The Rulers of the MediterraneanDavis, Richard Harding
History
The Rulers of the Mediterranean
Davis, Richard Harding
Mediterranean Region -- Description and travel
There are very good things to see, and with a companion on one side to
explain them, and another on the other side to whom you can impart this
information as though you had been born knowing it, you cannot spend a
more entertaining afternoon. There is only one drawback, and that is a
lurking doubt that you should be up and about seeing the show-places.
Friday, in consequence, is the best day in Cairo, as all the things you
ought to see are then closed, and you can sit still on the terrace with
a clear conscience. Among the mosques and the tombs and the palaces and
museums to which all good tourists go, and of which there are excellent
descriptions, giving their various dimensions and other particulars, in
the guide-books, there are the Citadel and the Mosque of Mehemet Ali.
The Citadel is the fortress built on the hill above the city, but which,
with the Oriental incompleteness of that time, was reared upon high but
not upon the highest ground. The sequel to this naturally was that when
Mehemet Ali wanted the city of Cairo he sought out the highest ground,
and dropped cannon-balls into the fortress until it capitulated. He
afterwards asked all the Mamelukes to dinner at the Citadel, and then
had them treacherously killed--all but one, who rode his horse down the
side of the Citadel and escaped. If you can imagine the reservoir at
Forty-second Street placed upon the top of Madison Square Garden, and a
man riding down the side of it, you can understand what a very difficult
and dangerous thing this was to do. There is no doubt that he did it,
for I saw a picture of him in the very act in a book of history when I
was at school, and I also have seen the marks of his horse's hoofs in
the stone parapet of the Citadel, and they are just as fresh as they
were three years ago, when they were on the other side.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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