The intellectual and religious life of the city centred in the great mosque of Al-Azhar, which had been completed in A. D. 1012. Cairo was not yet the economic centre for all Egypt which it became later, but it was the seat of a splendid court, with military pageantry, as well as a centre of religious learning. Ibn Tuwair and others have given us vivid pictures of the ceremonial processions and festivals, the magazines, treasuries, stables, and royal household. As for Alexandria, where we _know_ Al-Ghazali lived for some time before his return to Syria, it did not have a high reputation at that time for learning. It was rather a port of trade, from which men passed on to Misr (Cairo) or went by sea to Syria. Hamadhani makes one of his characters say: “I am of the citizens of Alexandria, Of sound and pure stock among them, The age and the people thereof are stupid, Therefore I made my stupidity my steed!” But in Moslem tradition, Alexandria has high honour. Moslems show the tomb of Daniel the prophet, also that of Alexander the Great whose story is told in the Koran. Alexandria also boasts two celebrated Walis or holy men. One is Mohammed al Busiri, the author of the poem called Al Burdah, universally celebrated; and the other Abu Abbas Al-Andalusi, at whose tomb prayer is never offered in vain. There is also a prophecy that when Mecca falls into the hands of the infidels Alexandria will succeed to its honours.[51] From Alexandria Al-Ghazali went to Damascus and then to Nishapur and from there to Bagdad, or from Damascus direct to Bagdad, where he taught the _Ihya_ and preached. As-Subki tells us that the people crowded to hear him, and that notes of his sermons to the number of 183 were taken by one of those present, who read them to Al-Ghazali before they were circulated. The following story is told of his life at this time: Once while teaching the _Ihya_ at Bagdad, he began to quote: “He has made beloved the homes of men, as abodes of desire which the heart has decreed; whenever they remember their homes these remind them of the pledges of youth there, and they long thither.” Then he wept, and those present wept with him. Thereafter some one saw him in the open country with a patched dervish-garment on, a water-vessel and an iron-shod staff in his hand,—all in strange contrast to the states in which he had seen him before, with three hundred pupils around him, including one hundred of the chief men of Bagdad. So he said, “O Imam, is not the teaching of science more fitting?” But Al-Ghazali looked at him with red eyes and said, “When the full moon of happiness rises in the firmament of will, the sun of setting departs in the East of union.” Then he recited, “I abandoned the love of Layla and my happiness was far, and I returned to the companionship of my first alighting-place; then cried to me my longings, ‘Welcome! these are the alighting-places of her whom thou lovest, draw up and alight.’”