Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/794

770 EGYPT [CAIHO, tion.) Sir Gardner Wilkinson, in his Modern Egypt and Thebes (i. 256), published in 1843, gives the population at about 200,000 ; and Mrs Poole, writing in 1842, estimates it at about 240,000 (Englishwoman in y>/pf, i. 136); but Clot-Bey (Aperqit, General, i. 204), whose work appeared in 1840, states the much higher amount of about 300,000 souls. The census of 1847-8 states the more moderate number of 253,541 inhabitants, and in this instance it is not likely to have been far wrong. We may fairly suppose that during the time of comparative prosperity that followed the great plague of 1835, the population gradually increased to about 250,000, and that the cholera in 1848, and the conscriptions occasioned by the Crimean War, somewhat diminished its amount, which in the subsequent time of peace rose to the present sum of about 350,000. Of the population of 240,000, in Mr Lane s estimate, about 190,000 were Muslim Egyptians, about 10,000 Copts, 3000 or 4000 Jews, and the rest, strangers from various countries. The adult male population was about one-third of the whole, or 80,000 persons, of whom 30,000 were merchants, petty shopkeepers, and artisans, 20,000 domestic Bsrvants, and 15,000 common labourers, porters, &c.; the remainder chiefly consisting of military and civil servants of the Government. (Modern Egyptians, I. c.) Cairo is still the most remarkable and characteristic of Arab cities. The beauty of its religious and domestic architecture, before the recent innovations, is unexcelled elsewhere. The edifices raised by the Moorish kings of Spain and the Muslim rulers of India may have been more splendid in their materials, and more elaborate in their details ; the houses of the great men of Damascus may be more costly than were those of the Memlook beys ; but for purity of taste and elegance of design both are far excelled by many of the mosques and houses of Cairo. These mosques have suffered much in the beauty of their appearance from the effects of time and neglect ; but their colour has been often thus softened, and their outlines rendered the more picturesque. What is most to be admired in their style of architecture is its extraordinary freedom from restraint, shown in the wonderful variety of its forms, and the skill in design which has made the most intricate details to harmonize with grand outlines. Here the student may best learn the history of Arab art. Like its contemporary Gothic, it has three great periods, those of growth, maturity, and decline. Of the first, the mosque of Ahmad Ibn-Tooloon in the southern part of Cairo, and the three great gates of El-Kahireh (the old city), the Bab- en-Nasr, Bab-el-Futooh, and Bab-Zuweyleh, are splendid examples. The leading forms are simple and massive, with in the mosque horse-shoe arches. The decoration is in friezes, and its details of conventionalized foliage. The second period passes from the highest point to which this art attained to a luxuriance promising decay. The mosque of Sultan Hasan, below the Citadel, those of Mueiyad and Kala-oon, with the Barkookeyeh, in the main street of the old city, and the mosque of Barkook in the Cemetery of Kait Bey, are instances of the earlier and best style of this period. The forms, though still massive, are less simple, and they are admirably adapted to the necessities of space. The decoration is in conventionalized foliage of the most free forms, balanced by exquisite geometrical patterns. Of the last style of this period, the Ghooreeyeh, in the main street of the old city, and the mosque of Kait Bey in his cemetery, are beautiful specimens. They show an elongation of forms and an excess of decoration in which the florid qualities predominate. Of the age of decline the finest monument is the mosque of Mohammad Bey Aboo- Dahab, in the old city. The forms are now poor, though not lacking in grandeur, and the details are not as well adjusted as before, with a want of mastery of the most suitable decoration. The usual plan of a congregational mosque is a large, square, open court, surrounded by colonnades, of which the chief, often with more rows of columns, faces Mecca (eastward), and has inside its outer wall a decorated niche to mark the direction of prayer. In the centre is a fountain for ablutions, often surmounted by a dome, and in the eastern colonnade a pulpit and a desk for readers. When a mosque is also the founder s tomb, it has a richly ornamented sepulchral chamber. Of domestic architecture there are a few precious fragments before the age of decline ; but most specimens are of the latest period of that age. These are marked by a singular fitness and great elegance in the interiors. The decoration, though inferior to that of the mosques of the best style, is charming for variety and beauty of pattern. See CAIRO, and also ARCHITECTURE, vol. ii. pp. 445-44. To the east of Cairo is a bold spur of the mountains known as El-Gebel El-Mukattam. Beneath it, and to the north of the Citadel, is the Cemetery of Kait Bey, remark able for the splendid tombs of the Memlook sultans. The most beautiful of these is that of Kait Bey, from which the cemetery takes its name, but those of the sultan Barkook and of El-Ghooree must not be passed by unmentioned. At a little distance to the north-east is the Gebel-el-Ahmar, or " lied Mountain, 1 and southward of this, petrified wood in large quantities is seen strewn on the surface of the desert. The space between Cairo and the Nile, varying from a mile to a mile and a half in breadth, is occupied by plantations which were made by Ibrahim Pasha during his father s rule. Formerly this side of the city was, as thd other three are still partially, bounded by lofty mounds of rubbish ; these he caused to be removed, and by doing so conferred a great benefit upon the inhabitants, as well as by planting with trees the intervening space. By irrigating this tract very freely with a steam-engine he considerably lessened the good he had effected, rendering the western part of the city somewhat damp. To the south of Cairo is a great cemetery containing the tomb of the Imdm Esh-Slidfe ee, and also an aqueduct, built by the sultan El-Ghooree, which conducts water from the Nile to the Citadel; and further south, the Roman fortress of Egyptian Babylon, now called Kasr-esh-Shema, at present chiefly occupied by a Coptic convent, as well as the small town of Masr El- Ateekah, which is all that remains of the famous metropolis El-Fustat. It contains no remarkable edifices : in its immediate neighbourhood, however, is the oldest mosque in Egypt, that of Amr, the Muslim conqueror, but it has been so frequently repaired and almost rebuilt that it is impossible to form any idea of its original appearance. Opposite to Masr El- Ateekah, from which it is separated by a very narrow branch of the Nile, is the island of Er- R6dah, containing the famous Mikyas, or Nilometer. The chief place on the western bank near Cairo is the small town of El-Geezeh, opposite Masr El- Ateekah. El- Geezeh is best known as having given its name to the most famous group of Pyramids, the chief monuments of Mem phis, which stand on the slightly elevated border of the low Libyan range, not more than a quarter of a mile oeyond the limit of the cultivated land. The city of Memphis, MEN-NOFER, " the good sta tion," stood on the western bank of the Nile about ten miles above Cairo. It was founded by Menes, the first king of Egypt. The kings and people who dwelt there chose the nearest part of the desert as their burial-place, and built tombs on its rocky edge, or excavated them in its sides. The kings raised pyramids around which their subjects were buried in comparatively small sepulchres. The pyramids were grouped together, and often there is a long distance from one group to another. Although many pyramids have

been nearly or wholly destroyed, yet, as the largest undoubt-