Visits to Monasteries in the Levant - Robert Curzon

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when they are met by these columns of dry, heated sand, which stalk through the deserts like the evil genii of the storm. I have seen them in other countries, more particularly in Armenia; but this, which I saw on my first journey up the Nile, was the only moving pillar which I met with in Egypt or in any of the surrounding deserts. We passed two men fishing from a small triangular raft, composed of palm-branches fastened on the tops of a number of earthen vases. This raft had a remarkably light appearance; it seemed only just to touch the surface of the water, but was evidently badly calculated for such rude encounters as the one which we had lately experienced. Soon afterwards the tops of the great Pyramids of Giseh caught our admiring gaze, and in the morning of the 12th of August we landed at Boulac, from which a ride of half an hour on donkeys brought our party to the hospitable mansion of the Consul-General, who was good enough to receive us in his house until we could procure quarters for ourselves.

      Having arrived at Cairo, a short account of the history of the city may be interesting to some readers. In the sixth and seventh centuries of our era this part of Egypt was inhabited principally by Coptic Christians, whose chief occupation consisted in quarrelling among themselves on polemical points of divinity and ascetic rule. The deserts of Nitria and the shores of the Red Sea were peopled with swarms of monks, some living together in monasteries, some in lavras, or monastic villages, and multitudes hiding their sanctity in dens and caves, where they passed their lives in abstract meditation. In the year 638 the Arabian general Amer ebn el As, with four hundred Arabs (see Wilkinson), advanced to the confines of Egypt, and after thirty days' siege took possession of Pelusium, which had been the barrier of the country on the Syrian side from the earliest periods of the Egyptian monarchy: he advanced without opposition to the city of Babylon, which occupied the site of Masr el Ateekeh, or Old Cairo, on the Nile; but the Roman station, which is now a Coptic monastery, containing a chamber said to have been occupied by the blessed Virgin, was so strong a fortress that the invaders were unable to effect an entrance in a siege of seven months. After this, a reinforcement of four hundred men arriving at their camp, their courage revived, and the castle of Babylon was taken by escalade. On the site of the Arabian encampment at Fostat, Amer founded the first mosque built on Egyptian soil. The town of Babylon was connected with the island of Rhoda by a bridge of boats, by which a communication was kept up with the city of Memphis, on the other side of the Nile. The Copts, whose religious fanaticism occasioned them to hate their masters, the Greeks of the Eastern Empire, more than the Mahomedans, welcomed the moment which promised to free them from their religious adversaries; and the traitor John Mecaukes, governor of Memphis, persuaded them to conclude a treaty with the invaders, by which it was stipulated that two dinars of gold should be paid for every Christian above sixteen years of age, with the exception of old men, women, and monks. From this time Fostat became the Arabian capital of Egypt. In the year 879 Sultan Tayloon, or Tooloon, built himself a palace, to which he added several residences or barracks for his guards, and the great mosque, which still exists, with pointed arches, between Fostat and the present citadel of Cairo. It was not, however, till the year 969 that Goher, the general of El Moez, Sultan of Kairoan, near Tunis, having invaded Egypt, and completely subdued the country, founded a new city near the citadel of Qattaeea, which acquired the name of El Kahira from the following circumstance. The architect having made his arrangements for laying the first stone of the new wall, waited for the fortunate moment, which was to be shown by the astrologers pulling a cord, extending to a considerable distance from the spot. A certain crow, however, who had not been taken into the council of the wise men, perched upon the cord, which was shaken by his weight, and the architect supposing that the appointed signal had been given, commenced his work accordingly. From this unlucky omen, and the vexation felt by those concerned, the epithet of Kahira ("the vexatious" or "unlucky") was added to the name of the city, Masr el Kahira meaning "the unlucky (city of) Egypt." Kahira in the Italian pronunciation has been softened into Cairo, by which name this famous city has been known for many centuries in Europe, though in the East it is usually called Masr only. From this time the Fatemite caliphs of Africa, who brought the bones of their ancestors with them from Kairoan, reigned for ten generations over the land of Egypt. The third in this succession was the Caliph Hakem, who built a mosque near the Bab el Nassr, and who was the founder of the sect of the Druses, and, as some say, of the Assassins. In the year 1171 the famous Saladin usurped the throne from the last of the race of Fatema. His descendant, Moosa el Ashref, was deposed in his turn, in 1250; from which time till the year 1543 Cairo was governed by the curious succession of Mameluke kings, who were mostly Circassian slaves brought up at the court of their predecessors, and arriving at the supreme rule of Egypt by election or intrigue. Toman Bey, the last of the Mameluke kings, was defeated by Selim, Emperor of the Turks, and hanged at Cairo, at the Bab Zooaley. But the aristocracy of the Mamelukes, as it may be called, still remained; and various beys became governors of Egypt under the Turkish sway, till they were all destroyed at one blow by Mohammed Ali Pasha, the now all but independent sovereign of Egypt.

       Table of Contents

      National Topics of Conversation—The Rising of the Nile; evil effects of its rising too high; still worse consequences of a deficiency of its waters—The Nilometer—Universal Alarm in August, 1833—The Nile at length rises to the desired Height—Ceremony of cutting the Embankment—The Canal of the Khalidj—Immense Assemblage of People—The State Tent—Arrival of Habeeb Effendi—Splendid Dresses of the Officers—Exertions of the Arab Workmen—Their Scramble for Paras—Admission of the Water—Its sudden Irruption—Excitement of the Ladies—Picturesque Effect of large Assemblies in the East.

      In England every one talks about the weather, and all conversation is opened by exclamations against the heat or the cold, the rain or the drought; but in Egypt, during one part of the year at least, the rise of the Nile forms the general topic of conversation. Sometimes the ascent of the water is unusually rapid, and then nothing is talked of but inundations; for if the river overflows too much, whole villages are washed away; and as they are for the most part built of sunburned bricks and mud, they are completely annihilated; and when the waters subside, all the boundary marks are obliterated, the course of canals is altered, and mounds and embankments are washed away. On these occasions the smaller landholders have great difficulty in recovering their property; for few of them know how far their fields extend in one direction or the other, unless a tree, a stone, or something else remains to mark the separation of one man's flat piece of mud from that of his neighbour.

      But the more frequent and the far more dreaded calamity is the deficiency of water. This was the case in 1833, and we heard nothing else talked of. "Has it risen much to-day?" inquires one.—"Yes, it has risen half a pic since the morning." "What! no more? In the name of the Prophet! what will become of the cotton?"—"Yes; and the doura will be burnt up to a certainty if we do not get four pics more." In short, the Nile has it all its own way; everything depends on the manner in which it chooses to behave, and El Bahar (the river) is in everybody's mouth from morning till night. Criers go about the city several times a day during the period of the rising, who proclaim the exact height to which the water has arrived, and the precise number of pics which are submerged on the Nilometer.

      This Nilometer is an ancient octagon pillar of red stone in the island of Rhoda, on the sides of which graduated scales are engraved. It stands in the centre of a cistern, about twenty-five feet square, and more than that in depth. A stone staircase leads down to the bottom, and the side walls are ornamented with Cufic inscriptions beautifully cut. Of this antique column I have seen more than most people; for on the 28th of August, 1833, the water was so low that there was the greatest apprehension of a total failure of the crops, and of the consequent famine. At that time nine feet more water was wanted to ensure an average crop; much of the Indian corn had already failed; and from the Pasha in his palace to the poorest fellah in his mud hovel, all were in consternation; for in this country, where it never rains, everything depends on irrigation,—the revenues of the state, the food of the country, and the life or death of the bulk of the population.

      At length the Nile rose to the desired height; and the 6th of September was fixed for the ceremony of cutting the embankment which keeps back the water from entering into the canal of the Khalidj. This canal joins

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