere, gives a slight smile in the midst of his quite serious work. He can't quite pass by his mention of this powerful woman without mentioning her extravagant demands on the hajj. She wanted her cheese and greens! ..even on the long desert road to Mecca.
This brings up another interesting point about a structure like this. It is obvious from Maqrizi that these buildings served as something like place markers for personalities. When people talked about the grand structures of Cairo they talked about the eccentric personalities that had them built. Around these buildings stories swirled. The building by building structure of Maqrizi's Khitat allows this to become clear. He takes up a new building and immediately launches into the stories of those who built it or made later endowments for it.
Cavafy's Apartment and Old Alexandria
July 29, 2009
It was curious to find this icon holder in the Alexandria apartment where the Greek poet C.P. Cavafy once lived. But I got it after a little reflection: he's a mixture of the sacred and profane, historical and contemporary. In the Cavafy Museum (located in Cavafy's old apartment) this icon holder hangs directly over the bed.. a bed that surely saw some action. Here is the poem "To Sensual Pleasure":
My life’s joy and incense: recollection of those hours
when I found and captured sensual pleasure as I
wanted it.
My life’s joy and incense: that I refused
all indulgence in routine love affairs.
It's not most people's definition of "purity".. but Cavafy found a certain purity in the absolute sensuality of his loves.
Most of Cavafy's furniture was sold after he died, but there are several pictures of the apartment as he arranged it:
I like the look of this room.. the hint of a messy desk and books. It's funny how the current set-up in the museum looks more expansive:
In one poem the speaker recalls lost pleasure, and walks out onto a balcony to look at the city:
Then, sad, I went out on to the balcony,
went out to change my thoughts at least by seeing
something of this city I love,
a little movement in the street and the shops.
["In the Evening"]
This part of Alexandria where Cavafy once lived is spotted with decrepit buildings that once held an undoubted charm. Central Cairo has similar buildings from its belle epoque. This period of Egyptian history has been overrun by the new Egypt. From Cavafy's old apartment I looked out of his bedroom window to see what view of the city he loved could be had now. A hodge-podge of buildings, with their roof-top satellite dishes was the main view. Then I looked down to the street:
The image is a reminder that Alexandria is the city that has to be perpetually re-imagined. Cavafy labored in his poetry to imagine the glorious Alexandria of the past.. of which almost nothing remained. Then when we come to Alexandria and look for Cavafy's city, we discover that his Alexandria must be imagined as well. And it is not always an easy task. But that is the labor I find most enjoyable.. and for that reason there will be more posts over the next few months on both Cavafy and Alexandria.
A Poet Buried Under Muqattam
July 27, 2009
'Umar ibn al-Farid was a Sufi poet who lived from 1181-1235 AD. He is a master of complex philosophical poetry that takes up themes like wine and love, but points by means of them to the overpowering experience of God. The final lines of his great Wine Ode clearly point to spiritual truth:
For there is no life in this world
for one who lives here sober;
who does not die drunk on it,
prudence has passed him by.
So let him weep for himself,
one who wasted his life
never having won a share
or measure of this wine.
These lines are from the excellent translation of his poetry by Th. Emil Homerin. This book also includes a short life of Ibn al-Farid.. which provides some vivid images of life in Ayyubid Cairo. The life gives a sense of the sacred geography of medieval Cairo. The compiler happens to be ibn al-Farid's grandson, and he cites his father's memory of the account of ibn al-Farid on his own life:
When I first began my spiritual retreat, I would ask my father's permission, and then go up to the Oasis of the Wretches on the second mountain of Cairo's Muqattam range where I stayed, wandering around night and day. [304]
This wandering in the Muqattam range appears to have been habitual for ibn al-Farid, and when his life ended he was buried here at the foot of the Muqattam range. His tomb was refurbished not too many years ago, and it can be visited.
here is the tomb, looking in from the entrance. There is an area for ablutions and then a modest courtyard. Finally one arrives at the small mosque, which has a small dome and under that dome is the shrine for ibn al-Farid. As with many such shrines, the tomb is gated off and the shrine itself covered with silk.
This tomb is surrounded by other tombs.. and it's a cemetery although many people live in here. To get to the tomb I had to walk among many burials:
In that photo you can see the individual tombs and then the small funerary enclosures that line this lane that dead ends in the dry Muqattam range.
From the tomb of ibn al-Farid the visitor looks up at the Muqattam range:
These are the mountains that attracted ibn al-Farid. It's where he searched for spiritual fulfillment. Egypt, of course, has a long tradition of desert spirituality, and in ibn al-Farid we see some of this transferred to Sufi practice. Currently this whole area is so clogged with tombs and enclosures that it would be impossible to wander this range. That spiritual landscape is gone.
One question I had on visiting the tomb of ibn al-Farid is the extent to which people here actively know about him.. and possibly can even recite his poetry. I arrived just before noon prayer, and so I waited outside as lots of local men entered. This is a poor area, and I could see that the building functioned more as a local mosque than as a historic monument for a great poet.
Off to the right you can see the gated area that houses the shrine of ibn al-Farid. The remainder of the building is rather standard as a mosque. There was a bookcase filled with Qurans and images on the wall listing the 99 names of God. All standard stuff. Near the tomb itself there was a prayer to be said by visitors and a framed series of verses by ibn al-Farid:
But no one at the mosque appeared to know much of anything about ibn al-Farid. The imam was basically blind and could only give generalities about the life and poetry of this guy buried in his mosque. I often find it depressing how much of classical Islamic thought is lost among contemporary Muslims.
One oddity in the mosque was a beautiful series of black and white photos of the hajj. The photos were all framed by gold borders of a large wall hanging:
With a closer look I saw that many of these images captured the desert surrounding Mecca:
Out of everything in this mosque, here was one thing ibn al-Farid would certainly have appreciated. He about 15 years in Mecca, and his life makes it sound like he saw Mecca as a more extensive version of the Muqattam range:
Then I began to wander in the valleys and mountains of Mecca, and I used to be on friendly terms with wild animals night and day. [306]
The note about being on friendly terms with wild animals is a common one in lives of saints. Love for the desert and wandering in wastelands appears to have been a marked characteristic of ibn al-Farid. I'm not sure ibn al-Farid would know what to make of modern Cairo or modern Mecca and its streamlined hajj.
The Stable Mean and Poor - Bethlehem
July 24, 2009
The final book of Herman Melville's epic poem Clarel is entitled Bethlehem, and at its center is a guided visit to the Church of the Nativity. The guide who gets to escort this band of doubters and skeptics is a young Franciscan from Tuscany. Mid-way through the visit liberal Dervent whispers:
'Tis doubtless the poor boy's first year
In Bethlehem; time will abate
This novice-ardor; yes, sedate
He'll grow, adapt him to the sphere.
[4.13.179-82]
That expectation of waning ardor is matched by the description of Christianity as a whole in the very next section. Speaking of the decline of the Franciscan order, Rolfe broadens his point:
...If sad perversion came
Unto his order—what of that?
All Christianity shares the same:
Pure things men need adulterate
And so adapt them to the kind.
[4.14.79-82]
Bethlehem is the perfect symbol for this meditation on decline. It is, after all the simple origin of Christianity.. the site where the pure child entered the world. At the same time it is a site encrusted with the history of Christianity. Primal message and historical reality thus seem uniquely at odds here. If you take a minute and watch my slide show of the Church of the Nativity you will get a sense of the heavy layers that have been settled over Bethlehem.
During the fictional tour in Clarel, the Franciscan guide recognizes the conflict that could be felt in all this finery upon the site of the simple story:
..."Though o'er this cave,
Where Christ" (and crossed himself) "had birth,
Constantine's mother reared the Nave
Whose Greek mosaics fade in bloom,
No older church in Christendom;
And generations, with the girth
Of domes and walls, have still enlarged
And built about; yet convents, shrines,
Cloisters and towers, take not for signs,
Entreat ye, of meek faith submerged
Under proud masses. Be it urged
As all began from these small bounds,
So, by all avenues and gates,
all here returns, hereto redounds:
In this one Cave all terminates:
In honor of the Manger sole
Saints, kings, knights, prelates reared the whole."
[4.13.140-158]
On the one hand the guide accurately traces the ancient origin of the church and its continuous additions, on the other he wants to ward off the obvious reading of all this. The Church of the Nativity is not a sign for "meek faith submerged/Under proud masses." Instead he offers a circular metaphor: "all here returns." The faith began from this point and so as Christianity grows every age and its leaders come back to Bethlehem to pay homage.. and that homage takes the form of new constructions. In effect, it is the ever-living power of the simple story of the child that keeps the construction going on. That is far different than seeing the original story as somehow blotted out and forgotten under the later construction.
The Franciscan guide is a foil for Melville's doubters.. a latter day St. Francis of Assisi. At the end of this main section on the Church of the Nativity, hethe guide turns the discussion around and points to their own Christmas celebrations:
"Signori, here, believe,
Where night and day, while ages run,
Faith in these lamps burns on and on,
'Tis good to spend one's Christmas Eve;
Yea, better rather than in land
Which may your holly tree command,
And greens profuse which ye inweave."
[4.13.254-57]
Despite their doubting assumptions about the site of Bethlehem, the guide puts his finger on the hollowness of the placeless and green Christmas that his visitors likely know.
Alexandria from Above and Below
July 22, 2009
One of the opportunities offered by the Internet is to travel to distant places in the imagination. It is an effective tool for this imagined travel because through programs like Google Maps one can get a detailed vertical view of the layout of a city, and at the same time the elements in that view can be seen from the ground as a visitor would experience it. Books of photographs can seem un-anchored, while bare maps feel abstract.. but a combination of these two modes of presenting a place allows for a place to be imagined in great detail.
I noticed recently that the Description de l'Egypte (1809-29) is quite sophisticated in its presentation of places. The 23 volumes taken as a whole are a remarkable textualization of a nation, consisting of plates and written description of its historic, modern, and natural aspects. A macro examination of these volumes would be worthwhile, but for now we can look at how the Description presents Alexandria.
Of great historical importance are the maps published in the Description. In the second volume of plates for the Etat Moderne we find this:
That is an image of about the same patch of land as the image from Google Maps at the top of this post. In 1800, when Napoleon's scholars were making their images, Alexandria was a smallish city with the remains of a wall and various crumbling ruins. There was no corniche, certainly..
This map is followed up by a series of exact—almost photographic—representations of how Alexandria looked on the ground:
This is a quite small image as I reproduce it here, but the original is remarkably full of landscape details and it can be nicely collated with the map. These images from the ground can be thought of as filling in the map. They give body and specificity to the shapes that appear on the map. Between these two elements the reader perusing these volumes could get a very exact notion of what the city of Alexandria was like in 1800.. at least in its physical details.
There is a third element, though, to the presentation of Alexandria in the Description. We could call this the "typical." In other words there are lots of scenes that contain buildings and people which are not remarkable in and of themselves, but which can be thought of as typical of what a visitor sees. The Description expends quite a but of effort to present the "typical".. and does not worry about placing it on the map:
This is one example of houses and window designs from the section of plates of Alexandria. There are also sections of plates entitled "arts et métiers" and "costumes et portraits" that try to capture typical work set-ups and clothing encountered in Egypt.
I'm not aware of any other work that so effectively presents a place. Think of the well known images of Egypt by David Roberts. Those are detailed scenes from Cairo, but after looking through his work one has no idea how all these images relate. Are they from adjacent streets or miles away from each other? Roberts is not interested in communicating a place, he is interested in scenes. The Description in its care to represent a place stumbles into a method for imagined travel.. something that the Internet makes possible for many places all over the world.
End of the World, Lawrence Style
July 20, 2009
The last couple of terms I was an advisor to a student working on a highly personal project. His idea was to capture the life and anxieties of his friends as they were about to graduate from Lawrence University. Since he did his filming in the winter of '09, the project has lasting interest as a view of what life was like as the financial markets tanked.. and it turns out that college seniors, with their perennial concerns about jobs, are a fascinating lens for seeing this period.
What I've always admired about this film is its ability to get inside college life. Listen to the discussions and you will hear students that are serious about their work, but you also see the recreational or quotidian side of college life in a vivid way. The reading from Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death strikes me as particularly important, since it sets up the question: Is modern college life a form of despair? The End of the World does not really answer that.. in fact it skirts the question, giving us enough evidence to answer yes, but then also giving us the emotional insight to hold up our judgment and see something genuine in the students.
The short film is wrapped in nostalgia.. and can at times feel kind of like flipping through someone's yearbook. I kept wondering what tone this reminded me of, and I think it has the tone of Superbad.. although obviously upped from high school to college. But the unabashed respect for guy friendships that is evident throughout the The End of the World matches that of Superbad.. and is quite touching. Where The End of the World differs most strikingly from Superbad is its care to show the real life of students.. not just a made-up Hollywood version of it. These are students whose seriousness we can believe in much more than the characters of Superbad.
The eye for detail (note the care in representing the dorm room and its ephemera) is one that could only be developed through a college (liberal arts?) education. He has studied enough cultures to recognize what is fascinating and unique in his own experience.. and has caught key moments from that experience. If you have ever been curious about contemporary college life, then this two part video is an excellent place to start. This is how students talk and live.
The Library of Alexandria
July 19, 2009
Most takes I have seen on the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt are glowing. The video clip above serves as an example. The Bibliotheca project sounds great in the abstract, but when I actually walk through the library, I feel disappointed. I visited the library six years ago shortly after it was opened, and I was not impressed by the books on the shelf. I went back to the library on this last trip and found that the shelves looked substantially the same. There has been no great improvement in books. Here's an image of some holdings in American literature:
I like the Library of America volumes, but missing is any sense of critical scholarly editions. There's no way a scholar could use this library and be on top of what is happening now in literary criticism and scholarship.
If I were to choose between the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and our library here at Lawrence University, I would in a heartbeat choose our Mudd. It is a much more selective and smart collection of books. That comes with a small caveat, in that the Mudd contains almost no books in Arabic, but even there I have not found the Bibliotheca outstanding.. and I much prefer the library of the American University in Cairo. Somehow the poor quality of the books at the Bibliotheca never enters into the glowing discussions about it.
The building itself is beautiful. I was curious to see how its exterior and interior would hold up to the pounding of Egyptian weather and daily use. But it looks as pristine as ever. The interior is still a marvel of open space:
Its exterior a glorious statement about the importance of writing:
But despite the marvel of the building, one begins to wonder if the whole project is not disastrously ill-conceived. We are living in an age when dreams of a universal library and universal access to knowledge are everywhere.. and the ancient Library of Alexandria often lurks in the background of such discussions as an ideal. But of course these contemporary dreams are latched to the Internet and its possibilities. The presence of rows of computers within the Bibliotheca testifies to the importance of the Internet even here.
So what exactly is the use of this grand space? I couldn't say for sure. One positive defense of the Bibliotheca would revolve around its importance as a symbol in Egypt for scholarship and books. When one considers that it may be local students, often just learning English, who are the main users of the library, then its book selection looks more justifiable. But that is not the kind of talk that turns up on the booster videos and articles.
The library is moving toward being an umbrella institution for numerous web projects. The projects are listed on this web page. It's an impressive group, each making available material that is otherwise unavailable—and related specifically to Egypt. I am hoping to explore some of the material on these sites in future posts, but for now let me just note how the Bibliotheca is most useful when it drops the "universal" ideal and concentrates on making available specifically Egyptian documents. I find that mission slightly at odds with the architecture.. but that's OK.
Seeing Pompey's Pillar
July 16, 2009
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina had a fascinating exhibit called "Impressions of Alexandria." It contained an excellent record of the images that have given visual shape to Alexandria. One monument that comes up more than once is the so-called Pompey's Pillar, the magnificent lone pillar that has nothing to do with Pompey. Since so much of the antiquities of Alexandria is gone, this pillar has had to play a part as a representative of the lost whole. Every traveler has to mention it. At the beginning of her first letter on the subject of her experiences in Egypt, Sophia Lane Poole writes about her view of Alexandria:
The first object which met our view was the Arab Tower, which stands on a little elevation; and shortly after, the new lighthouse on the peninsula of the Pharos, and the Pasha's army of windmills, showed out near approach to Alexandria, and the pillar (commonly called Pompey's) seemed to rise from the bay. [13]
I find it surprising that the pillar could be glimpsed so easily by a new arrival.. since today it is quite invisible. The old images of the pillar likewise emphasize the aloofness of the pillar.. and its position as a far-seen sign for the classical past.
This is quite a different pillar than what the contemporary visitor finds:
The pillar is surrounded on all sides by modern high-rise dwellings.. and not of the luxurious kind. The pillar now stands in a popular Egyptian neighborhood, far from the belle epoque sections of the city. No one in the harbor could possibly see the pillar since it's surrounded by these structures.
The current presentation of the site makes some telling choices. White walls make a strong separation between the Egyptian neighborhood and the archeological site. Once inside, the separation seems especially stark:
The contemporary Egyptian world is seemingly boxed out.. and the visitor is encouraged to walk around within a spotless and whitewashed zone. But this comes at a price. Whereas the pillar once stood as an outward looking symbol of the past, it is now isolated and contained within an inward looking setting. That would be a decent metaphor for the place of the classical past within modern Egypt.
Although Alexandria is the great city of memory, it's now a thoroughly modern Egyptian city. Its cosmopolitan past—from the 1920s—is evident the easy-going manner one encounters on its streets. That cosmopolitan world is gone. A walk along the corniche at night is a brilliant parade of modern Egyptian life and values. From the balcony of my hotel I took a series of photos of the life I saw on the corniche:
That's a world I admire in many ways.. but it's also a long way from the classical past that Pompey's Pillar stands for. If there is any culture that is not "classical" in its ideals, it's the culture of modern Egypt.
The Mulid in Egypt
July 14, 2009
Near the mosque of Sayyida Zaynab I came across a makeshift store that sold videos of celebrations from the major mulids in Egypt. I bought this two CD set of the celebration of the Mulid of Imam al-Husayn in the year 2005. It features a singer—Yassen el-Tohamey—who is extremely popular, judging by the dozens of available videos performances. These videos consist of images of Yassen's emotional singing intercut with images of the dense crowd in attendance. To my disappointment, the 2 CD set that I bought is defective in the audio, so I have posted a brief clip that has the visual only. What you see is Yassen singing and then brief clips of the active crowds:
These kinds of crowd scenes we might expect from the front rows of a rock concert in the United States. That same energy is present in this sacred concert at a religious festival.
In Alexandria I wandered around the Mulid for Sayyid Mursi.. and upon sticking my head into the tent for the Sufi order of the Rifa'is, I was invited to sit and talk with the small group. When it came time for the dhikr I was able to sit right next to them, and they gave me permission to take all the photos I wanted.
This was an informal affair.. and men came and went. This was not a huge mulid, nor was it the climactic night for the week-long festival, it nonetheless gives a sense of the spiritual intensity of the mulid.
What is further odd about the mulid is the association of county fair-like cotton candy and children's rides and the explicitly religious nature of the event. To get the vitality of a mulid you have to imagine a county fair being held around a large Pentecostal Church.. with the decibel level in the evening piercing. The next video clip of children's rides at this same mulid gives a sense of the contrast:
Tanta an Unknown Place
July 13, 2009
The first task for any city in America—no matter how big or small—is to connect itself to the grid of official culture. Even some out of the way rural town will label itself the "garlic capital of the world".. in a bid to get motorists to stop and spend money. Larger cities work hard to attract sports clubs and to build eye-catching museums. These are ways to get a city on the map.. meaning not just on road maps, but somehow in the heads of people from outside the area who might visit or invest. Civic success cannot be differentiated from this process of connection to official culture.
Now think of Tanta in Egypt. Here is a city with about 400,000 people—so about the size of Oakland, Minneapolis, or Colorado Springs. But it's a large city that's innocent of the maneuvers we expect from a large city. It has its popular mosque of Sayyid Badawi (see my slide show above). It has a minor university (see here). But after that one draws a blank as to what there is of importance in Tanta. Here is the entire Wikipedia entry for the city:
Tanta (Arabic: طنطا) is Egypt's 5th largest City, with an estimated 429,000 inhabitants (2008). Tanta is located 94 km (59 miles) north of Cairo and 130 km (81 miles) southeast of Alexandria. it is the capital of the Gharbiya governorate It is a cotton-ginning center and the main railroad hub of the Nile Delta. Tanta is known for its sweets, eaten during the mulid festivals. Biggest and most common streets in Tanta are Al-Bahr algeish street, Al-Galaa Street, Al-Nahaas Street and Saeed Street.
History
Three annual festivals are held in Tanta in honor of Ahmad al-Badawi, a revered Sufi figure of the 13th century, who founded the El-Ahmadiah tariqah and is buried in the main mosque of the city.
That article is hardly overflowing with information. Outside a handful of geographical and economic facts all we really learn is that a well-known mulid or festival is held here. This is centered at the mosque.. which again appears as the only thing notable.
As I searched on the web I found only one other site that had anything to say about Tanta. This is a tourist website, and includes a short and perfunctory description of Tanta. It mentions population and geography, the university, and then concentrates most of its space on the festival at the mosque. Lonely Planet also provides only the barest sketch of Tanta. It does not give the impression of being on anyone's itinerary.
I'm not mentioning any of this to imply that the city is a waste or nothing. I am confident that Tanta is just as interesting as Oakland and Minneapolis, only getting at that interest is difficult for someone from the outside. There must be a rich social world here.. and there must be ties to villages.. and favorite haunts for youth.. and competitions of various kinds. But none of this interest makes it into publications that are linked to official global culture. So this rich experience goes unknown. That experience is taking place but is not recorded in a way that can be accessed by someone from a distance. Tanta, like many large but unknown cities in the Global South, is thus unknowable to a surprising extent.
Someday I would love to come back here and live for a week or two.. and see something of the intricacies of the city. For now I will be happy with a video taken from outside the one site that gets mentioned as interesting: the mosque. I could not video inside (although I did get photos), but I stood outside and captured some of the daily coming and going in front of the mosque:
Popular Egypt at Sayyida Zaynab
July 11, 2009
On one of my last days in Cairo I visited the Mosque of Sayyida Zaynab. I once again had to miss the mulid or festival connected to this mosque.. this time by just two weeks. As I walked outside the mosque I looked for early arrivals, and I saw a tent hung with red banners.. marking it as the tent for a Sufi order. Once those inside saw me taking a picture, they motioned vigorously for me to come over and talk to them. They had me sit down and drink some tea with them.
These are the people in Egypt that I find most fascinating. I have a hard time convincing people of this, but the traditional brand of Islam, which includes devotion to the religious festivals of saints such as Sayyida Zaynab, is friendly and open. I've never had a bad experience among people like this. Traditional Islam is the antithesis of fundamentalism, which is hostile toward the old and popular. Sitting among these guys is always interesting. They pry me with questions and have nothing but excitement when they find that I am interested in mulids and the important shrines of Egypt. When I expressed sorrow that I would not be here for the mulid of Sayyida Zaynab, one guy pulled out this folded flyer:
That is an image of the mosque of Sayyid Mursi in Alexandria. It lies just north of the corniche as it bends toward the Fort of Qaitbey. I opened the flyer and found the following text:
The important thing to note is the date for the mulid of Sayyid Musri. It will last from July 3 to July 9. So if I wanted to see a mulid in the few days before I left Egypt, this would be my chance.
The fact that this man was carrying around with him this announcement for the mulid is worth pondering. This is not an event that has an Internet presence. When I got to Alexandria the English language daily did not list this mulid among other cultural events. It is an event that flies under the official cultural radar. But there is a well developed network of information spread among the attendees of mulids. This network relies on what seem fairly archaic means of communication: physical paper handouts and word of mouth. It's a knowledge that eludes tourists completely.
Once I attended the mulid of Sayyid Mursi, I was looking over some color posters that were offered for sale. The posters were in this layout of merchandise:
Up at the top left of the photo you can see the small posters. There were some obligatory images of Mecca and the prophet's tomb at Medina. But there was also the following image:
I bought this poster but then decided I could not carry it with me back to Cairo.. and so abandoned it in my hotel room in Alexandria. What you see in the image are the shrines for ten important saints in Egypt. These include the shrine of Husayn, the shrine of Sayyida Zaynab, the shrine of Imam Shafi'a.. as well as a few shrines outside Cairo such as that for Sayyid Badawi in Tanta.
As I talked to the men who welcomed me outside Sayyida Zaynab, these were the places that tripped off their tongues. If they were asked to name the important places to visit in Egypt, these would be the places. Most of these shrines are not even in the medieval mosques that are on tourist itineraries.. they are housed mostly in newer mosques, even if the shrines themselves have a much longer history. There is a disconnect between the notions of what is important in Egypt within popular Egypt and that which is heralded for tourists. The Egypt of the tourists is present on the web and in all sorts of official guidebooks, while this popular Egypt is present in ephemeral flyers and images.
I will close with two videos of popular devotion at the shrine of Sayyida Zaynab. Devotion at these shrines is at the heart of popular religious practice in Cairo. It is easy to spend time in Egypt marvelling at very old things, but to understand traditional Islam it's necessary to seek out these more modern shrines.
My Hotel in Tanta
July 9, 2009
Tanta is a large city in the Nile delta. It has about 400,000 inhabitants, yet there is basically nothing to do. The one thing that almost counts as a tourist site is the Sayyid Badawy mosque, which every fall is the site for the largest pilgrimage in Egypt. While the mosque is a popular site, it hardly qualifies as a tourist site.. and the hassle I went through getting permission to take pictures inside indicates discomfort in tourist role). Part of my interest in coming to Tanta and hanging around for a while was to see what I could understand about a large city in which there is little or nothing of interest.
I might as well start with the Hotel Arafa where I stayed. The hotel is the peach colored building on the far right. I was up on the sixth floor and had a fine view overlooking the city. My room at first seemed pretty normal:
The mattresses left something to be desired, but malesh as they say. Let's look a little more closely around the room. First note what is lying folded on the chair:
That is a green prayer rug.. with an image of the kaaba from Mecca appearing on top. That's not exactly standard issue for a hotel room in the US! One question that remains is the direction of prayer. As I looked around I spotted this taped to the mirror:
That says in Arabic: "the direction of the qibla." (The qibla is the direction to Mecca.) So one now has a prayer carpet plus a pointer as to the proper direction for prayer. What else could a guest want?
That is a Qur'an neatly aligned with the corner of the desk. We all know about Gideon's Bible and their place in US hotel rooms (mentioned even in a Beatles song). But it's not at all common to find a Qur'an in a hotel room in Egypt and the Middle East.. at least in the hotels I stay at. So this Qur'an along with the other helps for worship mark the hotel as quite serious about Islam. It's probable that internal Egyptian travel to visit the mosque of Sayyid Badawi is likely the primary source for patrons.. and that would be an unusually religious group.
The wall above the bed had a painting that was bland but curious in its choice of subject.. especially among the religious markers present in the room:
I've stared at that image and tried to figure out where it is set. It seems like a one-storey Swiss Chalet, but then there are cypress trees around it. I sense a real misunderstanding of the role of a driveway evident here. Nobody in Egyptian cities lives in a stand-alone home like this.. and it is also not what one finds in a village. This is truly an imagined place.. with lots of things that don't make sense. It's interesting how a certain ideal of peaceful life finds representation in faux-Western images.
One other element of the Arafa Hotel experience is the elevator ride.. which includes recitation from the Qur'an:
It is too bad I could not stay in Tanta very long. As happens in out of the way places in Egypt, once the security guys figured out a foreigner was in town they were on me like glue. There were in all seriousness a dozen armed men in front of the hotel all night "guarding" me. When I went out at night I had a plainclothes officer trailing me and watching out for me. It all made me uncomfortable and I cut short my trip.. I headed to Alexandria.
I also suspect that this security attention was about discouraging me from looking too closely at Tanta. Different officers kept asking me questions as to why I was there.. and tourism just didn't seem to make sense to them.
Al-Azhar Park
July 5, 2009
The above image from Google Maps encompasses much of historic Cairo. The white square toward the top right is the al-Hakim mosque; the tan square toward the bottom left is the mosque of Ibn Tulun. A large percentage of the historic monuments of Cairo (and all of Egypt) fall somewhere between these two. Notice the pointed slice of green space on the map. This attention to green space seems perfectly natural when compared to overhead images of New York City or London.. but the green space is a newcomer with respect to the historic landscape of Cairo, opening only in 2005. The Islamic city is one of the great triumphs of human social organization, but it was not a system that included what we think of as parks.
I arrived at al-Azhar Park with some skepticism.. and definitely curious as to how a park would function right next to historic Cairo. Would it be used mostly by foreigners? Would it appear an unnatural addition to the urban Cairo landscape? To my surprise I thought it worked very well. The park is in a great position for various views of Cairo, whether looking toward the citadel or back to al-Azhar.
The park provides a really fine vantage point for seeing the scope of historic Cairo. If I were to come to Cairo with a visitor, perhaps this would be the first place I would come.
Then the park appears to be a quite popular spot for Egyptians. I have just a brief video clip of kids playing near the fountain at the entrance.. but I saw lots of similar scenes.
It's difficult to know where these Egyptians are coming from.. but they did not seem to be entirely elite Egyptians. The park is a success for Egyptian families and school kids.
I am all for this success, but it's important to be clear that this is possible because of changes in the way Egyptians experience their urban world. A medieval person would have trouble understanding what is going on at the al-Azhar Park for several reasons: 1) a contemporary park is neutral, non-religious space, and public space in the medieval world was marked by Islam; 2) women and family are set within notionally private space, and a public park implies that the private can take place within the public sphere; 3) the modern park exists outside the financial framework of waqf and patronage that is the foundation for the medieval city.
None of this is to argue that Egyptians should be stuck in the past. The world changes for all of us.. and in the US we are undergoing some pretty significant changes with respect to our views of the public sphere. But coming from a medieval standpoint, the park would just not compute. The interesting thing is that some needs that are met by a modern park were met in other ways in the medieval city. The mosque represents "open" space. If you are looking for places in the medieval city where there was room to breathe and find personal quiet, then it would be to the mosque that you would turn. Even today something of this "open" space is present in traditional mosques, such as the mosque of Sayyida Zaynab in Cairo:
Lots of things that you would do in a park, people do in a mosque (sleep, read, sit quietly with friend and talk). There's something about not having rows of pews that frees up the mosque and lets it have a wider function.
Belly Dancing in Cairo Wedding
July 5, 2009
Early on July 4 I was walking in the area of Bab Zuwayla and spotted a small street set up for a wedding. I inquired about it and learned that at 10 pm the wedding would take place. 10 pm turned out to be wildly optimistic about the start, as when I arrived no one was there. I hung around and after a while a guy in his twenties befriended me. Little by little things got going and finally the little alley became jam-packed with people. As soon as the music began it was no use talking anymore.. it was totally deafening. Then came the belly dancers..
The video clip above is an image of what things looked like when I arrived at 10 pm. The lights were on and flashing, but there was nothing happening yet. People were walking past.. and life was going on as usual. One reason I was excited to witness this wedding was that it was a neighborhood wedding. It wasn't an upper class wedding that takes place in a posh hotel, but one that appeared to include everyone living nearby.
The above video clip is of the craziness that ensues as the belly dancer and singer begin their work. This entertainment was used as a tool to raise money, and you will see an old guy breaking in to make appeals for more 50 or 100 pound bills. I stayed at the wedding until 1 am, and pretty much the whole time was spent getting money from the audience.. which would often be given quite ostentatiously.. with the man coming up to the stage and doing a little dance as he handed over the money. It was a chance to show and affirm social ties.
The belly dancing speaks for itself. One thing to note is that the torso of the dancer is actually a body suit.. a very tight fitting body suit. The main hall of the wedding is filled with men, and lots of young guys come forward with cell phone cameras and other devices to train upon the belly dancer. This is certainly the most exposed flesh that one sees in a public place in Cairo.. and the young guys are interested. It's also slightly uncomfortable since there are almost no women present in this main area (they sit as a group off to the side). So the belly dancer is up there to satisfy male eyes.. and there's no work to appeal to females in the event.
The belly dancer is in a curious position.. and this is nothing new. Lane describes public dancing women who are not bound by the restrictions of good wives and daughters. In Palace Walk Naguib Mahfouz portrays a head of a house, Sayyid Ahmad, who keeps his wife and daughters totally secluded but carries on affairs with public singers. He would never for a moment consider having his sons marry one of these singers, who are not proper women. Nor would he for a moment consider letting one of his daughters enter that profession. These singers are off limits for a proper marriage, yet they are an accepted part of the social landscape.
This belly dancer at the wedding is in a similar situation. My guess is that she is more or less in the position of a prostitute.. and no one at the wedding would let his son marry such a woman. But despite this outsider status, she has a perfectly legitimate and necessary function to play at a wedding. In fact, if there were not women of this position, they would have to be invented because the social custom demands dancers like this. This could possibly be analyzed through the famous angel/whore
dichotomy.. but it's also different. In this case not only are there two types of women, but public and legitimate social gatherings involve both. In Victorian England, the "whore" is a figure, but was, I imagine, excluded from weddings which were the domain of the angel. In contemporary America there is a "whore" aspect to weddings, but those are bachelor parties and notably separate from the weddings proper.
Friday Prayer in Zamalek
July 3, 2009
Friday is the "day of gathering" when Muslims show up at a mosque to hear a sermon and complete the prayers. When people imagine a "mosque" it is generally an ideal imposing structure that they have in mind. But the most common type of mosque is the tiny room on the ground floor of a nondescript building. This is the local mosque that Muslims turn to when it is time for one of the daily prayers.. and it is here they come on Friday as well. On Friday these tiny mosques expand into the alleys and streets nearby. As the time for noon prayer approaches you see people spreading the green prayer mats and carpets, and the extent of these mats marks the notional mosque.. and people take off their shoes before stepping into this zone.
Walking through Cairo at the time of the noon prayer is like walking through a succession of outdoor prayer meetings. Every five minutes or so you notice a small gathering tucked away up some street.
These have always been a part of my understood landscape of Cairo, but today I tried to document a few of these prayer meetings. Two videos, both taken along 26th of July Street running through Zamalek, were particularly successful. When you think of mosques, this is the image that should come to mind. This is the environment in which a large percentage of Cairenes pray to God.. with cars pushing by and pedestrians passing as well. If you add up all these small mosques in Cairo I'm sure the numer would be in the thousands.
Another element of Islam evident from these videos is the male-dominated nature of public worship. Some formal mosques have an area screened off by wooden panels where women can worship, but in these outdoor prayer centers there's no place for women. When the sermon is over and the prayer begins you can see the men forming parallel lines, in which every person is lined up with each other (this process is featured in the second video below). This brotherhood and equality in the worship is one of the glories of Islam, but it has proven difficult to introduce women into this alignment.
Buried in Cairo
July 2, 2009
Walking through one of the many cemeteries to the south and east of Cairo, I came across the above scene. As with the rest of historic Cairo, there's not always too much left from the past.. as everything has been overrun by the demands of the present. But here was an open grave with a cupola over it. It's the sort of thing I remembered seeing in the Description de l'Egypte:
Looking at representations such as this, one gets the idea that there once existed many more of this style of tomb. With their wooden superstructure, they were clearly vulnerable to time and abuse. But I've at least seen one now!
This kind of wooden standing monument should be seen as a poor man's version of the great stone monuments put up by the elite. These were composed entirely of stone, and they are sprinkled throughout the old cemeteries of Cairo:
These stone tombs have some obvious advantages in terms of staying power. They stick around, but the person who is buried within them is apt to be forgotten. There are lots of these stone tombs that have lost any identifying inscriptions. Their interior is filled with smelly trash.. and the ground water is leeching into the lower levels of stone. In other words, if the goal was to make a memorial for a name, then stone did not succeed any more than wood.
One of the sites I was looking for today was the Sultaniyya complex, which is a large Mamluk burial complex (c. 1350 AD):
You can see the two large minarets and then two large domes in the background. Unfortunately the actual building that once connected these individual elements has disappeared and nobody knows for whom this was built. It's something to think about when it comes to building a grand memorial!
These grand mortuary monuments turned out to be a boon for European artists, who loved their dilapidated and mysterious qualities. David Roberts, whose 19th century work on Cairo is pretty much canonical, made the following image of this same complex:
Roberts had the advantage of a lot more open ground than exists now. This view could not be duplicated today. These are the kinds of images for which Cairo is famous. That funeral procession in the middle ground of the painting reminds us that this landscape is culturally generated.. and not here by some accident of Orientalism. Roberts made his trip through Egypt, Nubia, and the Holy Land in 1838-9, and I often suspect that he had Edward William Lane's Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians in front of him because that book works as a key to so many of his details. In this case here is Lane on the funeral procession:
The passage is too lengthy to set here in its entirety (see chapter 15 of Lane's book). But after reading the chapter you know something of the sound of a funeral procession as well as the passages from the Qur'an that are commonly read.
A Place to Whirl Away
July 1, 2009
There had been a lecture earlier in the day, and thus all the chairs in the center area, but try to imagine this as an open circle with a polished wooden dance floor. Within this open area the whirling dervishes once did their circling. This is the institutional/structural framework that supported that well-known spiritual practice. There were some pictures on the wall of latter day whirling:
In this picture you can see the dervishes in the center and then the audience ranged outside the low fence running around the circular dance area. There is also room on the balcony for the audience. In addition, the balcony has a small area for the musicians to sit and an enclosed hareem for women. This set up points to use of the whirling as a public spectacle. There were the practitioners who lived in the takiyya or Sufi monastery, but then their spiritual practice was never private, but a performance. You can imagine the performance as a way to attract monastics and donors.
Up above this whirling was a painted dome. The dome was finished somewhere around 1850. It represents the sun at the apex, which could be taken for a symbol of the oneness and life-giving power of God. In the white area around the sun are what at first seem to be a lot of black specks, but on closer examination these are actually flying birds:
It's quite a lovely image. It's hard not to suspect that the birds are an image of the dervish, utterly dependent on God and expressing their joy in God through flight. This kind of metaphorical play is very much in the style of the Sufi poet Rumi, the originator of the Mevlana order.
A little bit more about the history of this order in Cairo: they arrived with the Turks in the 16th century, and in 1607 they were granted a crumbling Mamluk madrasa. Instead of taking over and
conforming themselves to this previous building, they built around and over it. They in effect colonized the Mamluk structure, although it is still possible to see the older building:
The original minaret and mausoleum are still there, but crowded next to them is this alien structure.. the dance hall. The mausoleum also became the burial place for the leaders of the dervish order. There are various examples of re-use in the history of Cairo. Re-use generally includes expansion and additions to the interior. In some cases a mosque may even take on another name. But this is on another order: The madrasa was built upon, not re-used.
The Sufi order built dormitories for its dervishes. Madrasas and Khanqah's in Cairo had long included rooms for their students or monastics, but this looks quite different to me. Then adjoining these dorm rooms is a garden:
The walk way for this garden looks old, so I assume this is a historic garden.. and it's featured on the historical reconstructions on display. I wish more would be said about the historical nature of a garden site like this. It would hardly have been found in the original Mamluk madrasa, so we can assume that the dervishes have taken over ruined ground and dedicated it to green space. That in itself is pretty interesting and worth examination.
I've spent the past couple of days wandering around Cairo looking at and photographing minor mosques. At some point I started to feel punch drunk, and I duly recognize the elements of medieval mosque design. But this Sufi takiyya was different. Its spiritual practices demanded a new type of space.. and it supported a lifestyle that differed in important ways from the Sufi lifestyle already present in Cairo. It's clear.. although I can't explain it entirely.. that new concepts and practices gave rise to unique structural forms. It was also a reminder of why its fun to wander in medieval Cairo.
