The Mamelukes: a romance of life in Grand Cairo

Front matter

THE MAMELUKES: A ROMANCE OF LIFE IN GRAND CAIRO. VOL. I. THE MAMELUKES: A ROMANCE OF LIFE IN GRAND CAIRO. BY A. A. PATON, AUTHOE OP "THE HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS OF THE ADRIATIC: " SERVIA, THE YOUNGEST MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN family;" and "the modern Syrians." " What we greedily seek for in poems, travels, romances, is the picture of a state of society unlike the regularity of our own." — Guizot. "The guests assembled from different quarters, and following different professions, formed in language, manners, and sentiments a curious con trast to each other, not indifferent to those who desired to possess a knowledge of mankind in its varieties." — Rob Roy. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET 1851. LONDON: Print ed l»y Samuel Uentley ik Co., Bangor House, Shoe Lane. THIS WORK IS DEDICATED TO JOHN WINGFIELD LARKING, Esq. BY HIS SINCERE AND ATTACHED FRIEND, THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

Chapter I. The Plagues Of Egypt

On the afternoon of a day, in the month of September, 1797, a string of camels had just traversed the desert that lies between Egypt and Syria. It was easy to see that both men and animals suffered from an au tumnal hot wind, which, although much less oppressive than those of May, and unattended with the violence and danger of the simoom, had yet penetrated with languor and fatigue every fibre and muscle of the bipeds and qua- B VOL. I. drupeds of the caravan. The steady elasticity of the long-measured step of the camel, showed itself in a slower and more uneasy gait. The passengers and drivers exchanged not a word ; but, Ya, latif! — Oh, gentle ! — or other ejacu lation, was heard from time to time, or a short Arabic couplet, expressive of patience ; the drooping eyelids and feeble enunciation of the reciter, confirming the impression, that lan guage was given to man to disguise his real feelings.

The track the camels followed was still the desert ; wild isolated palms grew here and there, out of a soil that seemed entirely sterile, but denoted latent water. To the right might be seen the first traces of the basin of the Nile, on which the sun shone with a dull, misty, ill-defining radiance ; while the horizon, hazy with the particles of sand or dust floating in the air, showed the cultivable territory, without communicating to the caravan that satisfaction which was their due, in the normal course of nature, on arriving at verdure and vegetation, after traversing the desert. The youthful Khaled, seated on a camel with saddle-bags of hair-cloth, and a carpet under him, wore a kef eh, or silk and cotton small striped shawl, which hung down each temple, while the thick folds of a turban pro tected his head from the sun, should it shine in its lustre.

An over-all of coarse brown cloth, with a single silk and cotton robe below, with pistols in his girdle, and crimson shoes on his feet, completed his equipment. For hours he had leisurely watched the feet of the camel in front of him, as they alternately contracted like a living sponge at the touch of the diver, or set to the ground beautifully ex panded, till they became like the tores at the foot of the shaft of a column. He occasionally moistened his clay with a draught of unrefresh ing water from a gourd, and at length, approaching the alluvial soil, he attempted, with his languid eye, to penetrate the hazy horizon, and perceived, or thought he perceived, on his right hand, the lakes or ponds of the inundation of the Nile, while ahead of him was an irregular line of palm groves, in the midst of B which was a mound or hill, capped with the town.

"Bilbeis," said the camel-man behind him, pointing to the town. " El-hamdulillah ! — praise be to God!" — said the youth. But although, owing to the haze, the distance at which Bilbeis was dis covered, was not great, and it rapidly increased in size, its apparent approximation did not keep pace with the impatience of Khaled. At length the caravan entered between palm trees, growing out of alluvial soil, partly covered with water, when an instantaneous relief was felt from the vegetation, which, by its humidity, tempered the parched air; and, ascending steep mounds, the caravan entered the town ; and, turning to the left, the camels were unloaded for the day, within the wide courtyard of a khan or caravanserai. " At length within the walls of an Egyptian town," said Khaled to himself, as he slipped off his camel on the ground ; and though his head ached, he looked curiously about him, and on his first glance around him, could scarcely fail to remark the contrast between the places of public entertainment in the Syria he had left, and those in Egypt, in which he now arrived for the first time.

Instead of the stone of Lattachia and Tripoli, with somewhat of ornamental sculpture mingling with the solid vaults, he found himself in a quadrangle of sun-dried bricks, without an arcade, and little cells, with mud walls and mud floors, for the use of travellers. In Syria, he left variety and dispersion, many religions, many climates, many local capitals, and many rivers. In Egypt, one river, but, that single river the Nile ; one metropolis, but that one the finest in the Moslem world — the guarded city of Cairo. When a room was secured, Khaled, who had no servant, got a Bedouin to assist him to remove his luggage into it ; and as it had no window, the open door served instead ; and having a severe headache, his carpet and coverlet were spread out, and, laying his pistols and dirk behind his pillow, vvas soon asleep.

The court of the khan was full of hubbub, from the unloading of the caravan, and the Bedouins and passengers were too busy with their own affairs to remark a man who sauntered apparently unconcernedly around the enclosure ; but had he been closely watched (to provide against which contingency he himself had an eye all around, to see that no one occupied himself with him), it would have been seen that he was attentively examining the condition and appearance of the various arriving parties. He was a little man, apparently fifty years of age, with a complexion of a deep bronze. He wore a turban and a blue cotton robe, his legs were bare, and old yellow shoes, without stockings, covered his feet. He seemed, by instinctive quickness, to know instantaneously when his countenance was observed, when it affected a blank indifference ; but when con scious that he was unperceived, his piercing eye showed an alternate inquisitivencss or puzzled pensiveness, that revealed ingenuity on the alert to accomplish a secret purpose.

The various countenances and equipments of the passengers were examined, and at length Khaled seemed to fix his attention, and, cross ing to the other side of the khan, and sitting down at the wall, lighted his pipe, and looking at him under the legs of the camels, seemed to have made up his mind, and waited until he was asleep. He then put into the corner of the room or cell a small sack, which he brought from the side of the gate, and walked into the street towards the bazaar, in the middle of which was a coffee-house, somewhat preserved from the parched suffocating heat, by having poles stretched from house-top to house-top, which were covered over, so as to darken the shops, while the space in front of the coffee-house was from time to time watered, so as to create a slight coolness and humidity.

Benches, covered with mats, had been built on each side of the door facing the street, but from the unpleasant state of the weather, they were devoid of visitors ; and in the deep dark shade of the interior, sat a dervish, with his high conical felt hat, having on the bench beside him a basket of provisions, from which he ate some cheese, with a round flat cake of bread. The man with the green turban entered, and sat himself down on the other side of the pro vision basket, and began to imitate the Dervish, who called for coffee, and making up for him self his own portable hookah, began to converse in a low tone with the wearer of the green turban, so as not to be heard by either the Arnaout, sitting at the door, or by the coftee house-keeper, who, at the other dark corner, was engaged in the manipulation of his goblets and canisters, where the red glare of live charcoal shone in the darkness on his swarthy visage.

" What news, comrade ?" said the Dervish. " Nothing to boast of," answered the man with the green turban, in as low a tone as that in which he was addressed. " Nothing to boast of! One by one I have examined the appear ance of all the travellers by this caravan, and doubt if we shall gain anything to compensate for our trouble in coming hither. There is only one young man, whose equipment does not appear very stylish, but, by a certain melancholy gentility in his countenance, I guess that he is of a good family, and that his capacious saddlebags, at all events, contain rich clothes, but of any mercantile effects, I have great doubts. I am sure that we did wrong to come here." " And I think differently. Are we not known up the river and down the river ? Can we go to Beni Souef without being known in a moment, and the same with other places ?

We have not been here for five years before — the story of the Bagdad Merchant must be for gotten long ago. You were not in that business, and nobody, after so many years, would recognise me under my costume of a dervish. Bilbeis is just as a virgin field for our openn ing. " Virgin as the desert behind it, not worth the opening. A single failure here exposes us to more risk than in Cairo, and not worth the trouble." " Too quick, friend. We know not yet the contents of this man's purse, nor yet of his saddle-bags : a man never crosses the desert from Syria to Egypt without carrying a suffi ciency of money. Besides, we have got a strong B hint from Yousef the Bassass (police-runner), that a liberal snack in the business doing will not save us for the future. And has not Ibrahim Bey threatened the Waly with dis missal, if the police of Cairo be not better attended to ?

But what happens in Bilbeis or elsewhere, does not concern him. So now to business." " What does his age appear to be ?" " Two-andtwenty, and a soft youth I should say. " Have you put my bag into his room, and are all the other rooms filled ?" " They seem to be so, otherwise we should have had no excuse for your sharing his, but I advise you to effect an entrance immediately, for he is now sound asleep, and therefore suits our purpose. How do you mean to operate ?" " How can I tell as yet. We will have no violence on any account, always save and ex cept the danger of being taken. There is time before the starting of the caravan for Cairo to concert measures." " Did you remember to bring the narcotics ?" THE PLAGUES OF EGVPT. 11 " All right ! " said the man in the green turban. " Well then," said the other, " do not leave here, or the bazaar, until you hear from me again, and in the evening I will be enabled to say how we are to proceed." So the Dervish laying down a few parahs on the counter of the coffee-house-keeper, left the place.

Chapter II. The Coffee-house

It was well on in the afternoon when Khaled awoke, his headache was gone, but he was acutely thirsty. The water-gourd was applied to his lips, but immediately dashed away, so distastefully flat and tepid had it become. " Gently there, friend," said a deep bass voice from a person unseen by Khaled as he lay with his face turned to the wall, " we are neither so overstocked with spare room or spare water as you suppose." On this Khaled turned his head briskly, and perceived that he had got a companion, in the costume of a dervish, with a deep copper countenance, who sat cross-legged on a carpet on the other side of the cell, and with his handkerchief was wiping the spilt water from his robe, and was smoking a water-pipe as comfort ably as circumstances would allow, for he had rigged out a couple of coarse towels across the door vvay, which being kept humid, helped to keep out the stifling hot wind.

" Pardon my rudeness," said Khaled, rising, " but I am feverish — this is a land of fire, and I saw not what I did." " You are thirsty ?" said the Dervish, in quiringly. " Like a valley before the autumnal rains," said Khaled. On this, the Dervish took from a corner a cool water-bottle of porous potter's earth, which, by gradually exuding, retains a certain coolness, and handing it to Khaled, he took a long pull at it, and thanking the stranger, sat up. " Has the A sr (hour of afternoon prayer) passed," said Khaled. " We are now within an hour of sunset," said the Dervish ; " but pray excuse my taking half of your room. The khan is crowded, and there was no other place." " You are my father," said Khaled. " Your road, companion ?" said the Dervish ; " but you seem a stranger ; are you for Cairo?"

" By the permission of the High God." " You have come from the other side of the desert — from Acre, I think." " No — from Aleppo," said the youth, with some hesitation, which was remarked by the Dervish, as a scarcely perceptible wink of the left eye showed. " Halebi chelebi, — Aleppine superfine." " And you," said Khaled, " whither are you bound ?" " To the guarded city of Cairo," said the Dervish. " Then we will make the journey together," said the youth. " Welcome to the land of Egypt," said the Dervish. " There is nothing like a little travel for a youth of your age. You recollect the proverb, ' Stagnant water stinks ; and the aloe, a common tree in its own country, is a fraorant perfume in distant lands.1 " " But there are other proverbs," said Khaled ; " ' A malediction on travel if only for a mile, for the bread of a man is in his own land.' " " These might be all webs spun by the same weaver," said the Dervish, " only the first may be a remembrance of the groves of Damascus, or a blessing on Egypt and her Nile.

And the last was, perhaps, a curse on the desert you have crossed in such a land wind as this." " It is possible," said the youth, reflecting as he raised the humid curtain in front of the door, and beckoning the khan-keeper, requested him to get some kebabs from the bazaar ; for, in spite of languor, the long fast had given him an appetite. " Not so fast," said the Dervish, taking a basket from the corner. " I have here two roast chickens, stuffed with rice, white bread, and a cake of honey pastry, that would tempt the palate of a sated vizier. So make yourself welcome in the name of the most merciful God, and keep me company." When the repast was concluded it was sunset ; and both of them, after ablution, said prayers. But something told Khaled that this was a mere form with the Dervish, and he concluded that, like many others of his order, he had little of religion besides the costume ; while the Dervish, from various circumstances of the slightest description, felt certain that Khaled was not a true Moslem.

Prayers ended, the Dervish proposed an ad journment to the bazaar, to drink a cup of coffee, and hear the news, to which Khaled agreed ; and the humid hangings being removed, showed tbe camels all in one corner, with their legs bound, to prevent their rising, and the Bedouins in the middle of the ground, sitting, at some little distance, apparently regardless of the heat of a fire, on which vvas boiling a huge pot of meal-porridge, which one of them was stirring, and preparing for supper. " But we must lock the door," said the Dervish, "for in Egypt we are overrun with thieves, aud we could not put so good a face on such an adventure as Hodja Nusreddin Effendi." " How so ? " said Khaled. " One day he saw thieves coming out of his house with a part of his property, and slily following them, noted the house to which they were carried, so taking the rest of his things to the thief's house, he entered and threw them down."

" ' What means this ?' said the thieves. " ' Have I not removed my quarters hither ? ' said Hodja. ' You carried the first things, aud I carried the last.' " So the thieves, ashamed of themselves, gave him all his property. But those thieves were not Egyptian ; " and, added the Dervish, " if you would find well — be sure you lock well." " I have heard much of the Cairo thieves," said Khaled, " and am desirous to find a khan to alight at, in the first instance, which is quite sure ; can you recommend me such a one ? " " Undoubtedly, at the Kitchen of Black Honey, in the Mergoosh. Here you will be quite safe, for Cairo is a perfect ant-hill of impostors." They now arrived at the coffee-house, at which was seated a more numerous company than in v 18 THE MAMELUKES. the morning, while a public reciter, advanced in years, who had served the bathers all day in the bath, was, with a theatrical intonation, re counting the adventures of Rokn Eddin Daher Bibars, that bold Turk, who, after the fall of the Kurdish dynasty of Saladin, was the terror of both Franks, Crusaders, and those Tartar hordes of Central Asia, that preceded the great invasion of Timour ; and who many a time and oft made the very town of Bilbeis the first stage of his journey to Syria.

The reciter was in the most interesting part ofhis tale, when a man entered the group, and sitting down, said " The Nile is rising ; the marks at the Nilometer show a rise of two draas in four hours, and we previously had a full Nile." No sooner was this said, than the buzz of conversation became general, and the reciter, seeing himself neglected, immediately stopped. " What damage done ? " said several voices. " No one knows. A mountain of corn must have been carried away from somewhere up the river ; and a boatman told Abou Hilwa, that y THE COFFEE-HOUSE. 19 the grain was floating down past Djezireh, like pomegranate soup, and the large mountain of grain at Boulak, belonging to Sheikh Cassim, is sure to be swept away, if the water rises a few inches more." " There is no power but in the high and great God," said several voices.

"Thank God," said the Naib, or Cadi's clerk, an old man, whose left hand was withered and shrunk up ; "a high inundation is not so bad as a low one. I should not relish to eat kebabs made of another man's flesh." " And when was that ? " said a young man. " That was in the year 457 of the Flight ; when the rains failed in Abyssinia, and the loaves of bread were sold by auction, and an egg cost a dinar, and when all the clogs and cats were eaten. Cutlets of human flesh were publicly sold, and passengers in the narrow streets were drawn up by hooks into the windows of houses, and slaughtered and eaten." " For heaven's sake, frighten us no more," said another man, " with your catalogue of horrors. God has been more merciful with our generation. But there is no escape from what is written and predestined.

And such a moment as that is the only one in which one might envy the possession of gold and jewels, which are a useless ornament to the person." " And what can gold and jewels do ? " said the old man, " when people have not bread to eat. In that year, a woman went out with some jewels, crying aloud in the streets, ' Who ever gives me bread, will get these jewels ;' and no one offering, she looked at them, and said, ' You wretched baubles, of what use are you to me, if you cannot assist me in the hour of dire necessity ?' on which she cast them away, and returned sorrowing to her home." This conversation, from the novelty of the circumstances, arrested the attention of Khaled, and he did not observe that the Dervish slipped the key of the room into the hand of the man with the green turban, who sat beside him, who took it to the khan, and lighting a little wax taper, at a miscellaneous grocer's shop he put it into a small paper lantern.

The Bedouins had now disappeared, having gone to encamp outside the wall of the town, but another set of travellers were arriving, so, opening the door of the room of Khaled and the Dervish, he shut it again, and bolted it inside, and laying the lantern on the ground, behind the water-bottle, so as not to attract attention from without, through the chinks of the door, carefully noted the position of the saddle-bags of Khaled, — then lifted them into a corner, — as they were not padlocked in the European way, he began to unlace the thongs, with the rapidity and expertness of one acquainted with his profession. He was somewhat disappointed at finding that they contained nothing but clothes, and necessaries of travel ; so, laying them up again, with the same expertness, and replacing the thongs, he blew out the taper, which he contracted and put in his breast, and, opening the door, locked it again, and rejoined the Dervish at the coffee house where the indefatigable reciter had again beoun to recall the audience from the inundation of the Nile, to the adventures of Bibars.

But I he had a sort of rival in the old man, who continued to dilate on the horrors of the great famine ofthe Fatimite period. " But do you not think," said Khaled, " that ther. have been some exaggerations in these statements ? " ;-: ., ' " None at al}," said the old man, who was ' -the naib or clerk of the Cadi of Bilbeis, and felt, that, as a man of letters and erudition, his read- \ ing was not to be impugned. " Nothing could be more circumstantial," said he, " than the chronicles of the period, and a woman attested by oath her escape from being butchered." During these wonderful stories, but not more wonderful than true, the Dervish was convers ■ ■ V. ing, in a low tone, with the man with the green turban, who had laid the key down beside him, while a man in rags, with a goat-skin of water slung on his neck, was squirting the liquid about, so as to produce a little coolness, for the land wind was still oppressive.

" Come, come, cousin," said the Dervish to Khaled, " we start betimes to avoid the heat of to-morrow, and must get back to our khan, or else we shall be half roasted long before we reach Cairo." " You are the prince of the knowing," said Khaled. " Let us go." So they went back to the khan and arranged their mattresses and coverlets as well as pos sible, the Dervish taking particular notice of. Khaled as he took off his upper clothes. He . . observed that a black leathern purse was taken out of a pocket of his sadereey, or breast robe, I and put under one of his saddle-bags, which served as a pillow. So waiting until he heard . him snore, the Dervish felt for the purse, but after an hour's attempt, perceived that there were no means of removing it. So said he to himself, " Now for an hour or two's sleep, and then, hey ! for to-morrow's ingenuity."

Thus thinking to himself, the Dervish lay down to take a little sleep. The caravan for Cairo started an hour after midnight : the hot wind still painfully oppres sive, but just before daylight a sudden coolness took place, and a slight breeze was felt from the opposite direction, which produced an instantaneous refreshing effect on the nervous system of the young Syrian. " Shimaly !. a north wind," said the Dervish, who was an Egyptian. " Gharby ! a west wind," said Khaled, who was a Syrian. The sea from which the cool wind comes, lying northwards from Egypt, but westwards from Syria. This welcome incident, with the dawn soon afterwards peeping up from behind the low hills to the left, had an instantaneous effect on the spirits and good humour of the whole party. The Bedouin camel-master began to sing in his strange uncouth way.

The Dervish, who had a strong husky voice, and was not musical, grew loquacious ; but eager expectation of entering the Egyptian metropolis absorbed Khaled, and the golden orb of day, no longer dim and undefined, emerging from the crest of hills, shot across the gardens down to the right, and traversing the Nile, bathed the peaks of the pyramids with the ruddy tints of dawn. When within a little more than an hour of Cairo, the landscape partaking of that mixed character which is peculiar to that debatable land, in which the influences of the Nile and its vegetation dispute possession with the desert : they approached the khan of the Emir Yezbek, since dilapidated, which was often the rendez vous of travellers arriving from both Suez and Bilbeis ; westwards, as they drew near, it was seen to adjoin a field fenced with Indian fig, and containing a few palms, whose stunted growth denoted the poverty of the soil, and the insufficiency of the water, except during the period of the inundation.

On the other side of the khan, was the arid plain, which appeared to be the scene of the exercise of a large party of horsemen, and, from time to time, cavaliers seemed as if engaged in a sham fight, their steeds prancing and galloping, their arms gleaming in the sunshine, and an occasional pistol or carbine shot heard amid the confused trampling of hoofs and neighing of the wild stallions, while at a few yards from the khan was a large and showy tent, surmounted by a gilt apex, in which sat two men richly dressed, VOL. I. C reclining on cushions, and smoking long pipes, and attended by a large retinue of servants, who waited all around the tent. The caravan, to steer as clear of the troops as possible, kept close to the fence of Indian fig, and appeared disposed to pass on to Cairo, but the passengers wished to halt for a cup of coffee, and the camels appeared to be very much of the same opinion, for a khan is a khan to a camel and a mule, as well as to the biped traveller; and although the language of animals is still a mystery, there is no mistaking the yes or no of a camel.

The caravan therefore made a halt, and to avoid the confusion, the Dervish took Khaled into one of the cells, no longer used, and in which a part of the wall was already dilapidated ; the greater part of the khan in question having been since used up as materials for a large white villa now seen nearer the Nile. " "We will remain here half an hour," said the Dervish, " which will give you time to see how our Egyptian Mamelukes go through their exercise ; but first let us drink a cup of coffee." " No," said Khaled, « I will go and tell the man to bring it." " It is useless," said the Dervish ; " what with the caravan that we met at the door, besides our own, and all these Mameluke ser vants, the khan is in such a bustle, that we must make it ourselves. Go in the mean time and take a glance at the exercises."

Khaled then looked through the opening in the wall ; he examined with interest and curiosity the scene before him. The horsemen were mostly young men in the vigour of youth, who wore a silk and cotton robe, braced by a girdle ; two upper robes of cloth, and trousers of enormous volume, and on their heads, instead of the crimson fez of modern times, was a high yellow padded kaouk, around which were twisted the ample folds of a white muslin turban. Their horses were rather remarkable for their compact massive barrel, strong short curled neck, and fine head, than for that slender grace and tenuity of limb, which is characteristic of the thorough-bred English race-horse ; and the massive saddle, with its high pommel and c cantel, along with the heavy habiliments and arms of the Mamelukes, almost seemed too great a burden to be borne conveniently, and fitted rather for sudden and violent exertion than for long marches.