The Reigning Dynasty
While in the city of the Khedive, if one has a wish for the benediction of a far-stretching view, he must go to the Citadel. The prospect from this hill has been described many times. One sees all Cairo, with her minarets; the vivid green of the plain, with the Nile winding through it; the desert meeting the verdure and stretching back to the red hills; lastly, the pyramids, beginning with those of Gizeh, near at hand, and ending, far in the distance, with the hazy outlines of those of Abouseer and Sakkarah. The Citadel was built by Saladin in the twelfth century. Saladin’s palace, which formed part of it, was demolished in 1824 to make room for the modern mosque, whose large dome and attenuated minarets are now the last objects which fade away when the traveller leaves Cairo behind him. This rich Mohammedan temple was the work of Mehemet Ali, the founder of the present dynasty. It is not beautiful, in spite of its alabaster, but Mehemet himself would probably admire it, could he return to earth (the mosque was not completed until after his death), as he had to the full that bad taste in architecture and art which, for unexplained reasons, so often accompanies a new birth of progress in an old country. Mehemet was born in Roumelia; he entered the Turkish army, and after attaining the rank of colonel he was sent to Egypt. Here he soon usurped all power, and had it not been for the intervention of Russia and France, and later of England and Austria, it is probable that he would have succeeded in freeing himself and the country whose leadership he had grasped from the domination of Turkey. Every one has heard something of the terrible massacre of the Memlooks by his order, in this Citadel, in 1811. The Memlooks were opposed to all progress, and Mehemet was bent upon progress. Freed from their power, this ferocious liberator built canals; he did his best to improve agriculture; he established a printing-office and founded schools; he sent three hundred boys to Europe to be educated as civil engineers, as machinists, as printers, as naval officers, and as physicians; his idea was that, upon their return, they could instruct others. When the first class came back, he filled his public schools by the simple method of force. The translators of the French text-books which had been selected for the use of the schools were taken from the ranks of the returned students. A text-book was given to each, and all were kept closely imprisoned in the Citadel a period of four months, until they had completed their task. Mehemet had a dream of an Arabian kingdom in Egypt which should in time rival the European nations without joining them. It is this dream which makes him interesting. He was the first modern. A Turk by birth, and remaining a Turk as regards his private life, he had great ideas. Undoubtedly he possessed genius of a high order.
As to his private life, one comes across a trace of it at Choubra. This was Mehemet’s summer residence, and the place remains much as it was during his lifetime. The road to Choubra, which was until recently the favorite drive of the Cairenes, is now deserted. The palace stands on the banks of the Nile, three miles from town, and its gardens, which cover nine acres, are beautiful even in their present neglected condition; in the spring the fragrance from the mass of blossoms is intoxicatingly sweet. But the wonder of Choubra is a richly decorated garden-house, containing, in a marble basin, a lake which is large enough for skiffs. Here Mehemet often spent his evenings. Upon these occasions the whole place was brilliantly lighted, and the hareem disported itself in little boats on the fairy-like pool, and in strolling up and down the marble colonnades, unveiled (as Mehemet was the only man present), and in their richest attire. The marbles have grown dim, the fountains are choked, the colonnades are dusty, and the lake has a melancholy air. But even in its decay Choubra presents to the man of fancy—a few such men still exist—a picture of Oriental scenes which he has all his life imagined, perhaps, but whose actual traces he no more expected to see with his own eyes in 1890 than to behold the silken sails of Cleopatra furled among Cook’s steamers on the Nile. Mehemet’s last years were spent at Choubra, and here he died, in 1849, at the age of eighty-one. As he had forced from Turkey a firman assigning the throne to his own family, he was succeeded by one of his sons.