Bucket List

I promised Harris some free time so he could finish his work (now weighing in just under 300 pages on one topic and 130 on another) before we took off. It’s part of my Cairo Bucket List project. Emad and I went off on Saturday for a boondoggle to view sites I knew Harris was not hellbent on seeing. Our first stop was the Museum of Islamic Ceramics in Zamalek, an obscure museum in a beautiful 1920s villa of Islamic style architecture surrounded by gardens. It was closed for renovations. Phooey.

Our next try was the Manial Palace, built by a rich family member of Mohammed Ali’s in the late 1800s. I’d seen it in 1996, and liked it for how each room represented one of the decorative traditions of Islam. It, too, was closed for renovations.

Next try was the Cairo Tower, built in 1961 under Nasser with money from the U.S. that was, according to my guidebook, earmarked for buying American arms. Instead, he had a tall needle constructed with a distinctive basket-weave shell. The view from the top was splendid: all of greater Cairo was laid out before me, from the Pyramids to Moqattam Hills. I circled around twice and realized that as I gazed and recognized various places, it made me blue. Time to descend.

Cairo Tower, with its distinctive basket-weave exterior

View looking south

After a bit of koshery at Abu Hanafy’s, Emad and I went to Coptic Cairo. Though the weather had turned hot, we trekked around tirelessly. First stop was the Church of Saint George, martyred under Emperor Diocletian for his Christian beliefs, but better known for slaying a dragon. The spaces were small and a little smelly. 

Mosaic of Saint George at the church

From there, we walk through the pedestrian-only covered alleys of Coptic Cairo to the church of Saint Sergius, built (according to legend) over a cave where Mary, Joseph, and Jesus hid from Herod’s slaughter of the innocents in their flight from Jerusalem into Egypt. Like all the churches in the area, it is basilica-style, and combines decorative motifs from Islamic art with Christian iconography.

Pedestrian-only alleys of Coptic Cairo

Exquisite inlay at Saint Sergius

Saint Barbara’s was next, as well as a walk through the Greek Orthodox cemetery, remarkably beautiful even in the hot sun. We stopped in the Hanging Church, built over a water gate, visible through a glass slit in the floor. A group of Indonesian Christians wearing baseball caps with “Holyland Tour” stitched on them livened it up.

Hanging Church from the air; note the Roman walls in the background

The most interesting place to me was something unexpected, the Ben Ezra Synagogue. It is one of the oldest in the world, built first in 350 BC, rebuilt under Ibn Tulun (whose mosque we saw last week) in the 9^th century, and restored by the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Canadian Center for Architecture in the 1990s. It, too, is basilica-style, and for a period functioned as a Coptic church; two small confessional rooms on either side of the altar where the Torah is kept are still there.

Ben Ezra’s carefully restored decoration fuses the decorative traditions of the three Abrahamic religions as well as ancient Egypt. There is a well where the daughter of Pharoah found Moses (the Nile was closer then); the altar is decorated with exquisite inlays in mother of pearl and ivory of arabesques in traditional Islamic designs; the basilica format is Christian; and Hebrew and Arabic inscriptions give the name of God. In 1896, a treasure trove of written materials were found, a geniza (funeral) stash; since anything with the name of God written on it can not be destroyed, these documents were “buried.” They now reside at Cambridge University, and include a letter from Maimonides, deeds of sale, parts of ancient torahs, and various documents dating from medieval Cairo to the end of the 19^th century.

Interior of Ben Ezra

Fragment from Ben Ezra's geniza

When we returned to Ma’adi after this wonderful outing (with a stop en route to buy two large suitcases—we are probably bringing eight checked bags home)—Harris had crunched a huge amount of work, so my junket served its purpose.

The president of Bryn Mawr College, my alma mater, came to AUC on Sunday and I joined other Mawrters for a lunch in her honor. Jane MacAuliffe’s specialty is Islamic studies and cross-religious studies; she was in town for one day en route to a festschrift (essentially, a festival of scholarly papers) honoring an archbishop with whom she had worked, and put Cairo on her itinerary. It was fun.

I pick up my students’ final work tomorrow, and then spend the 23^rd and 24^th grading as Egypt votes. All eyes are on this election. Jimmy Carter is coming to town, and there is a chance we will get passes to hear him speak on Saturday. I’ll post again after the elections. We live in interesting times. BTW, all my photos in this posting are from the internet; my camera is messing up.