MOSQUE EL TŪLOON.

175 style in England. They have a very slight tendency to a return at the spring of the arch, but cannot be said to approach the true horseshoe form." The effect of the long colonnades with the delicate friezed arches is unapproachable in any other building, and only partly destroyed by the senseless closing of some with masonry to form stores and receptacles for rubbish. Not long ago the magnificent courtyard was a sort of asylum for the lame, diseased, and half-witted beggars of Cairo; but happily they have been removed; and if nothing has been done to restore its splendour, we are at least allowed to contemplate it in befitting silence. Ludicrous traditions must, of course, attach

to every spot in Egypt. Here, say some, Moses conversed with the Almighty; Abraham sacrificed the ram; and Noah descended from the Ark. Of the other wonders of the Tüloonide dynasty nothing remains, and the reports of some of them, including the leather bed floating on the lake of quicksilver, we may relegate to the domains of fiction. Tuloon's successors were unable to maintain their power, and after forty years the Abbasy Khalifs recovered their authority, to lose it again in thirty years to Mohammed el Ikshid, who, thirty years later, was unable to resist the Fatimy Khalif el Múizz from Tunis. Hitherto Egypt,

though to some extent independent, had yet nominally recognised the authority of the Khalifs of Damascus or of Bagdad, towards whom their position was much that of the Egypt of to-day to the Sultan, but now (969 A.D.) for the first time Egypt became the seat of the Khalifate. Gauhar, general of El Muizz, built a palace for his master, which he styled El Kahira (the Victorious), and from this, after the burning of Fostat, developed the city of Cairo. To Gauhar

Mosque el Azhar.

also we owe the Mosque el Azhar (the Most Splendid), but of the original building little is left; for, injured by the earthquake of 1302, it has been three times restored, nor has the result left any architectural beauty. But El Azhar is to-day worth a visit as the university of Islam. Here, seated in little groups, may be seen hundreds of students imbibing as much useless information as is consistent with systematic idleness. If the learning by rote of passages of the Koran and of the traditions, if the committing to memory of abstruse platitudes, and the repeating of sounds conveying no idea to either speaker or listener, be education, then the Mosque el Azhar is doing a great work.

The third of the Fatimy Khalifs in Egypt was El Hakim, an illuminé who founded the sect of the Druses, and whose followers still believe that he will reappear as the Mahdi or last prophet. He has left behind him the mosque called after his name, built, but much less carefully and artistically, in imitation of the Mosque el Tuloon. Little remains but the walls and two picturesque mabkharehs which dominate Cairo, and one of which was fortified by the French during their occupation of Egypt. In a corner of the large court is now

SALADIN.

177 the Arab museum, full of lovely lamps, wooden mushrebeeyah work, and other remains of Saracenic art, mainly of the Mamluk period.

The Fatemites held their own for two hundred years, until 1171, but the rivalry of jealous Viziers, and the ever readiness of the Egyptians to call in a new conqueror against the old, proved fatal to them. Then came the great Salah ed din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (better known to us as Saladin), as general to the Sultan of Damascus, to restore order. The brilliant and talented adventurer soon succeeded in getting rid of the last of the Fatimy Khalifs and establishing the Ayoubite dynasty, recognising once more the authority of the Khalifs of Bagdad.

The eighty years which elapsed before the authority of his descendants fell before the power of the Mamluks are celebrated not only in the history of Egypt, but in that of the world. If the Fatemites "had changed Egypt from a province to a kingdom, Saladin transformed the kingdom into an empire. The long struggles with the Crusaders, the victory of Tiberias, the conquest of Jerusalem, the well-known treaty with Cœur de Lion, though most familiar to us, form but a part of Saladin's exploits. He made his power felt far beyond the borders of Palestine; his arms triumphed over hosts of valiant princes to the banks of the Tigris; and when he died in 1193 at the early age of fifty-seven, he left to his sons and kinsmen not only the example of the most chivalrous, honourable, and magnanimous of kings, but substantial legacies of rich provinces, extending from Aleppo and Mesopotamia to Arabia and the country of the Blacks."

Little remains in Egypt to recall the great empire of the Ayubis besides the Citadel and the third wall of Cairo; of the mosque and palaces in the former no trace remains but the walls and part of the interior, as well as probably the deep well with its massive masonry, are Saladin's work-as also the interior of the tomb-mosque of Esh Shafiy. One other memorial of a different sort remains. The "most chivalrous, honourable, and magnanimous of kings" was touched by the petition of the Pisans trading to Alexandria, who complained that they were unable to leave the port without suffering grievous exactions at the hands of his officials, and Saladin granted in pity to the "suppliants at his stirrup" their request, that they should be made to pay nothing but their exact dues, and should decide among themselves without interference their own quarrels. From this first act of generosity, as it was then, of tolerant justice, as we should call it now, has arisen the intolerable injustice which, under the name of Capitulations, forbids the Moslem successors of Saladin to tax or to have jurisdiction over the Christian descendants of "the suppliants at his stirrup."

The Mamluks (Mamluk = owned) were white slaves, imported first by the