History-Egypt under the Persians, Macedonians, Ptolemies, and Romans- Bablun-Ezra and Elijah-The Mosque el Amr-A kourbashed pillar -A strait gate-The Ommiades The Abbasides-Tuloonides-- Mosque el Tuloon-Egypt the seat of the Khalifate-El Kahira- Mosque el Azhar-Mosque el Hakim-Saladin-Ayubites-Mamluk period-Mosque el Kalaun-Mosque Sultan Hassan-Legend of the Bloody Mosque-Mosque Kait Bey-Mosque el Ghoriya-Egypt a Turkish Pashalic-The generous Egyptians-Rise of Mohamed Ali— From Pharaoh to Fellah. IT PROLOGUE. T was in the early part of the year 188-, and in the bright courtyard of the Grand Hotel de Noailles, that they met. The Scribbler, an unmistakable Briton, was moodily inquiring of the waiter whether eggs in Marseilles were invariably laid addled, and whether coal was the sole ingredient of black coffee, when his eye caught that of another stranger regarding him with some curiosity. The grumblings ceased, and with an exclamation of "Sketcher, by Jove!" the Scribbler sprang from his chair with enthusiasm. The terrified look of the waiter at this unusual form of insanity in an Englishman recalled the latter to a sense of his nationality, and falling back into his Anglo-Saxon shell, he said quietly, "How are you, Sketcher?" The man addressed was evidently no Englishman. The light-blue eyes, under straw-coloured eyebrows, betrayed the Gothic basis as unmistakably as the light, lithe figure showed the admixture of the Latin-an unmistakable Frenchman with Burgundy in all his veins. "And what on earth brings you here?" said the first. Sketching, of course, old fellow! What else have I done since the days at Clareton when you made me do your French exercises for you, and I in revenge got you a hundred lines by sketching the loves of the Integral and Differential Calculi in the fly-sheet of your Todhunter'? A sketcher with nothing to sketch, in search of the picturesque, and with at least as much right. to be in my own country as you have. And you?” 6 "A scribbler in search of material-material that must be solid and dull, such as no man can read, so that I may obtain a reputation for untold wisdom and inscrutable depth, be voted a bore without a trace of frivolity, be elected a member of a statistical society, and eventually, in my toothless old age, be considered worthy of a seat in the Cabinet, or the editorship of a comic paper." A MIA OL A SCRIBBLER AND SKETCHER. "And in search of it?" "I am going to Egypt. After mature consideration, I fancy that I shall find there precisely the style of subject I require. In the first place, the British public took some interest in the country last year, so naturally has none now; then it has been so much written about, that there can be nothing new to say; thirdly, we have vital interests in the country, so it is certain that a book on the subject will not be read; and, above all, the subject has been so frequently discussed in Parliament, that one can rely on utter ignorance of essential facts." "What rubbish! You are going there, first, because you like it; second, because you know that it has become a British possession à peu près; and, thirdly-excuse the brutal frankness,-because it's the only subject on which you know anything. Egypt! the dream of my life! I would give my head to come too!" "You would like to come! then why not join me?" said the Scribbler, with a second access of genuine enthusiasm. "You needn't," he added, relapsing into his old tone, "give your head, though you would probably sacrifice your lungs and your liver. You would get typhoid in Alexandria, of course, and probably cholera in Cairo; but, after all, the hospitals are the cleanest places to live in in Egypt, and you might get over it. What do you say?" "Say!" said the Sketcher, laughing. "Why, that your invitation is so cordial, your picture so lively, that I've half a mind to take you at your word. To me, Egypt has always presented one inscrutable puzzle, one everincreasing mystery, and perhaps, if we went there together, you would help me to solve it." "And what is the mystery? The riddle of the Sphinx? the sources of the Nile? or the explanation of British policy in Egypt?" Neither; but one more difficult than either-the connection between Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Fellah!" "I hate all mysteries or riddles, and can't even understand the question of yours. The connection between Pharaoh and the Fellah has generally been one of stout hippopotamus hide, called a kourbash. I fear there's no difficulty in understanding that!" "How dense you are, or pretend to be! Listen, and I will explain myself down to the level of your practical intelligence. The Egypt of the Pharaohs is the Egypt of an art hardly absolutely inferior to that of Greece itself, and, as its parent, relatively superior to it-the Egypt of a science which may be similarly compared to our own-the Egypt with a literature, the remnants of PHARAOHS AND FELLAHS. 3 which, scant as they are, show traces of majesty worthy of Homer-the Egypt of an empire embracing half the known world. Such is Egypt of the Pharaohs. Now turn to Egypt of the Fellah-a people who for hundreds of years have given us nothing above the literature of a Kaffir, without a trace of artistic perception, incapable of all but the lowest manual labour, unfit to govern, not a nation only, but a village-a people fallen from the highest to the lowest. Does not this contrast present a riddle worthy of solution?" Certainly it would," said the Scribbler, "if any such contrast existed, but it does not. You make the common error of assuming that the Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Egypt of the Fellah are two distinct epochs, instead of two distinct classes, always existing side by side. Egypt of the Pharaoh and of the Fellah existed 7000 years ago, and the same Egypt exists to-day. In the Fellah there has been no change; in the Pharaoh there has been much. The same men to-day till the fields, tend the same cattle, work the same shadoof, make the same bricks, as in the hieroglyphs of thousands of years ago. One foreign ruler has followed another, styled either Pharaoh or Ptolemy, Caliph or Khedive, leaving behind them monuments either of their greatness or their littleness; but this is not a change in the people, who are to-day what you have described them, and what they have ever been within the record of seven thousand years." "Then you give the Egyptian no part whatever?" "If you mean by the Egyptian the Fellah of Egypt Proper of to-day-the Egyptian of Arabi—the Egyptian of Blunt, and of the ravers of "Egypt for the Egyptians"-I give them one unbroken past, a servitude of 7000 years, during which they have been hewers of wood and drawers of water to successive conquerors." "Even then they must have taken something from their conquerors. You so-called English yourselves are but a mélange of different conquering races, and probably owe your best qualities to your conquerors." Precisely; but there is this peculiarity about the Egyptian: always conquered, the prey first of one conqueror and then of the other, he is himself the real conqueror in process of time. The conquering race passes over him, but leaves no trace. Just as Indian wheat or American cotton-seed, planted in Nile mud, becomes at the second crop Egyptian wheat and Egyptian cotton, taking its nature from the soil, so the human seed-mixed though it has been with Ethiopian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab, the race Egyptian has always re-asserted itself and remained one and the same, physically and morally. I believe, if you were to obliterate the race, and people the country with settlers |