A quick insert before we depart on Monday for Alexandria and Siwa. I signed us up for a boondoggle AUC faculty tour of some of the classic sights of Islamic Cairo on Saturday morning, since I knew the photo ops would abound. We visited a newly-opened site, the 1335 AD Palace of Amir Taz, a Mamluk ruler whose opulent digs had disintegrated into a great garbage dump. The Egyptian antiquities commission budgeted 16 million LE (about $2.7 million at the time) for the garbage to be removed, the building restored, and indeed, it is amazing. Even its stables are great, now housing an exhibition of prints by Europeans of 19th century Egypt.
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| Porch of the Palace of the Amir Tz |
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| Beautiful carving, Amir Taz |
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| Interior dome, Amir Taz |
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| Dragged on a boondoggle and none too thrilled |
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| Restoration documents; note the garbage and crumbling walls |
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| Stalactite decoration, Amir Taz |
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| Carved detail, Amir Taz hammam |
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| Hammam roof exterior |
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| Hamman roof, interior |
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| another detail of inlay, Amir Taz |
Our next stop was another site famously restored, the home to Sufi practitioners and particularly to their devotional dances, the so-called whirling dervishes. An Italian team patiently restored the round hall with its painted dome and the mausoleum with its gorgeous stalactite arches. The space required lots of engineering reinforcement, and the view of nearby domes and minarets was beautiful.
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| Circular hall for the whirling dervishes |
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| Sufi dome, exterior |
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| Sufi mausoleum dome |
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| Italian restoration team's before and after |
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| Novel way to keep bread warm |
We ended with a visit to the largest mosque in Egypt, the Sultan Hassan Mosque. It was also a school or madrassa, with lodging for 400 students. It is best known for its prayer space, with an elaborate mihrab or niche indicating the direction of Mecca (and thus, the direction one faces during prayer) and its pulpit for the imam’s Friday sermon, the minbar (not to be confused with the minibar). In its courtyard is a huge fountain where the faithful could wash before prayers (a tenet of Muslim faith). We did not troop en masse up to the top of the minarets, however. I’d done that in 1996, and frankly, it was unrealistic for this largely middle-aged group of 30 or so!
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| The opulent mirhab and minbar of Sultan Hassan Mosque |
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| Fountain in courtyard of Sultan Hassan Mosque, used also for washing before prayer |
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| More great inlay |
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| More cool stalactite details of the dome |
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| Islamic Cairo skyline |
Harris gave his talk on John Keats’s poem, “To Autumn,” on Sunday. He’s a rock star, and the talk, though over the head of most of the undergrads, was dazzling.
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| Harris delivers on Keats |
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