Present-day Egypt

Front matter

FREDERIC

COURTLAND

PENFIELD m

Preface to Revised Edition

I STOOD once before a window in Venice wherein an artisan was at work. Arranged before him were smalts and innumerable bits of glass of every hue, some brilliant, many dull, and none suggestive of value or purpose. Apparently following no definite design, the workman seemed to draw mechanically upon the materials at his command, choosing alike from the dull and bright pieces, until it could be seen that the object on which he had been employed, now completed, was a mosaic of attractive pattern— not a masterpiece in any sense, but perfect enough to find a purchaser from among the group of onlookers.

In fashioning this mosaic volume of information concerning the reawakened Nile country, I may have drawn too generously upon the supply of lusterless material, and dulled naturally brilliant atoms by misplacing them in the pattern. The finished article, I am conscious, is far from a masterpiece, but may be attractive enough to satisfy the inquiring reader interested to learn about the atoms making up the Egypt of to-day.

"Present-Day Egypt" is prepared neither for the Egyptologist, antiquarian, nor historian : these

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Preface

are favored already with a bibliography straining the shelves of every library. Aiming at being a discursive budget of information and comment, — social, political, economic, and administrative,— the volume presents a series of faithful pictures of the Egypt that is interesting to the winter visitor, health-seeker, and general reader, desirous of learning something, and not too much, of contemporary conditions in the oldest country in the world. " Present-Day Egypt " is written in no partial or partizan spirit, and advances no theory of the purpose of the Pyramids, nor attempts to explain the riddle of the Sphinx.

The work has passed through enough editions, in America and in England, to prove that a demand existed for a book on modern Egypt whose purpose was informing— a volume by a layman for lay readers. To this end the present edition has been generously amplified, and brought up to date with sufficient fidelity to record events occurring but a few weeks prior to its going to press.

Feedeeic C. Penfield.

Authors Club, New York City, September 18, 1903.

Authok's Note. — The poem, " The Rose of Fayum," is incorporated in this volume through the courtesy of Professor Clinton ScoUard, and of Messrs. Copeland & Day, publishers, Boston. A considerable portion of Chapter V appeared in the "North American Review "for March, 1903, under the title of " The New Nile Reservoir."

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I IN FASCINATING CAIRO 1

II IN FASCINATING CAIRO (Continued) 40

Chapter I In Fascinating Caiko

FROM its founding in 969 by the Fatimite califs, as an offshoot of the tented settlement of Fostat, to the present rule of Abbas Pasha, seventh khedive, or viceroy, of the dynasty of Mehemet Ali, Cairo— capital of Egypt, metropolis of the African continent, and chief seat of Mohammedan teaching— has a romantic history. Scene of famous exploits of great personages, from Saladin to Napoleon, of sanguinary conflicts between Christianity and Islamism, and the memorable massacre of the Mamelukes ; cradle of religions and cults ; home of the "Arabian Nights" tales; the place where lasting principles of philosophy and science were conceived, and where Bible scenes were laid, Cairo has become the meeting-ground of winter idlers from every clime.

The visit to Egypt has become almost as essential to Americans— and fully half of the eight thousand winter visitors are from the United States — 1 , as the pilgrimage of good Mohammedans to Mecca. The Mohammedans' religion takes them but once to the sacred city of the prophet, but pleasure draws those favored by fortune to the Nile capital time after time. Cairo is more than interesting: it is fascinating. The antiquarian, the student, and the savant have always been at home there ; and the invalid— real or imaginary— seeking a climate, finds in and about the khedival city the superlative of air and temperature.

Artists never weary of reproducing Cairo's picturesque scenes and vivid colorings. The blue of the skies, the splendor of the setting sun, the Turneresque afterglow, and the delicate browns of the desert, can be best suggested in water-colors, for, like Venice, Egypt demands a master hand in oils.

The traveler of impressionable nature yields to the fascination of Cairo's quaint Eastern life, as perfect as if met far beyond the Orient's threshold, and doubly satisfying, because found within a halfhour of the creature comforts of hotels conspicuously modern. To walk the streets of an Oriental capital wherein history has been made, between meals, as it were, and delve by day in museums and mosques perpetuating a mysterious past, and dine de rigueur in the evening, with the best music of Europe at hand, explains a charm that Cairo has for mortals liking to witness Eastern life provided they are not compelled to become a part of it. If Egypt disappoints, the indecisive idler can in four or five days be back in Paris or on the Riviera.

Every turning in the old quarters of the Mohammedan city has its story. The remnant of a fortified gateway, a dilapidated mosque, a Cufic text, each has its history, perhaps carrying one back to the days when Saladin went forth from El-Kahira to meet Richard and his crusaders on the plain of Acre; or the mind's eye sees the good Harun-al- Rashid, freshly arrived from Bagdad, stealthily pursuing his midnight rambles. A hundred associations such as these are wrapped about the crumbling ruins of medieval Cairo, to this day rich with exquisite achievements of Saracenic art. Huge monuments of the earliest history of the world fringe the horizon as one looks from the ramparts of the citadel, teaching us how the years of Cairo are but as days in the sight of the Sphinx and the Pyramids. To the left is desolate Memphis, earliest city of the world ; face about, and you behold the edge of the land of Groshen ; two or three miles down the Nile, near the Embabeh end of the railway-bridge. Napoleon and his army, just a century ago, won the battle of the Pyramids over the Mameluke horde; and in a modern structure in the near foreground, the Egyptian Museum, rest the bodies of Seti and the great Rameses, while within a few paces of the spot from which you are viewing this matchless panorama sleeps the Roumelian warrior who by daring and bloodshed founded the dynasty now ruling Egypt. All this, and more, may be seen in an hour, if the blare of bugles, reverberated by the Mokattam Hills, does not inform you that the British soldier has decided it is time to close the gates of Saladin's stronghold, and you are awakened to the fact that your table d'hote dinner begins in thirty minutes, and you must array yourself in conventional evening garb before you can partake thereof.

The suburbs have a double charm to students of the Bible. A visit to the Shubra road, the Corso of Cairo until fashion decreed the Grhizereh drive, at sunset, will illustrate the scriptural allusions to the sheep and the goats; and a pleasing picture may there be seen of the shepherd bearing in his arms a lamb or kid too feeble to keep pace with the herd. The scene might have been taken from an engraving in an old Bible. One will not proceed far without seeing devout Moslems engaged in eventide prayer on the housetops. The wine-skin of old was the same as that used now by the watercarrier, seen a hundred times a day in Cairo, enabling one to comprehend the simile of new wine in old bottles. Aged men about the mosques and bazaars are appareled to-day as they were in Abraham's time, carrying the same staves ; and the scribe, with inkhorn and pens of reed in girdle, joins the throng in the Khan Halil to-day, and frowns upon the outcast Jew, as did the Pharisee upon the publican. A few minutes' walk from the hotels brings one face to face with the living Bible ; a few minutes' drive in another direction may bring one face to face with the grotesque characters of a hotel costume ball, with petits chevaux for a diversion between dances. Cairo is paradoxical as well as fascinating.

Walk eastward from your hotel, and in five minutes you are in the medley of East and West. At the post-office observe the mingling of nationalities. A German nurse-maid, leading the little son of a prosperous Frankish merchant, is inquiring for letters at the poste restante window, and a patriarchal sheik in silken caftan and turban is negotiating a money-order to send to some up-Nile village. With a swagger indicating a sense of importance, Tommy Atkins enters, pouch over shoulder, to get the dainty billets-doux for the smart regiment quartered at Abbassieh, and home letters for officers and men. Another window is surrounded by students from El-Azhar. One is expecting his monthly remittance from the family in Tunis, and his ten or twenty comrades take a keen interest in the operation of attaching the Arabic hieroglyphics to the several receipts demanded in case of a money-order or registered letter.

Over the way, ranged along the iron palings of the buildings of the Mixed Court, are the public letter-writers, gravely imperturbable, sitting at umbrella-shaded tables, prepared to write anything for illiterate applicants, in any language, for a piaster or two. One is preparing the soul-impassioned letter of Bianca to her Griovanni, back in Naples or Brindisi, assuring him that she has not ceased to love him, although separated by the turbulent Mediterranean for more than a month. At another table one of the professional scribes is inditing for Youssef Mohammed a bid for clearing a canal at Assiut, for which the government has invited tenders.

The contrasts presented by the people thronging the streets are amusing and bewildering. The European element— Grreek, Italian, and French— is everywhere blended with the Oriental. Egyptian women swing along in blue gowns and black veils hanging loose, allowing the neck and line of cheek to be easily seen, while concealing the only part of the face scrupulously hidden by an Oriental woman — the mouth. Bedouins stalk about with lordly mien, wearing around their turbans the striped hufieh of their desert tribe. Coptic effendis, uncomfortable in the clerical-cut coat signifying governmental employment, scamper along on donkey-back conscious of their own importance, but as obsequious as slaves on encountering a person of higher official station. A clatter of hoofs of a cavalry guard draws every one to window or balcony to see his Highness the Khedive dash past, in open carriage, with aide-de-camp by his side, hurrying in from Koubbeh to conduct the day's affairs of state at Abdin Palace. Running footmen, with bare brown legs and embroidered jackets with flowing sleeves, carrying wands of authority, soon follow, commanding the populace to make way for the carriage of their master, perhaps a pasha making a call of ceremony, or the diplomatic representative of one of the great powers.

In the midst of this moving throng a camel-train comes noiselessly into the foreground, laden with rough building-stones slung in network sacks, contending with English dog-carts and bicycles for right of way. The camels never relax their super-

J < rN,;:ir

PUBLIC LKTTER-WRITER (LETTER PROM BIANCA TO GIOVANNI).

cilious expression, even when nibbling at beflowered Parisian bonnets on the heads of ladies seated in victorias in front of them. This, or a comic-operalike medley fully as novel, may be seen any day from the veranda of Shepheard's or the new Savoy. Equally heterogeneous is the jumble of humanity on tourist-hotel terraces. Princes of ruling European houses rub shoulders in friendly manner with sovereign visitors from the States. The Englishman, who never tires of informing the stranger of the benefits conferred on Egypt by the wholly disinterested British " occupation," is everywhere. Grrand duchesses and society queens share tables with dressmakers from Paris and elsewhere, each sipping afternoon tea, not knowing, perhaps not caring, who or what her vis-a-vis may be. An Omdurman hero, modest and good-looking in civilian dress, is the cynosure for a few minutes of every feminine eye, and the recipient of courtly consideration from "Baehler," "Luigi," or "Greorge," — the managerial triumvirate of Cairo's hotels,— as the case may be. The Egyptologist, with long hair, excavating at Thebes or Sakkarah, with half the alphabet appended to his name, or the irrigation expert, rescuing from the desert a province of tillable soil, is eclipsed by the Mahdi's escaped prisoner. However, the inclination of this teadrinking, gossiping— perhaps flirting— crowd is to forget cares and responsibilities, breathe the heavenly air, and watch indifferently the kaleidoscopic panorama of Egypt passing endlessly in the street. In a land of perpetual sunshine it is wonderful how

1 1 the willingness to do nothing grows on human beings who in other places must be employed to be happy.

An amusing feature of street life is the manner in which the huckstering of fowls is conducted. The fellah woman, paying duty at one of the octroi bureaus, comes into Cairo with a donkey loaded with baskets of hens, ducks, and geese, their heads standing out in every direction as if enjoying their outing. To sell a dozen fowls keeps the woman dickering all day. Her lord and master, maybe, is driving a flock of young turkeys through the crowded streets of the European quarter, singing the praises of his peeping, docile birds in a manner conveying a meaning only to the servant class. With a palm-branch he guides the flock wherever he wishes, keeping the birds clear of the traffic. The man loves to dicker, also, and has no appreciable regard for time. To effect the sale of a turkey requires a vast amount of palaver and much estimating of weight, in which numerous disinterested natives are invited to take part. Milk is sold in a manner too direct to admit of adulteration, for the cow is milked in front of the customer's door ; but skeptical Egyptians hint that the cows are systematically plied with lukewarm water before setting out. A ridiculous custom is to have a small boy accompany the cows, carrying under his arm a stuffed calf, to make them submit willingly to the milking process. Badly moth-eaten, with stuffing of straw protruding from a dozen places, this calf is always in evidence. It is a custom, and in Egypt custorn is unalterable ; and, presumably, cows are not looked upon as possessing sufficient intellect to know a live from a dead calf, or to recognize their own.

Cairo presents tbe best exemplification of the confusion of tongues descending from the building of the tower of Babel that I know. Every language and patois of Europe, every shade of vernacular of Asia and Africa, may there be heard. It is humiliating to us of the Western world, who may have struggled the best part of a lifetime with a single foreign language, to find the Cairene able to speak fluently a dozen. The dragoman or the donkey-boy can exploit his vocation in a wonderful variety of tongues, although possibly unable to read his name in any. Ask your way in the street, and you must not be surprised if the information be given in a sentence made up of words from English, French, and Italian, perhaps with a Greek word thrown in. Polyglot as Cairo is, the medley of coinages is none the less confusing. Send your dragoman to the bazaars in quest of some article, and he ma}'^ return with the astonishing information that it costs " one napoleon, half a sovereign, and eighteen piasters tariff." It calls for pencil, paper, and patience to compute the price of the article you are endeavoring to buy through your polynumismatic servant. And the piaster, the basis of computation, has a confusing value. The piaster " current " of small transactions is but half as much as the piaster "tariff" of high life ; and this latter is only five cents in American money.

Cairenes are ever out of doors. Their religious calendar teems with ceremonious anniversaries, added to which are the numerous fantasias and fete-days required by their devotion to the khedive ; and if things of their own are quiet, there being no wedding to be celebrated, or friend setting out on the pilgrimage to Mecca, or returning from the visit to the prophet's tomb, the native classes go to see the Greeks honor the name-day of their king, or the French colony commemorate the fall of the Bastille. With calendars ranging from the Hejira to the Gregorian, it is indeed an off day when nothing is being celebrated. Cairo has three fixed Sabbaths. Friday is that of the Mohammedan, Saturday of the Jew, and the succeeding day the Sunday of the Christian church. Being lunar, the Mohammedan year is eleven days shorter than our own. This makes it difficult for strangers to know just when a celebration is to occur, for the interesting function that one's friend witnessed in midwinter fifteen years ago, and told you that you must not fail to see, now falls in midsummer.

Every Moslem knows by his almanac when the fasting month of Ramadan should begin; but the crescent moon must first be seen by the imperial astronomer in Constantinople, and the fact be telegraphed to Cairo, before the citadel guns can announce to the Egyptian nation that the celebration of 'the ninth month of their year may officially begin. The streets then become thronged, the story-tellers at the cafes draw large audiences, and thousands of the faithful spend the night in the mosqnes. Ramadan is observed by the masses with fasting by day, for nothing passes their lips ; even the cigarette is eschewed. But the instant the sun disappears below the horizon, feasting begins, and, with smoking and merrymaking, lasts well through the night. The mortality is very great when Ramadan comes in summer.

The occasion of a wedding is a favorite revel. Noisy processions, feasting of friends, and feeding of poor, last nearly a week. The wealthy pasha or bey gives a public character to his nuptials by having a military band and perhaps an escort of soldiers head the cortege bearing the bride to her new home. A bride elect of the middle class is dragged indefinitely about the streets, hidden within a closed carriage by Persian shawls drawn over the windows, and preceded usually by a clattering band producing the most penetrating of music from discordant instruments. A string of camels brings the furniture and gaudily painted boxes to her future husband's house, and for several nights the home of the happy pair is bright with lamps, and gay with thousands of red-andgreen flags stretched across the street. A spectacular procession is that in which the happy woman is carried in a palanquin, borne by two camels, and surrounded by wild-looking fiends of the desert on other camels, who extract an unconscionable amount of noise from kettledrums. This is a survival of the Cairo of old, and if the procession be headed by half -naked mountebanks and swordsmen who frequently engage in mimic combat, and a group of dancing-girls, it attracts great crowds. To the bride, however, crouched for hours within the palanquin, swaying and rocking with the stride of the camels, the ordeal must be as joyless as a crossing of the English Channel in choppy weather to one yielding easily to mal de mer. The poor man feels justified in borrowing at ten, perhaps twenty, per cent, a month, the funds essential to a proper celebration of his marriage, even if it takes years to liberate himself from the toils of the Greek lending him the money.

In the month of Shawal occurs the impressive ceremony of despatching the holy carpet to Mecca, when streets are filled with soldiery, officials of state in gold-embroidered uniforms, and thousands upon thousands of the followers of the prophet. Every true believer, if possible, passes the day in the streets, and women and children appear in gay attire. The ceremonial is held in the great square under the citadel. Khedive and dignitaries are present in state to start formally the caravan bearing the sacred carpet, under military escort, on its journey to Arabia. The Egyptian troops in the capital, with bands playing, accompany the cavalcade to the outskirts of the city. A pyramidal wooden structure, covered with embroidered stuffs emblazoned in gold with quotations from the Koran, perched on the back of a camel of splendid proportions, contains the carpet. People press violently forward to touch the swinging drapery of the camel with their hands, which having done, they kiss with unmistakable fervor; and as the procession

i6

MARRIAGE PROCESSION AND SABER DANCE, CAIRO.

passes through the narrow streets, many women let down from latticed windows shawls or face-veils, to touch with them the sacred object. The pilgrimage takes place annually, and the carpet is placed on or near the sacred sanctuary in the temple at Mecca to absorb holiness for the year. The caravan returns to Cairo with the carpet of the previous year. With the pomp attending its despatch, and its journey to and from Mecca, the carpet costs the Egyptian government fully fifty thousand dollars. An item of expense is the newly minted coins thrown to the multitude by the khedive when bidding the chief of the caravan to guard jealously his priceless charge.

The man who has been to Mecca is supremely happy, knowing that paradise will be his reward for a life devoted to the teachings of the Koran. Neighbors who have not made the pilgrimage look upon him as an exalted person, admitting that his religion is of a quality superior to their own. He may wear interwoven in his turban a strip of green cloth, the prophet's own color, proclaiming to all whom it may concern that its owner has prayed within the holy of holies, and is evermore to be given the title of hadji. These dignities and privileges are as nothing, in his opinion, compared with the right to announce pictorially from his housefront the salient features of the trip to the sacred city. This he does in his own way, with his own hands, and with perspective wholly wanting. If he went from Cairo to Suez by railway — which he did on a third-class ticket, probably— he describes

TO the fact by portraying in indigo blue an impossible locomotive, drawing a train of impossible pink cars. A steamboat of marvelous design, -with paddle-wheels revolving in a mass of fish, tells in purple how the trip from Suez to Djeddah was made. A train of green camels informs the uninitiated how the pious man journeyed from the Red Sea coast across the desert to Mecca. Huge lions, with round and almost human faces, in bright orange, tell of dangers in the desert march. But all ends happily, for the pictured story invariably concludes with the caravan halted before the sacred mosque, with the good man prostrating himself in prayer thereat. Hadji Youssef Achmet knows no joy greater than sitting in his doorway beneath this mural proof of holiness, receiving the salaams of passers-by. Eternal peace is his. He knows this, and every Mussulman seeing him knows it as well.

The strangest of Cairo customs, perhaps, is the hiring of professional mourners, who, at a funeral, do the shrieking, howling, and garment-rending for the bereaved family. These black-shawled and barefooted objects are frequently to be seen, like birds of ill omen, squatting outside a house wherein a person is dying, awaiting the signal to begin their lamentations, which presumably vary in degree according to the stipulated payment. They follow the corpse to the cemetery, bewailing at the top of their voices and rending their scanty clothing. The place of interment reached, the wailing stops suddenly ; the women enjoy a chat by themselves, possibly discuss the prospects of further business, and, if satisfied with the money given them by the relatives of the deceased, trot off homeward. Other forms of bereavement give them employment also. A score of these hags follow to the railway-station the squad of policemen taking a convict to prison. The women howl and curse, throw handf uls of dust over their heads, scream voluble and wide-embracing Arabic oaths at the authorities, and make the street almost unbearable with shrieks and lamentations. The train started for Tourah, the shrieking subsides, and they are ready for further professional engagements. The conscripting of young men for the army being profoundly dreaded, hired wallers accompany their weeping relatives when the unhappy lads are marched to the barracks.

The Cairene, never cultivating physical exertion, emerges from boyhood to sedate manhood before he is twenty, with tranquillity his chief characteristic. The middle-class man enjoys looking at dances, but never dances himself ; he is fond of music, but never sings or plays. Everything athletic is foreign to his nature. He takes to sedentary amusements, and in shop or home will ponder long over a game of draughts or chess. If belonging to the class that goes to the cafe for diversion, he will watch for hours the antics of street hoodlums, or join in a game of interminable backgammon — which all Egyptians love— to deqide who is to pay a few milliemes for the coffee or the smoke from the hubble-bubble. "When he can sit for hours in front of the cafe, smoking the hubble-bubble, he realizes that he is doing the superlative of all that is grand, and feels justified in giving it the character of a public spectacle. This is the conservative Egyptian, who sees nothing good in the movement Europeanizing his beloved Cairo.

Men of the wealthy classes are becoming daily less and less Oriental in appearance and habits. They wear clothes of Parisian make, pose before the photographer's camera, speak fluent French, dance with foreign ladies, flirt a little, and profess to think " five-o'clock tea " an institution reflecting the highest civilization. Each has his stall at the opera, and applauds at the right time. Between acts he calls on friends of the limit ton in their boxes, and perhaps recruits a coaching or river party for the following day. If the visitors are from abroad, the courteous native most likely will explain that as a lad he witnessed the premier production of "Aida" in that very theater, Verdi's opera being an item in the program arranged by Ismail for the edification of the Empress Eugenie and other distinguished guests attending the opening of the Suez Canal. If the visitors are from Alexandria only, the Cairo gentleman probably rings the changes on the contrasting temperature of the two cities, wondering how Alexandrians can stand the excessive humidity of the coast. The visitors retaliate by claiming that the superdryness of the capital affects their health, whereas in Alexandria they are always well. Thus the weather, in its humid aspect, is sadly overworked as a topic of small talk in the country having the best and driest climate in the world. If this accomplished Egyptian would remove his inevitable tarboosh, in shape and shade of red the latest thing from Stamboul, he might to all intents and purposes pass for a European. But he never will, for he is as devoted to the religion of Islam as the man praying five times a day in mosque or street. His Europeanizing is but superficial, and in his heart, perhaps, he abhors all infidels.

The ladies of the rich man's household likewise know French,/ and affect gowns and ornaments from Paris and Vidnna. Custom compels them to view the opera from screened boxes, and they are never included in coaching or river parties. They wear the gauziest of veils — exceedingly thin if their faces are beautiful — when driven from palace to palace in European-built carriages. If opportunity offers, they are not averse to peering from behind their carriage curtains at passing Europeans, revealing glimpses of their faces, and possibly the fact that they are smoking dainty cigarettes. Europeans are inclined to believe that Egyptian ladies admire European customs and perhaps wish to emerge from the veiled seclusion of the East. This is not the fact, for their adherence to the tenets of Mohammedanism is still rigid, and they look pityingly upon foreign women, so little valued by their lords as to be permitted to roam over the world with faces exposed to any man's admiration.

There is something profoundly impressive in the devotion of the Mohammedan to his religion. It governs his actions, pervades his thoughts, conversation, business dealings, and conduct of every-day life. He reads his Koran faithfully, for it lays down his standard of ethics, and is the foundation of his code of laws. See him at prayer, in the mosque, field, or busy street, addressing his supplications to Allah, through his prophet, face turned to Mecca: his faith is complete and his sincerity unquestionable. He cares not how the onlooker may regard him. The fellah on the canal-bank utters the same fervent, heartfelt prayer as the pasha prostrate upon his silken rug within the Mehemet Ali mosque. The cardinal requirement of the Koran, that food and riches must be shared with the unfortunate, is literally obeyed. The Mohammedan has no cant or hypocrisy in his nature. He is tolerant of all religions, but looks with horror upon the unbeliever. It is the good Mohammedan of whom I write— and there are many such ; not the fanatic, liable by excitement to become a frenzied demon.

The provision of the Koran permitting four wives has become more honored in the breach by Cairenes than in the observance. Few Egyptians in public life have now more than one wife. Khedive Tewfik gave his influence to the monogamic idea; and the present khedive, although not taking a wife from the elevated class from which his mother came, is following his father's example. The middle class is gradually following the matrimonial precept of its superiors. Possibly its men found polygamy not particularly conducive to domestic tranquillity, in the absence of sufficient means to maintain several establishments. The