File:The story of Cairo (1906) (14595518080).jpg

Identifier: storyofcairo00stan (find matches)
Title: The story of Cairo
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Stanley Lane-Poole
Subjects:
Publisher: J. M. Dent
Contributing Library: Gumberg Library, Duquesne University
Digitizing Sponsor: Lyrasis Members and Sloan Foundation

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
nvitedthe invasion which the Fatimid caliphs had long beenpreparing. We have no description worth quoting of the city ofMisr during this prosperous period. The traveller Ibn-Hawkal gives a brief account of it a Httle later (978),and estimates its size as about a third of Baghdad. Henotes its handsome markets, its narrow streets, withbrick houses of five and even seven storeys high, largeenough for two hundred people to live in, and thegardens and pleasure-grounds surrounding the city. TheMosque of *Amr in its midst was still the moststriking of its buildings, which shows that there wereas yet no great palaces or government houses. Kafursown palace was outside, probably in the park calledthe Garden of Kafur, though at one time he builta new palace, at the cost of 100,000 dinars, by thepool of Karun, near the mosque of Ibn-Tulun; butthe miasma from the stagnant water soon caused itsdesertion. The capital was of course very differentlysituated from the present Cairo. The Nile had thepi04
Text Appearing After Image:
STREET IN OLD MISR .105 Misr hardly begun the slow shifting of its bed towards thewest which resulted in the formation of the island ofBulak or el-Gezira. The river in the Ikhshids timeflowed under the walls of the castle of Babylon,skirted el-Askar, and passed by the points now knownas the Bab-el-Luk and Bab-el-Hadid.i All thedistricts of Masr-el-*Atika, Kasr-el-Eyny, Kasr-ed-Dubara, and Bulak were then under water, and thecapital spread along the banks of the Nile and stretchedinland to near the mosque of Ibn-Tulun. The best description is that of the Persian Nasir-i-Khursau, who visited Misr in 1047, eighty yearsafter Kafurs death, it is true, but it is not probable thatvery important changes had taken place in the interval.He knows nothing of el-Katai*, and from his descrip-tion of Misr as a city built on high ground, and otherindications, it is evident that in his day the Wards faubourg- was included in Misr and that there were stillhouses there in spite of the devastation that f

Note About Images