THE LORD'S PRAYER in 300 Languages 4to, handsomely printed and bound, 10s. 6d. Gilbert AND Rivington Limited Clerkenwell, London

TO HIS HIGHNESS

ABBAS II

KHEDIVE OF EGYPT

THIS WORK IS, BY PERMISSION,

RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED

BY THE AUTHOR

Room Page Preface ix Author's Note xiv Chronological Table xv Introduction xix Stucco, Stone, and Marble I & Annexes 1, 91 Metal-Work II 18 Metal-Work VII 77 Metal-Work Passage 86 Metal-Work Annex I 89 Glass III 30 Texts, etc. III 44 Wood-carving and Inlay, etc. IV 45 Wood-carving and Inlay, etc. V 60 Wood-carving and meshrebīyas VII 75 Wood-carving and meshrebīyas etc. Passage 83 & Annex I 89 Pottery VI 64 Bookbindings VIII 79

Page Slab from a Prayer-niche. I, 19 face 10 Marble jar and stand. I, 34, 108 11 Inlaid silver and brass kursy. II, 12 face 23 Inlaid silver and brass kursy of En-Nāsir. II, 13 24 Koran case, brass inlaid with silver and gold. II, 57 face 25 Enamelled glass lamp of Sultan Hasan. III, 20 35 Enamelled glass lamp, xivth c. III, 38 38 Enamelled glass lamp of Sheykhū. III, 76 42 Bronze lantern, 1419. III, 130 face 44 Kursy of inlaid ivory and ebony. IV, 59 face 55 Carved side of a Sheykh's tomb 55 Mihrāb of Seyyida Rukeyya. IV, 62 face 56 Panelled door of Ashrafiya. IV, 64 56 Filigree bronze lantern, xivth c. IV, 66 57 The Kaaba in enamelled tile-work. VI, 167 71 Enamelled tile. VI, 172 72 Panel of Meshrebīya. VII, 1 76 Door from el-Azhar. Passage, 1 face 83 Brass lantern. Passage, 86 87

Note.—A few of the above are reproduced from Lekegian's plates in the French edition of the Catalogue.

The traveller who visits the temples of the Nile has not seen all the art of ancient Egypt: he must supplement his view of the monuments by a study of the matchless collections of the Gīza Museum. In the same way, it is not enough to make the round of the mosques of Cairo: one must also visit the Arab Museum. As the Gīza collections illustrate the ancient art by their classified series of objects found in the tombs or rescued from the sand, so the Arab Museum contains those remains of the Saracenic art of the past twelve centuries which have been gathered from the ruins of vanished mosques and palaces. The introduction of a bastard European style, the laying out of new streets, and the broadening of old ones, during the past fifty years, are responsible for more havoc among the monuments of Saracenic art than the centuries of former neglect. The street fights of Mamlūk Beys and Turkish Pashas did less damage to the mosques of Cairo than the futile attempt to Europeanize a medieval Eastern city. The ruins of demolished buildings became the happy hunting-ground of collectors and dealers, and the Museums of Europe and the houses of dilettanti are full of the spoils.

On the 20th April, 1892, the Commission or the Preservation of the Monuments entrusted me with the charge of the Museum of Arab Art. For five years previously, since the retirement of H. E. Franz Pasha from the administration of the Wakfs in 1887, the Museum had been without a special curator, and the collections had been allowed to fall into some disorder. My first care was to revise the inventory and re-number the objects. I then drew up a brief MS. catalogue, which was placed in the galleries for the use of the public. But as the number of visitors increased year by year, I considered it desirable to prepare a fresh catalogue raisonné, which should not merely enumerate, but supply an historical and technical commentary on the various objects. For their provenance I have relied upon the original inventory of Franz Pasha. In the detail of the descriptions, I have made it a special point to accurately record the Arabic inscriptions; and here I must acknowledge the valuable assistance of Yusuf Efendy Ahmad, the draughtsman to the Commission, who possesses a wide knowledge of Arabic calligraphy, and has often been able to reconstruct mutilated inscriptions. I should like also to mention the services rendered by Aly Efendy Bahgad, of the Ministry of Public Instruction. To Yakub Pasha Artin, who has taken a true scholar's interest in the Museum from the beginning, I am indebted for such information as his Excellency is peculiarly fitted to give.

Herz

RULERS MONUMENTS A.D. 639—641 Conquest of Egypt by 'Amr Mosque of 'Amr, 642, frequently restored 641—868 Governors (98) appointed by Caliphs

TŪLŪNIDS 868 Ahmad ibn-Tūlūn Mosque of Ibn-Tūlū 876—8 883 Khumāraweyh 895 Geysh; 896 Hārūn; 904 Sheybān 905—934 Governors (13) appointed by Caliphs

IKHSHĪDIDS 934 Mohammad El-Ikhshīd 946 Abū-l-Kāsim; 960 'Aly; 966 Kāfūr; 968 Ahmad

FĀTIMID CALIPHS 969 El-Mu'izz Foundation of El-Kāhira (Cairo), 969 Mosque El-Azhar, 971 975 El-'Azīz Azhar made a University Mosque of El-Hākim, 996 El-Hākim 990—1012 1020 Ez-Zāhir 1035 El-Mustansir Gates and 2nd wall of Cairo, 1087 1094 El-Musta'ly

Although the conquest of Egypt by the Saracens was completed in 641, we have no Arab monument, still standing in its original form, of an earlier date than 876. During these two hundred and thirty-five years of artistic silence, Egypt was merely a province administered by a succession of governors appointed by the Omayyad and 'Abbāsid Caliphs who had their seats at Damascus and Baghdād. The capital of Egypt was a provincial town, and no temporary governor, except its first conqueror,1 cared to waste 1 'Amr's great mosque, founded at the conquest for the new capital called El-Fustāt, ‘The Tent,’ after the general's pavilion, has unfortunately so often fallen to ruin and been restored, that scarcely anything of the original building can be proved to remain; and it supplies no evidence for the history of Arab art. See E. K. Corbet Bey, ‘The History of the Mosque of ‘Amr,’ in Journ. R. Asiatic Society, vol. xxii. N.S., 1891. The only other monument prior to 876 is the mikyās or nilometer at Rōda, which has a kufic inscription of the date of its restoration by the Caliph El-Mamūn when he visited Egypt in 217 A.H.=832 A.D.

In no department of Arab art is the influence of the style which the Persian Sasanians inherited and developed from Assyrian models more distinctly visible than in metal-work, where we find the Persian ornamentation by means of human and animal figures prevailing in spite of the objections of strict Muslims. The traveller Nāsir-i-Khusrau, who visited many Mohammadan countries in 1035-1042, besides noticing the gold and silver work at Tyre and Jerusalem, dwells especially on the triumphs of the goldsmith's art which he saw in Egypt in 1040. In the palace of the Fātimid caliphs at Cairo he saw the throne of El-Mustansir, which was made of pure gold and silver, chased with beautiful inscriptions and hunting scenes; and the inventory of the same caliph's possessions recorded by the historian El-Makrīzy describes an extraordinary collection of magnificent objects in the precious metals and stones. All these have disappeared, however, and it is only from the

The earliest specimens of Arab glass are the little discs used for weights (found in great numbers in the rubbish-mounds round Cairo), of which dated specimens exist from the first century of the Hijra.1 Nāsir-i-Khusrau mentions a ‘Market of Lamps’ (Sūk-el-Kanādīl) close to the Mosque of 'Amr, and refers to the admirable glass-work of Egypt.2 No. 1 in Room III, which we owe to Dr. Fouquet, the well-known Cairo physician, illustrates the varieties of beads and enamel found in the Cairo mounds. But the chief glory of Arab glass-work in Egypt is represented by the collection of over sixty enamelled glass lamps in the Museum, which, despite air-bubbles, bear witness to the skill of the artists in the variety of the decoration, the grace of the inscriptions, the finish of the work, and the colouring of the enamels. These glass lamps are always of 1 See S. Lane-Poole, Catalogue of Arabic Glass Weights in the British Museum, and P. Casanova, Catalogue des pièces de verre de la Collection Fouquet, Mem. miss. arch., Tome vi., 1893. 2 Sefer Nameh, p. 152.

Egypt is naturally very poor in wood, but the trouble and expense of importation have not deterred its artists from employing this material largely and with remarkable skill in their architecture and minor arts. The dryness of the climate has contributed to the successful employment of wood for building purposes. The pillars of the mosque of Ibn-Tūlūn, which have stood for more than a thousand years, have wooden ties, and the oldest brick domes are stiffened by a complete framework of wood. The mosque of Ibn-Tūlūn has also a large frieze of wood carved with a portion of the Korān in kufic letters,1 and its arcades were formerly covered by a wooden ceiling, a small portion of which the Commission for the Preservation of the Monuments was able to retain during the recent repair of the mosque, and of which the joists were then visible. These joists consisted of a trunk of a palm tree sawn in two, and faced on the three exposed 1 Not, as has been supposed, the whole Korān. Corbet Bey, in his Life and Works of Ibn-Tūlūn, says the frieze does not contain more than one-seventeenth of the Korān. He is wrong, however, in stating that the letters of the inscription were “cut out in solid wood and fixed on to the board”: they are carved on the board itself in relief.

The potter's art was assiduously cultivated in Egypt from very early times, and it was certainly not allowed to deteriorate during the Mohammadan period. To quote Nāsir-i-Khusrau again, the eleventh century traveller found that at Cairo all sorts of faïence were made, and some so thin and transparent that you could see your hand through it; whilst another kind had a metallic lustre, the shade of which changed according to the point of view.1 The traditions of ancient Egypt and of Greek and Roman examples, and the influence of Persian ceramic art, all contributed to the variety and beauty of Arab pottery. Almost a history of the art could be traced by means of the numerous fragments, from the commonest domestic crockery to the finest decorative work, daily picked up among the rubbish mounds which mark the site of the old city of Fustāt (near ‘Old Cairo’), and whence connoisseurs, especially Dr. Fouquet of Cairo, have accumulated very interesting and beautiful collections. Sometimes these fragments have the baking cockspur still sticking to them (e.g. no. 145), a conclusive proof of native manufacture, to which may be added the numerous wasters found among the rubbish heaps. Among 1 Sefer Nameh, trans. Ch. Schefer, p. 151.

Arab bookbinding is interesting not only in itself, but on account of its influence on Italian and European binders from the XVth c.1 The three hundred bindings in the Museum, with the exception of a few specimens from the mosque of Barkūk, were all found piled together among books in a small room behind the mihrāb of the mosque of El-Muayyad, and probably belonged to the library originally established in that mosque. Oriental bindings have a flat instead of a rounded edge, which is generally protected by a flap on which as much ornament is lavished as on the side; the side does not project beyond the edge of the book. The material is generally marocco, but silk and other tissues are sometimes used in the decoration. The leather is generally left its natural colour and only painted 1 The early Italian bindings belonging to Maioli, Canevarius, Grollier, and especially Corvinus, are obviously indebted to Arab models. The bindings at Budapesth which formed part of the library of Mathias Corvinus (1458—1490), and were carried off to Constantinople in the xvi c., and only restored to Hungary in 1878, are so Oriental in character that one would almost believe they were made in the East.