Wilkinson Attributes The Erection Of The Building To
Jauhar Al-Kaid, General Under Al-Moaz, About A.D. 970.
Wilson ascribes
it partly to Al-Moaz the Fatimite (A.D. 973), partly to his general and
successor, Al-Hakim (?).
[FN#21] Wakf, property become mortmain.
My friend Yacoub Artin declares
that the whole Nile Valley has parcel by parcel been made Wakf at some
time or other, and then retaken.
[FN#22] If I may venture to judge, after the experience of a few
months, there is now a re-action in favour of the old system. Mohammed
Ali managed to make his preparatory, polytechnic, and other schools,
thoroughly distasteful to the people, and mothers blinded their
children, to prevent their being devoted for life to infidel studies.
The printing-press, contrasting in hideousness with the beauty of the
written character, and the contemptible Arabic style of the various
works translated by order of government from the European languages,
have placed arms in the hands of the orthodox party.
[FN#23] Finding the Indian Riwak closed, and hearing that an endowment
still belonged to it, I called twice upon the Shaykh or Dean, wishing
to claim the stipend as a precedent. But I failed in finding him at
home, and was obliged to start hurriedly for Suez. The Indians now
generally study in the Sulaymaniyah, or Afghan College.
[FN#24] As the attending of lectures is not compulsory, the result is
that the lecturer is always worth listening to. May I commend this
consideration to our college reformers at home? In my day, men were
compelled to waste-notoriously to waste-an hour or two every morning,
for the purpose of putting a few pounds sterling into the pocket of
some droning Don.
[FN#25] The would-be calligrapher must go to a Constantinople Khwajah
(schoolmaster), and after writing about two hours a day regularly
through a year or two, he will become, if he has the necessary
disposition, a skilful penman. This acquirement is but little valued in
the present day, as almost nothing is to be gained by it. The Turks
particularly excel in the ornamental character called "Suls." I have
seen some Korans beautifully written; and the late Pasha gave an
impetus to this branch of industry, by forbidding, under the plea of
religious scruples, the importation of the incorrect Korans cheaply
lithographed by the Persians at Bombay. The Persians surpass the Turks
in all but the Suls writing. Of late years, the Pashas of Cairo have
employed a gentleman from Khorasan, whose travelling name is "Mirza
Sanglakh" to decorate their Mosques with inscriptions. I was favoured
with a specimen of his art, and do not hesitate to rank him the first
of his age, and second to none amongst the ancients but those Raphaels
of calligraphy, Mir of Shiraz, and Rahman of Herat. The Egyptians and
Arabs, generally speaking, write a coarse and clumsy hand, and, as
usual in the East, the higher the rank of the writer is, the worse his
scrawl becomes.
[FN#26] The popular volumes are, 1.
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