Cairo; Mother of the World - Part 1. The City of the Dead

At the time of Ibn Battuta’s visit to Cairo in 1326, the ruling Sultan was of the Bahri Mamluk line; al Malik (King) an-Nasir Muhammed. The Mamluks were slaves of Circassian, Turkish or Slavic origin who were purchased by the Ayyubid sultanate (1171-1250) to perform military service. Those of merit rose to become commanders or amirs of the army, but by 1250 they had become powerful enough to overthrow the Ayyubids and establish their own dynasty, the Mamluks, which lasted until 1517 and the coming of the Ottomans, under whom they retained considerable power.

Cairo was founded by the Fatimid dynasty in 969AD as ‘al-Qahira’ or 'Victorious'. At the time of the Muslim conquest in 641AD Egypt was ruled from Alexandria, and the only settlement in the area now known as Cairo, was the 2nd century Roman fortress of Babylon founded by Trajan, which had grown under the Byzantines to house the Coptic Christian population. The conqueror of Egypt, Arab general Amr ibn al-’As, established his own capital nearby the Christian quarter, which he called al-Fustat, or 'encampment'. The name refers to the fact that early Muslim conquerors did not mix with the local populations and their armies lived in garrisons outside existing cities. Al-Fustat prospered and expanded until the 10th century, but its importance declined as the fortunes of Cairo rose, and by the time of the Mamluks the wealthier classes had moved out, leaving only the poor and dispossessed.

Ibn B mentions the Mosque of Amr Ibn al-’As which still stands in al-Fustat although even by the 14th century it had been rebuilt far beyond its founding in 642AD. The latest re-building is 20th century and while the building itself is no longer of historic interest, the Mosque still holds such special significance for Egyptians that towards the end of Ramadan, when the days are held to be the most important of the month, people come from all over the country to pray here.

Nothing is left architecturally that is of historic importance but its significance to Egyptians is still considerable

And so to the City of the Dead or Qarafa.

“At Cairo too is al-Qarafa, a place of vast repute for blessed power...These people build in the Qarafa beautiful domed chapels and surround them by walls so that they look like houses...There are some of them who build a religious house or a madrasa by the side of the mausoleum.”

By the time of Ibn Battuta’s visit the City of the Dead was seven centuries old, having been founded as the cemetery of al-Fustat. Nowadays the Qarafa is separated by the citadel into two parts; the northern cemetery and the southern cemetery. The more important and spectacular of the two is the northern cemetery but most of its tombs were built after Ibn Battuta’s time. One of the oldest tombs is the Tomb of Tashtimur which Ibn Battuta does not mention because the man in question was very much alive when Ibn B. was in Cairo. In fact he mentions him as one of the amirs of Cairo;

“Another {amir} was Tushtu who was known as ‘Green Chickpeas’; he was one of the best of the amirs and had to his credit many charities to orphans for clothing and upkeep and payment of salary to a teacher to instruct them in the Koran. He also made large benefactions to the vagabonds known as harafish who are a large organized body, hard-faced folk and lewd.”

He goes on to relate that the King once imprisoned ‘Tushtu’ in the citadel whereupon thousands of harafish gathered below the ramparts and chanted;

“Ho, thou ill-starred limper, fetch him out”.

The ill-starred limper was of course the King who did let him out, but he imprisoned him a second time and again the harafish made a scene and he was released once more. Arrested again in 1342 the King (now Nasr Mohammed's son), taking no chances, swiftly had him executed.

View of the citadel taken from the top of the Qait Bey minaret of al-Azhar Mosque.

The Qarafa had ‘blessed power’ because Sufi brotherhoods or tariqas had established tekkes (Turkish word for convent) there. Outside the city walls and far from the commercial concerns and political intrigue of Cairo, they devoted themselves to the spiritual. Many of them were later buried here and their tombs, venerated by locals, gave the cemetery special status. The Bahri Mamluks supported the sufis by building khanqahs (convents) to house their members, and when they died they built their tombs in the vicinity of the sufis in the hope that some of their baraka or blessing would rub off on them. Most of the tombs that Ibn Battuta mentions in the southern cemetery are no longer to be found - with an acute shortage of housing in Cairo people took to living in the graveyards. The tombs were of such size and magnificence that thousands of people could be housed quite easily within their walls and consequently whole townships of the living grew up within the City of the Dead. In the process many of the tombs became wholly incorporated into housing units, which remains the case today.

One of the tombs mentioned by Ibn Battuta is that of Sayyida Nafisa, a great, great-grandaughter of Ali, the 4th Caliph, whose tomb is still venerated to this day. He also mentions the tomb of

“...Imam Abu Abdullah Mohammed ibn Idris al-Shafi, close by which is a large convent. The mausoleum enjoys an immense revenue and is surmounted by the famous dome of admirable workmanship and marvellous construction, an exceedingly fine piece of architecture and exceptionally lofty, the diameter of which exceeds thirty cubits. “

Shafi, who died in 820, was the founder of one of the four schools of canonical law in Sunni Islam. The dome, painted in arabesques and floral patterns in muted shades of red, blue and gold, is indeed immense and is the largest mortuary temple in Egypt. Inside the mausoleum are several tombs in addition to that of al-Shafi, including the wife of al-Adil, the second Ayyubid Sultan, who built it. I was the only foreigner at the tomb.

One of the sayings attributed to al-Shafi is; “Diligence (al-jidd) brings near each distant aim, and fortune (al-jadd) opens every bolted door.” I have decided to use this as my motto for the trip as it pretty much sums it up perfectly.

One piece of jadd I have had is finding the Hotel Talisman which has become my home away from home in Cairo. Located downtown on Talaat Harb Street, this charming boutique hotel opened in 2005. Its 24 rooms and public areas, are decorated in Egyptian-Ottoman style, featuring colored glass chandeliers and lampstands, brass lanterns, local textiles, pearl-inlay wooden furniture and mashrabbiya, the wooden screen that was used over balconied windows to allow the women of the house to see out without letting anyone see in. You can contact the hotel by phone at (+20-2) 393 9431 or by email at talisman_hoteldecharme@yahoo.fr. Should you decide to stay here, the hotel staff will give you directions because, being very discreet, nobody knows where it is.

Shifting Sands

“That district abounds in date palms and fruit trees, in sea-fowl and the fish known as al-buri.”

Ibn Battuta was describing the town of Baltim on the eastern edge of Lake Burullus where they still sell buri and where there are groves of date palms to this day.

There are 8 million date palms in Egypt and the majority of the crop is for domestic consumption.

Driving there we saw bundles of reeds stacked against walls and houses and nobody seemed to know what the were for – but when we arrived in Baltim we saw fishermen using them to build their ‘summer homes’ on the shore of the lake and the Mediterranean. My guide, Galal, told me that in winter the fishermen use their nets vertically to catch quail and other birds. This is very probably the ‘seafowl’ Ibn B refers to. If we go by his dates, he was in the delta in spring and summer and thus would not have seen this winter pastime, but we already know for certain given his own conflicting dates, that he made the journey through the delta on several occasions and here just lumped all the towns together.
As for us, we were not as lucky here as we had been the day before and did not find either the hermitage of ‘Shaikh Shams ad-Din al-Falawi’ which according to Ibn Battuta was in Nastaraw, today called Mastaraw, or the tomb of Marzuq. Half-buried in the sand we could see the remains of old barrel-vaulted graves, and as this region was known for its ascetics it seemed reasonable to assume that one of them might have been that of Marzuq, but nobody we met knew anything about them and any writing on the graves had long been erased. The town sits on shifting sands which in the intervening seven centuries has probably moved the poor sheikh to the bottom of the sea. He has not survived the passage of time even in memory.

Summer homes in Baltim

”I traveled next through a sandy region to the city of Dumyat.”

The coastline may have changed considerably from the 14th century but the new International Road, which runs along the top of North Africa, still keeps sand dunes at bay along the northern tongue of land between lake Borullus and the Mediterranean. The city of Damietta, as it is known in English, is forever linked to the Crusades. Taken by French King Louis IX in 1249, the Egyptians offered him Jerusalem if he would leave Damietta, but he refused. But a year later perhaps as a result of plague, the Crusaders fell to illness and disease and Louis decided to accept the offer. But now the Egyptians were in a position of strength and under the famous Mamluk general, Baybars, they attacked Damietta and captured Louis who had to pay a huge ransom to get released. (Hence the origin of the phrase; “a king’s ransom”) Baybars, who became Sultan in 1260, ordered the town of Damietta to be moved further inland to protect it from sea attack and so it remains today – Egypt’s 3rd largest port after Alexandria and Port Said.

We had a funny moment here when trying to find the hermitage of Sheikh Jamal ad-Din al-Sawi. I had gotten a tad testy with the guide in Mastaraw – our police escort was trying to be helpful but not surprisingly they were not quite sure what a lone traveler was doing wandering a sandy peninsula nobody ever went to in search of some obscure 14th century mystic. I had the distinct feeling that they thought if they only kept saying there was nothing there that I would give up and we could all go off and have a cup of tea. The guide had been thinking the same thing and when we arrived in Damietta, he immediately stopped the oldest looking man on the street and asked him where the old part of town was. We set off, drove around in circles until the guide now bereft of all patience leapt into a taxi and sailed off with me, the driver and the police escort in tow, much to the amusement of the bystanders. We were taken first to a mosque which had just been pulled down and was being rebuilt by the Ministry of Antiquites who went on to tell us there was no such hermitage as al-Sawi. Undaunted we drove off to the next place - which proved to be a large hole in the ground, a construction site. It appears that with the ground water level rising and the mosque’s foundations being non-existent that the building was in danger of collapse. It had been dismantled and was going to get put back together when the foundation had been built. I had to laugh, but the driver who told the site foreman what we were looking for then took me to a spot lying undisturbed which had a stone floor and under this, we were informed, was the tomb of the revered saint. I remain sceptical. Jamal al-Din al-Sawi was the founder of the sufi sect known as the calandariyya who were recognizable by shaving all the hair from their heads including eyebrows, and were known as wandering dervishes (dervish or darwish being the Persian for sufi) as they had no organizational rite nor tekke, or convent. When he died in 1233 he was buried in the hermitage which could now be part of the dismantled mosque but again it is interesting that his fame has diminished and the people working at the Ministry of Antiquities have never heard of him.

Damietta is nowadays the center of Egypt’s furniture industry and there are hundreds of shops turning out chairs, sofas, beds and tables in styles ranging from simple pine to Louis XV. Donkey carts loaded with these furniture pieces transport them from the factory to the shop. Stopped at a traffic light, one enterprising lad stuffed a card through the open window into my hand; it advertised the furniture-making skills of Abu Hashish….

“Outside Damyat is the sanctuary known as Shata, a place where the divine power is manifested. It is visited by people from all parts of Egypt.”

My guide, Galal, thought this referred to the 55th sura of the Koran, the Rahman sura;

“He has let free the two bodies of flowing water meeting together: Between them is a Barrier which they do not transgress:”

This is rendered as meaning salt and freshwater, and it is apparently the case that at the point where the waters of the sea and river meet they do not intermingle and according to my guide this was indeed a place which people used to consider blessed and came on pilgrimage. (Shata could be translated as “beach” although this is normally translated as ‘shatti”)

We started off south through Fareskur to Dikirnis, the town Ibn Battuta called Ashmun ar-Rumaan;

“ From there I traveled to the town of Ashmun al-Rumman ….it is a large and ancient town on one of the canals derived from the Nile and it has a wooden bridge by which all vessels anchor. About mid-afternoon the baulks are lifted and the vessels pass up and down.”

Dikirnis today still has a steel bridge which was built to open to allow ships to pass but there is no longer any commercial traffic on the Nile and the river here is now clogged with water hyacinth. We ended our Delta sojourn with a visit to Tinnis, the ancient Pharaonic capital of Tanis.

“Tinnis was formerly a great and famous town but it is now in ruins.”

Ancient Tanis was the most important of the delta towns in Pharaonic times and was the main center of weaving in Egypt in the 10th and 11th centuries. Today, the new town of Tinnis is of no importance while the old site has been plundered of its monuments. Little remains of Egypt’s early civilization in the delta even though several important dynasties were founded here. In contrast to Upper Egypt, the delta climate is hot and humid, the earth is fertile and the Nile has changed course over the years – conditions which are are not conducive to preserving stone, carved and painted records. Also there are no stone quarries here and all the stone had to be brought from the south. While re-cycling of building materials always took place, in Tanis succeeding generations found it more convenient to build with whatever existing stone they could cart off, rather then haul it from several hundred miles away.

The site is most interesting for the tombs of Psusennes I (1039-991BC) and Osorkon II (874-850BC) which were found by Pierre Montet in 1939, but the important discoveries were overshadowed by the outbreak of WWII. Fallen obelisks, chunks of carved stone and the fallen statue of mighty Ramses II all contribute to the sense of long past glory.

Not even Ramses II escapes time.

Many thanks to my old friend and colleague, Khaled Baheer and his team at South Sinai Travel, for their invaluable help and assistance in arranging this trip for me.

Delta One

“During my stay at Alexandria I heard tell of the pious shaikh Abu Abdullah al-Murshidi who lived a life of devotion in retirement from the world….he was indeed one of the great saints who enjoy the vision of the unseen…..I set out then from the city of Alexandria to seek this shaikh……”.

The Nile Delta is a vast fan-shaped green mosaic; canals, ditches, streams and tributaries criss-cross the patchwork fields like putty, while banana trees, date palms and maize line the dusty roads. It is indeed 'a place of exceeding beauty', as Ibn Battuta was wont to say, and as you trundle along its country roads life seems unchanged from the time of the pharaohs. (Lovely to the passer-by, it is undoubtedly back-breaking for the people who toil this fertile land.) This timeless quality is evoked still further because the favored method of transportation in the countryside is even now the donkey - sometimes attached to a cart, sometimes not.

But this bucolic loveliness ceases immediately upon entering the towns. Unattractive and in some cases almost determinedly ugly, the towns are a blight of brick and concrete apartment blocks that look as if they were erected sometime during the previous night, rebar sticking up out of houses like post-nuclear antennae, piles of rubble and associated construction garbage unused and never removed, no streets to speak of – row after row of apartment buildings and not a paved street in sight, and mounds of litter; paper, plastic bags and bottles, tin cans and broken glass. What is so odd about this is that every morning and evening one sees people assiduously sweeping and watering down the dust outside their individual homes or shops, and their homes are invariably spotless – yet the common area is an eyesore. Ugly architecture is by no means an Egyptian phenomenon - it is a worldwide disease. But I have been told by local people that in Egypt as in many other countries (China for example), one is not taxed on the house until it is complete. The unintended consequence of this law is that houses are never completed. I have also been informed that the reason for the rebar sticking up in the air is that people build the house in stages; either as much of the house as they can afford at the time, or because when eventually a son gets married and brings his bride to live at his parents’ home, another floor will then be added. In any event the result is the same – the house remains forever unfinished.

In the 14th century the delta was a wealthy area due to trade routes with the Far East and South Arabia, which ended in Gaza or Alexandria where the goods were trans-shipped to Europe. The region was especially known for its textile industry of which Ibn Battuta refers specifically to Abyar (Ibyar), our first port of call of the delta towns.

“From there I rode to Abyar, a place of ancient construction and fragrant environment with many mosques and of exceeding beauty….At Abyar are manufactured fine cloths which fetch a high price in Syria, al-Iraq, Cairo and elsewhere….”

There is no cloth manufacturing industry now in Abyar nor is it a place of exceeding beauty but it does have a certain dusty charm. The Nile delta is not an area of tourism in Egypt and as a result - unlike the road to Alexandria - there are few road signs and drivers and guides resident in Cairo are not familiar with the area. This of course can be quite interesting as complete strangers leap into your car at the first question concerning the 'old town' to show you the way. In Ibyar one old gallabiya-clad gray-beard did just that and as a result we came across a lovely 12th century mosque erected, according to a plaque in the wall, by the Bagam family. It may initially have been a khanqah or sufi cell since it is built in open courtyard style surrounded by four halls, of which only two still exist, with one having ‘study cells’ towards the back of the hall. The minaret was much newer - probably late-14th century Mamluk. Greek and Roman columns had been incorporated into the prayer hall – they are not of even height nor has any effort been made to match same-style capitals into any orderly pattern, which are dotted haphazardly throughout. This is a curiosity of mosque construction throughout North Africa until the 11/12th century when an aesthetic form began to develop in Egypt under the Fatimids.

We drove next to Nahrariyya, which was not marked on any map we had and for which we had to ask directions. Men asking directions is a common occurrence here unlike at home, but the results are the same the world over. Invariably after long, involved and detailed explanations concerning bridges right-hand turns, and one way streets, one drives merrily off only to grind to a complete halt three streets away since the street disappears, there is no bridge and nothing matches what you were told. On asking the next available person, he tells you to go back the way you came…. But seven centuries later Ibn Battuta was right and the town is still in the vicinity of Abyar, although the Nile has moved. Here in this long-forgotten town, my guide was elated to discover a stele with the cartouche of Psammetichus I of the 26th Dynasty (663-610BC), incorporated into the entrance of the little 12th century Mohammed Ibn Zayn mosque.

The western delta here is especially beautiful. Technicolor-green rice paddies stretch for miles, fields of grapes, and mango and orange orchards are edged at the side of the road by weeping willow trees, flaming orange poinsiana and pink oleander, interspersed with flashy pink bougainvillea spilling down the sides of walls and fences.

Veiled and straight-backed women with loaded baskets atop their heads stride alongside little boys on donkeys trotting along the pathways next to the irrigation ditches, donkeys bearing enormous loads of reeds stumble by, wooden carts piled high with watermelon or squash and pulled by horse or bullock take precedence over vehicles, as does the odd flock of sheep and goats meandering over the road.

White egrets perch on trees or peck away on the paddies, geese and ducks waddle along the canalsides, waterwheels creak and groan and even the shaduf, a primitive but effective irrigation device is still in use along the river. Ibn Battuta mentions the orchards, but with the building of the dam in Aswan and the end of the annual inundations and fluctuations as well as the changing course of the Nile, the agriculture has changed over the years.

“We then traveled to the town of Fawwa. This town has an attractive appearance….it has a great many orchards, and a remarkable supply of valuable products. In it is the grave of the saintly shaikh Abu’l Najah of celebrated name, the seer of that country.”

His mausoleum, a tiny little domed retreat near the river is still there. We found al-Murshidi’s mausoleum too, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) away from Fawwa in a place called Motubbas.

“The retreat of the shaikh Abu Abdullah al-Murshidi whom I had come to visit lies close by the town {here meaning Fawwa} and separated from it by a canal.”

These are the domes of al-Murshidi's mausoleum and the cemetery next to the canal.

The mausoleum is next to a cemetery which is only a few feet from a canal. Ibn B stayed the night in the retreat and had a dream in which a bird transported him to Yemen and a place he did not recognize where he was left. The saint later that day confirmed to Ibn B the contents of his dream and proceeded to predict other things that would happen to him, all of which came to pass. I did not have any such dreams not did anyone give me any predictions, but at the retreat I did have to flee from the local youngsters who had never seen a foreigner before and overly enthusiastic in their welcome, had to be chased away by the guide and police escort.

Because this is not a touristed area I had a police escort for the entire journey in the delta. Sometimes they would be in cars, sometimes in trucks but they were always armed and we were not allowed to go anywhere by car without them. We had had to provide them with our itinerary before leaving Cairo and each day before setting out they would confirm it. They did not stop me from doing anything and were always pleasant, but on occasion they did get a bit nervous if I jumped out the car to take photographs. Tourism is the country’s life-blood and the last thing Egypt needs is for tourists to stay away because they do not feel safe. So the country goes to great lengths to make sure people are safe by deploying thousands of tourist police at sites all over the country.

Our next stop was Rashid, or Rosetta as it is known in English. In 1799 while the French were restoring Fort Rashid, they found a stone written in three languages; hieroglyphic, demotic Egyptian and Greek. Knowing Greek, the French epigrapher, Champollion, was able to decipher hieroglyphics for the first time. (The word cipher comes from the Arabic word ‘zifr’ meaning zero.) The message written on the stone, which is now in the British Museum, is from a temple priest thanking the pharaoh for not taxing them. Rosetta’s fortunes rose and fell with trade and its heyday was the 18th century when it was the most important port in the country. Today it is a backwater town with a few examples of some Ottoman building and not much else. In antiquity the Nile had seven mouths; Canobic, Bolbitine, Sebennytic, Bucolic, Mendesian, Tanite and Pelusian. Now it essentially has two; one in Rosetta the other in Damietta, but fishing and boat building are still local industries.

This is a typical scene up and down the river as it empties into the Mediterranean at Rashid.

Before going back to Tanta for the evening – there are very few hotels in the delta and so we stayed in the large delta town of Tanta – we stopped in Damanhur for a late lunch. It is a large town as Ibn Battuta noted back in 1326, but there is little left of any antiquity. I saw two tiny domes obviously belonging to a small retreat, stuck between and behind some shops. It was that of Sidi Al-Aviena (sp?), but otherwise Damanhur will be remembered for its lack of paved streets all of which have apparently been torn up at the same time to replace underground sewers.

How to carry a heavy load and what you can do with rebar!

Conflict

I was going to write of the City of the Dead – a vast necropolis in Cairo that actually now houses far more of the living. But with the spiraling Middle Eastern conflict not only did the title seem macabre, I feel it is bizarre for me to be in the Middle East without mentioning it.

My mission is to present another side of the Middle East and the Islamic World – the daily lives of people, the art, the culture, the musicians, the taxi drivers, the ‘real’ people. The politics and the consequences of those politics of the region are all we ever see and I did not want politics to overly intrude into what is a very political part of the world. But I was supposed to follow Ibn Battuta to Gaza and when it seemed best to delay that portion, I thought to fly to Beirut and backtrack. Yet now I sit quite safely, like millions of others around the world, watching the latest conflict unfold from my television screen. Given that the violence of movies and interactive video games looks the same and comes from the same screen as the real violence of the Iraq war and now in Lebanon, Palestine and Israel, it is not surprising that at the end of the program we switch the TV off and go to bed – movie over. But the bloodshed and bombings, the mayhem and madness are real and real people; men, women and children - are gone, lives destroyed, homes bombed, livelihoods gone.

I wonder where it will end? Some people here tell me matter-of-factly, “it will never end”, inured to the endlessness of it. I wonder what kind of world we live in that large numbers of its people have no expectation that a conflict can or will ever be resolved - why is that acceptable? And I wonder what kind of politicians and leaders we are cursed with who think more violence is the answer? Where are the statesmen, the visionaries? Nobody anywhere comes out of this with anything but loss – if not now, later.

As children we are taught that violence achieves nothing, that to resolve conflict we must try to understand the other’s point of view and to accept that in trying to get what we want we must expect to give and take until an acceptable point is reached for both parties. Clearly the lesson is lost on us as adults since we are so spectacularly unable to follow this very sound advice. Violence does breed violence and if nothing else the failed Middle East policies of the last 50 years highlight this all too vividly, and yet we keep on; conferences, Road Maps, peace plans, bi-lateral talks - what for? It has all achieved nothing - Israel is no more secure than it was on day one, the Palestinians are still stateless with many living in refugee camps almost 60 years on, and the Lebanese - a people who have borne the brunt of the region's failed policies with hundreds of thousands killed in a 15 year civil war, now see hundreds more dead and their infrastructure, only recently re-built, pulverized.

The Middle East conflict is a complex and highly emotional issue and each new conflagration raises the bar of hatred and revenge just a little bit higher, views become ever more entrenched and bitterness too profound to respond to negotiation, while external forces swirl around the edges de-stabilizing the region and throwing up issues that are linked to but discrete from the reasons for the core conflict.

I will continue to write about the conflict because my journey is affected by it, and I will give the views of the people where I am traveling who are also affected by it. But for those who wish to learn more about this conflict I suggest you read Lebanon's Daily Star www.dailystar.com.lb and most especially editorial writer Rami Khoury who writes with great lucidity on the Middle East. I also suggest you read the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz. www.haaretzdaily.com

Watzyournaym?

I confess I am weary of this phrase. It is inevitably the only phrase in the English language known by legions of errant schoolboys who clearly threw the book away before they got to page 2. This tiresome phrase is immediately followed by gales of hilarious glee by the assembled crowd and this is before one has even said anything. For such purposes nowadays I go by a varied nomenclature; St. Augustine, The Holy Mother, Socrates, Perspehone, Julius Caesar, whatever comes to mind really, the more outrageous the better. Of course sometimes it is the opener – and in this case the next phrase is always “where are you from?” I usually say, “Wick”. This causes momentary confusion and if the streets are busy gives me enough time to melt into the crowd. In Egypt people talk to you and start walking along with you in the streets – it is completely innocuous, but it is simply that having heard it all before, you never know if your interlocutor is measuring you up for a bottle of perfume or a visa to England.

In Alexandria I had a moment like Ibn Battuta in Tunis; nobody knew I was coming and therefore I did not meet anyone, except I did not weep tears of bitterness or anything else – I merely jumped on a train to Cairo. At the station someone who noticed my confusion, pointed me in the direction of the first and second-class ticket counters which were jammed with people on this side of the window while the other side seemed curiously bereft of humans. It transpired that the computers were down - down? - they looked like they had come off the first computer assembly line ever and were not going to ever come up again. This was a vague worry as my train was due in 40 minutes. As the minutes ticked by I asked a friendly face behind me if she thought it was possible to buy the ticket on the train. She said not to worry as she was going on the same train and everyone would get on – they would eventually write the tickets by hand, and so it happened. The second-class ticket was 25 Egyptian pounds – less than $5. I meant to get the first class ticket but as I was holding my hand out with the cash – a woman behind me thrust her money into my hand and said – “get two tickets” and in the general chaos the first class bit got lost in translation. And so I ended up in second class which was perfectly fine – you can get a hot lunch – completely inedible - for one pound more than the cost of the train ticket, or you can get sandwiches, hot and cold drinks and snacks from the trolley which passes through regularly. The woman and I had seats next to each other and on arrival we shared a taxi as she would not let me pay the outrageous prices asked for by the taxi drivers at Ramses station – actually she would not let me pay at all. I begged her to let me give her something towards the taxi but she refused the money and stuffed it down my shirt much to the amusement of the taxi driver.

Tomorrow - the City of the Dead.

Pearl of the Mediterranean or City of Ghosts

I arrived in Alexandria in record time – the driver drove at speeds of up to 180 kph (112mph) - which is only 80 kph (50mph) - over the speed limit, which one is reminded of every mile or so by a large blue sign. (Unlike Cyrenaica there is also a sign every few kilometers giving you the distance to your destination.) The driver was stopped and fined for speeding – 158 Eygptian pounds ($27.50) When the highway police told him he was clocked at 180kmp, without the slightest trace of irony, he said, “me?” It made no difference – after paying his fine he sped off at 120kmp. Construction is rampant along the coast - the last time I drove along this highway was about 5 years ago en route to Siwa. Then, while construction was underway it was all a bit of a concrete eyesore. But not now; a brand new 2-lane highway runs the entire length of the coast, and high-end resort after resort lines the highway and hugs the coast. From El-Alamein to Alexandria, some 80 miles or so, there is unbroken development – it reminded me of something in Florida or perhaps Mexico, with tastefully-designed buildings in vibrant shades of yellow, lime green, blue, orange, red and vivid pink. The highway is lined on both sides with restaurants, shops, and cafes and there is an undeniable air of prosperity about.

I have always liked Alexandria – for me it is a city of ghosts; site of the greatest library in the world - burned to the ground, the Pharos, one of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World – disappeared into the sea, where Cleopatra, last of the Ptolemies, committed suicide, where Alexander himself may have been buried, and if so now lost, where Christianity was codified and Christians martyred – all of it gone. So little remains of its glittering past that it could all have been a dream were it not for the records which tell of its glories.

Brief History of the Pearl of the Mediterranean
The city was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC. On his death his empire was split between three of his generals, with Egypt going to Ptolemy. The dynasty bearing his name reigned for 300 years from 323 BC until 30BC when Cleopatra, having lost the Battle of Actium against Octavian, committed suicide along with Mark Anthony. Egypt then became a province of Rome. Under the Ptolemies, who made Alexandria their capital, the city attracted scholars from across the Hellenistic world and saw advances in science, mathematics and philosophy. It was the earliest center of Christianity with St. Mark, the city’s patron saint, making his first convert in 45AD. Under Diocletian, the city’s streets are said to have turned red with blood as Christian converts were massacred. He reigned from 284-305AD and although an edict banning conversion to Christianity had been in place since 204AD, Alexandria and the delta had many Christian communities. Coptic Christians date their calendar from the reign of Diocletian which they call the ‘Time of Martyrs’, and it is from this time also that the tradition of desert monasticism was born as converts fled to the desert to escape persecution. (Several monasteries in Wadi Natrun, south-west of Alexandria still exist to this day.) Constantine converted to Christianity in 330AD and in 395AD under Emperor Theodosius, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

One of the earliest schisms in Christianity took place at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. The Alexandrians believed that although Christ had been born of a woman, his human nature had been absorbed into the divine, while the main body of Christian thought held that Christ had two natures both divine and human, which were inseparable. However obtuse this may seem to us today, the Coptic Church with its monophysite creed was declared heretical and expelled from the body of the Church. Both sides hold the same beliefs to this day. The decision had severe repercussion because it set Alexandria at odds with Constantinople (seat of the Eastern Roman Church), and when in 641 AD the great Arab general Amr ibn-Amas came riding through at the head of a large army, the Alexandrians preferred to come to an agreement with him rather then the “Greeks”.

The Arabs always preferred the desert to the sea, and after Egypt was absorbed into the rapidly enlarging Islamic Empire, Alexandria’s star dimmed until by the time of the French occupation in 1798, the city was reduced to little more than a small fishing village.

Most of what Ibn Battuta saw when he arrived on April 15, 1326 is also gone. He wrote of the city’s gates;

“the city of Alexandria has four gates; the gate of the Lote-tree….the gate of Rashid, the Sea Gate and the Green Gate.”

He accurately described the Pharos which was already in considerable decay;

“I went to see the lighthouse....and found one of its faces in ruins. One would describe it as a square building soaring into the air……it is situated on a high mound and lies at a distance of one farsakh (3 miles) from the city on a long tongue of land encompassed on three sides by the sea…..so that the lighthouse cannot be reached by land except from the city.”

The 15th century Fort of Qait Bey seen from across the Eastern Harbor. Rebuilt after having been shelled by the British in 1882, it is built over the site of the Pharos of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, which was built between 282 and 246 BC by Sostratus.

He wrote about what he called The Pillar of Columns, which is called Pompey’s Pillar despite the fact it was probably erected during the time of Diocletian, and still exists. But mostly he wrote of the city’s learned saints and qadis, the tombs of two of whom I visited – Sidi Yaqut al-Habashi and Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi - both of whose tombs are venerated to this day.

I first went to the Mosque of Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi, which was built in the 17th century, and later rebuilt in the 20th century over the tomb of its 13th century namesake.

The Mosque of Abu al- Abbas al-Mursi

Women cannot enter the Mosque itself, Alexandria’s largest, but can visit the mausoleum. When I visited, both men and women were sitting in quiet contemplation or praying. I then went to the next-door Mosque of Sidi Yaqut al-Arshi where this time the tomb had separate rooms for men and women to pray. I was allowed in to visit both sides. While others were perhaps praying for an intercession of some sort, I spent the time trying to decipher the Arabic inscriptions on the two tombs so that I could determine which one belonged to Sidi Yaqut. I am happy to say I eventually figured it out.

The next door Mosque of Sidi Yaqut al-Arshi, who was a pupil of Ab al-Abbas al-Mursi.

Both saints were adepts and teachers of the Shadhili form of Sufism, founded by Sidi ‘Ali Abu-al-Hasan ash-Shadhili in the 12th century, one of the most important in medieval times and which continues in many parts of the Islamic world to this day. He was born in Morocco but opposition to his teachings there drove him out to Alexandria where he remained until his death in 1258.

The Border

No cellphone coverage and no international dialing capability from the hotel – and so no idea if the driver meeting me on the Egyptian side of the border is confirmed or not. Uncertainty is not always a bad thing, but is generally to be avoided at international border crossings. A quick stop at a taxiphone in the town of Bardi, confirms that I am being met - but where? Another call to the Egyptian driver on his cellphone – “where are you?” As-Salloum is a busy border crossing with lots of people hustling, and my Libyan driver has no passport, so after my passport is stamped with the exit from Libya – I am on my own. The answer from the driver is quite unclear and there are several kilometers to as-Salloum from the actual border so I guess I am going to have to live with a degree of uncertainty after all. One thing is certain however; I may not know the driver but there is going to be no mistaking me among this crowd.

Immigration duly taken care of on the Libyan side we drive up to a barriered area about 100 yards prior to Libyan Customs. Another person asks to see the passport and tells Nasser in no uncertain terms that he cannot take the car across here. Nasser protests; “I have always done this” , to no avail. We take the luggage out and start to cross on foot. Halfway across, another uniformed person asks to see the passport and taking it, walks off back the way we have come – of course we can drive. Bags back in the car. Drive off – arrive on the other side. Customs – cleared immediately. Then a policeman asks to see the passport and when Nasser explains who’s who (the policceman asks if we’re married) tells Nasser to drive to the Egyptian Immigration. Nasser explains he has no passport and no papers for the car so ‘no way’. “I am going with you, don’t worry,” said the policeman as he jumped into the back seat. I figure this can only be a good thing, meanwhile Nasser is now in completely virgin territory – this has not happened before.

Sailing through officialdom I am welcomed to Egypt by yet another passport-checker in perfect English. Ushered into the arrivals hall and immediately launched to the front of the line to my acute embarrassment but secret relief, by our newly-acquired minder, I have to go to the bank for the visa stamps since I have no visa. Off we go to the tiny, grimy window of the bank where lines of men in grubby gallabiyas are handing over fistfuls of $100 bills for stacks of Egyptian pounds. Meanwhile for $15 I get two stamps for the passport and off we go back to the line through the back door where my passport is duly stamped.

This is the busiest border crossing of my trip thus far by a long chalk – the others were backwaters in comparison. People are milling around everywhere; money changers, food and drink vendors, trash rummagers and collectors, while cars and trucks stacked with people and goods are going in and out in both directions. I say goodbye to Nasser who is going back with our friend who has been of such help, and walk off towards Egyptian customs. Two uniformed customs agents are about to ask me some questions when a quick-moving man with a NY Yankees baseball cap, a checked shirt and jeans asks for my passport – I look at the customs agents and say “meen hua”? which means, “who is he?” They burst out laughing and tell me he is the police. Right, of course, I knew that.

I am asked to follow him to where three more officials are sitting, get the all-clear and am sent back out through customs again. Getting to the other side the same policeman bids me wait and takes me to a taxi. I tell him I have a driver meeting me to which he explains that yes, but the taxi driver will take me to the customs barrier as my driver cannot pass. (It is indeed fortunate that I understood any of this but I was reading my Egyptian dictionary like a novel.) I could have walked as it was not far but it was melting hot and in retrospect it was really very considerate of him to help me. He loaded the suitcase then jumped into the taxi, when we reached the other side, he unloaded the suitcase, said goodbye and took off back to the other side again with boundless energy. There is now only one last barrier to cross when a very pleasant-looking policeman in immaculate white uniform and polished black shoes holding a walkie-talkie comes towards me and says in excellent English; “Are you Carolyn? Welcome to Egypt, your driver has gone to make a phone call as there is no cellphone coverage here and will be back shortly – please wait here in the shade.”

What’s not to love about Egypt?

Getting Settled in Tripoli

Getting Settled in Tripoli

I was getting quite settled in Tripoli – the center is very small and easy to navigate and I now felt quite at home. I even had my little daily routine starting with Youssef who makes the best coffee in Tripoli, but early Friday morning, the driver, Nasser, and I set out for Cyrenaica in Eastern Libya on our ‘quest for the Qubbat’. Between his English and my Arabic we would see if we could discover anything more about Ibn B in the east.

Friday being the holiday, the roads were quiet as the crowds had not yet started out for the beach. As we neared the beach area roadside stands were getting prepared for the beachgoers with children’s water wings, balls, windbreaks, parasols, and plastic tables and chairs neatly stacked, while between the trees in the shade, pick-up trucks were parked loaded with watermelons. We turned off just before the beach area on to a graded track which eventually became a brand new road. Our first obstacle was a large rock in the middle of it. I think we may have been the first people to have driven on this new road and the rocks were probably there for a reason - but we were on a mission and despite the fact there was an uncomfortably sheer drop down a very high cliff if we had not managed to scoot around the rock, we scraped by and sailed on to what is now called al-Qusbat, known to Ibn B as Mislata. Al-Qusbat is a sleepy agricultural town built among hills of olives and figs and by rights should be a pretty place, but it is marred by the trash lying everywhere, and even the flocks of goats hoovering up from the previous day’s market could not hope to make a dent in it. There is no old town of any sort left here so we did not linger and drove off quickly to Mislata, now a fairly large coastal city.

From here for the next 600 kilometers (375 miles) the road passed unbroken through flat scrubby, desert with some spectacular sections along the coast passing a limpid turquoise and blue Mediterranean and white sandy beaches with not a soul to be seen. Because the roads were quiet we drove easily at speed (about 87 mph) and after a quick lunch stop arrived in Ajdabiya around five o’clock. We took a quick look at the 10th century Fatimid fortress, the only Fatimid monument in the country, which now consists of little more than a portion of a wall, before calling it a day.

This is all that remains of the 10th century fortress

The following day we set off northwards towards Sluge where I stopped to visit the Mausoleum of the great Libya hero, Omar Mukhtar executed by the Italians in after fighting the Italian occupation in Cyrenaica. (A fine movie called ‘The Lion of the Desert’, starring Anthony Quinn as Omar Mukhtar and Rod Steiger as Mussolini outlines the story.) After a detour involving several kilometers to get gas, (distribution of gas in oil-rich Libya is patchy outside of Tripoli and frequently you find gas stations barred, meaning they have no gas) we continued north to Barce, one of the ancient Greek Pentapolis cities, cited by many medieval travelers as the one place you had to pass through en route from East to West. Clutching at linguistic straws, I decided that Barce (pronounced Bar-sah), was Ibn B’s ‘Barsis’, and the fort might be here. After getting lost a dozen times, Nasser spotted old domes peeking through larger but dilapidating colonial Italian architecture, a pile of rusting cars, mounds of trash and what may have been some BC Greek walls – it was hard to tell. To this amateur, the domes looked medieval, but the façade was now definitely Italianate. A woman who lived amongst this horribly disfigured landscape told us only that it had been a church. But now we got a break; on Goodchild’s map, it noted Zaouiat al-Qusur or ‘retreat of the castles’ in this exact spot And so I unilaterally decided that Barce is probably where Ibn B’s fort is and this former retreat turned church turned ruin is his Qubbat Sallam.

Could this forlorn building be the elusive Qubbat Sallam?

That mystery now ‘solved’, we continued on the pilgrimage route to al-Khurruba, al Mekhili and Zaouiat al-Izziya. Considering we passed exactly three road signs between Ajdabiyah and al-Kharruba, a distance of 191 miles, this was a miracle. Seven centuries after Ibn B passed through, paved roads may make the going easier but being unmarked, travelers still have to rely on locals to tell them where they are. Maps are of little use because they are out of date. (Egyptian and other migrant workers have nonetheless been able to overcome this handicap and have managed to find their way as far west as the aforementioned al-Qusbat where they are to be found in large numbers sitting at ‘designated’ roadsides waiting for work.)

The roadside along this stretch of the southern Jebel Akhdar, or Green Mountain, is dotted with forts; mostly small and mostly in piles of rubble, (the upper portions of the castles were mud-built) but one near al-Khurruba was in reasonable shape. They undoubtedly served as watchtowers, but as they appear to be built approximately the same distance apart they may also have served the trade and Haj caravans as places of refuge at night. There was nothing else of note in the arid landscape and there was only one more place mentioned by Ibn B – Qasr az-Za’afiya. Dr. Youssef and I had surmised that a place on modern maps called Zaouiat al ‘Izziyat might be the place as the names are very similar. And in this tiny place – a clutch of houses and a mosque - in the middle of nowhere, we may just have struck pay dirt. We found the remains of a large castle. From the existing walls, it was at least 150 feet wide, and double that in length with what appeared to be a defensive perimeter ditch of about 20 feet wide. Walls further away from the enclosure suggested the castle may have been considerably larger than it appeared now. Narrow passageways, walls, lintels and elegantly arched doorways seemed to suggest a castle of considerable size and importance – this was more than just a simple watchtower fort such as we had seen so far. It was all we had to point to this being the castle where Ibn B. celebrated his second wedding.

700 years later, this is what remains of Ibn B's Qasr Za'afiya, or is it?

And so mission accomplished we drove to and long the coast to Tobruk, site of WWII war graves; British, French and German, and now a large, clean and modern city where we stopped for a well-deserved ‘narghile’ or water pipe. I have a great fondness for a good water pipe and I had not partaken of the pleasure since I had arrived in Libya. I could not leave the country without having at least one.

These are the young water-pipe preparers.

(In Tunisia, Saleh the driver, and I shared a pipe while watching the Tunisia/Ukraine football match but in Algeria, the water pipe does not exist.) Next stop Alexandria tomorrow.

The Libyan Wedding

Libyan weddings are grand affairs. If finances permit, the wedding can last up to 5 days, but even in modest circumstances 3 days is the minimum. The celebrations can be exhausting and many modern brides think 3 days is enough regardless of financial outlay. I was fortunate enough to be invited to a local wedding – day 1 of a large celebration. Weddings nowadays are rarely held in the home, and venues are rented for the occasion. In this case the wedding party was held on the family’s estate just outside of Tripoli. Entering the hall, the brilliant spectacle of about 200 glamorous women bejeweled and clad in beautiful sparkly evening-wear was a tad unnerving to this traveler who was entirely unsuitably clad. It is customary in Libya to have large weddings, and family, friends and neighbors are all invited, but it is not mandatory to attend every night of the wedding.

On this particular night the bride, in contrast to the other women, was not wearing make-up which is the tradition for this day only. She wore a traditional pink-striped voluminous dress, folded up into cushion-like forms at the back and hips, and had a matching kerchief tied up on top of her head. Guests were served a traditional dish called rishda, a vermicelli pasta in a spicy tomato-based sauce, served with lamb or chicken. From then on, servers patrolled the hall with giant platters of cakes, cookies, baklava, ice cream, mint tea and soft drinks throughout the night. A four-piece live band of female musicians played (amplified) Arabic music all night long – certain songs saw lots of women of all ages up on the floor, tying belts around their hips and shimmying away in a Libyan-style belly dance. I too took to the floor and danced with the bride and the rest - it was like being in the disco again - the only thing missing was the pile of handbags in the middle of the circle! Seeing the little girls dance was something to behold – dashing on to the floor as soon as they liked the beat, they’d shake and shimmy their slender forms and non-existent hips like pros. One little girl in particular who had very long hair had her own style – bending over from the waist, she’d shake out her hair then toss her head in fast circles first to one side and then the other so that her hair became a whirling halo.

There are no men at these affairs. The celebrations are almost entirely separate, even today. Also in contrast to our weddings, here they are held at night. We arrived at 1100 at night, and left at 0230 in the morning, it was a Tuesday night and people were going to work as normal the next day. The summer months are generally the season for weddings and parties but they do occur throughout the year. One wonders where they get the stamina…. The day I attended is called hafla.

The following day was nejma, meaning star, when the bride gets hennaed up. The star bit refers to the bride going out into the street at night holding a mirror in front of her to ‘catch the star’. It is a procession in which the bride’s friends, neighbors and family members take part, although several women who were describing the wedding celebrations to me told me they had not done this, and this part of the tradition may be dying off. A child walks in front of her holding a tray with candles for light, eggs for fertility and a knife to keep away the evil eye. In Ottoman times I am told a black eunuch would walk entirely naked in the street at the same time, in order to deflect unwanted attention away from the bride...….perhaps if they re-introduced this part of the custom it might revive it? Just a thought......

When this is done, henna is applied. This is far more elaborate than I had understood. A tray with the ritual henna and associated implements is placed in front of the bride. Sometimes a family member will apply the henna but if they are not skilled, a professional is called upon to do it. The parts of the body which are not going to be hennaed are covered with string – either it is wound round the lower parts of a finger for example leaving the upper parts free, or in olden times to obtain the patterns on hands and feet, the string would be fashioned into different shapes and laid across the appropriate part of the body. (Now they have stencils.) The henna is not painted on but is thickly applied in a paste over the hand, arm or foot, and then bound with cloth to keep it warm to speed up the activation process. Formerly, straw was used for its warming properties. Thus bound and pasted the bride passes the time with her friends – feet and arms aloft. The process can take either a few hours or all night depending on the desired depth of color. The longer it is left on, the deeper the red.

The third day is called Goufah when the groom’s family invites family and friends to bring gifts to the bride. The bride usually wears the white dress on this day. This is also the day of the rajala, or men’s lunch, when they get together and eat couscous.

The 4th day is called Dokhla and the woman has a party in her home before the groom comes to pick her up to take her to his house. This usually takes place on a Thursday and if you have ever been to a Middle Eastern country and seen (and heard) crowds of people in their cars in a procession at night – all honking and shouting – this is what they are celebrating, the bride going to the groom’s house. As this is the first night they spend together, it is met with much teasing and banter. Inside the groom’s house, family members will greet them, some reciting prayers from the Koran sometimes to the accompaniment of music.

The following day is called sabahiyya – or morning after. A large breakfast is given and on this occasion the bride may change costume as many as 4 times, she will also be given a ritual spoonful of sugar to taste from all family members – (this is an old ritual to keep relations ‘sweet’ between them). Couples go on honeymoon on this day just as we do.

Wedding customs change from area to area across the country and a wedding in Benghazi will not be the same as a wedding in Tripoli for example, although there will be some similarities. Although there was a female video photographer recording the event, the video will only be shown to women and to immediate male family members. In respect of local custom therefore, there are no photographs to accompany this post. You will have to visit Libya and hopefully be invited to a wedding yourself. As it happens, I will be leading a trip for Geographic Expeditions to Libya October 29-November 14 later this year - if you would like to join me please contact kristina@geoex.com.

In search of Lost History

One of the reasons the history of Libya is so incomplete is that the nomads having been in control of so much of it for so long kept no written record, and we have to rely on hearsay, and documents from other sources. In addition because the tribes were both nomadic and warrior-like, when a weaker tribe was driven from an area, the occupying tribe moving in changed the names of places and sites without regard to history, which for them was of no importance. As this happened frequently the ‘collective memory’ was lost, and travelers passing through during different time frames would refer to the same place in a variety of names since their only source of information was from the local people who had no knowledge of the area from before their own time.

I have thus spent some time in Tripoli with the knowledgeable and affable scholar Dr. Youssef al-Alkhattali, trying to determine which route Ibn B. took after leaving Tripoli.

“We passed through Mislata, Misrata and Qusur Surt where the dromedary-men of some bands of nomad Arabs sought to attack us, but the Divine Will diverted them…………….Our way then lay through the midst of the ghaba and we traversed it to the fort of the anchorite Barsis and thence to Qabbat Sallam.”

Masalata and Misrata are straightforward, but by ‘Qusur Surt’, which means “castles of Surt”, we determined that Ibn B. was referring to a series of fortified buildings, dating back to Roman times, located on the south-eastern part of the Gulf of Sirt. This also made sense given Ibn B’s reference to potential attackers, as this area was greatly feared by travelers due to banditry by the local tribes. Using old maps compiled by the British archaeologist Richard Goodchild which plot Roman and Byzantine sites in Cyrenaica, as well as the writings of some seventeen other travelers from the 11th to 17th centuries who had completed the Haj pilgrimage, Dr. Youssef tried through a process of elimination to come up with the route.

We trudged off to the school for Libyan Studies under a blazing sun and about 38 degree Celcius (100F) temperatures to find al-Abthery’s book. There was not much to help us in this particulat segment of the journey although the book is of considerable import to students of medieval Haj pilgrimage

After a while we ended up back where we had started. We have determined the route based on the place names given by most other travelers who always cite the same names. We still do not know where the ‘fort of the anchorite Barsis’ is nor the Qubbat Sallam, although we are working on the theory that qubbat meaning dome could also be a retreat (zaouia) of a holy man of which there are many in the region, while Sallam would appear to be the name of the saint. (The name could as we have mentioned, have been changed any number of times before and after.)

By no means giving up the next day we then marched off to the Medina Museum housed in the old British Consulate building. It is a lovely shaded courtyard building with the library in the first floor. It was unbearably hot and humid – people were slumped in chairs, or sat on the steps in the porticoed gallery, immobile as statues. The library was no exception – the heat hung in the still air and 2 attendants seemingly incapable of movement, could barely muster the traditional greeting. I could feel perspiration dripping down my back as we looked for the volumes we needed. We came across al-Idrissi, the famous geographer who had passed by a century before, as well as al-Haukal who had passed by in the 10th century, but no fort, no Qubbat and no Qasr.

This plaque is on the wall outside the former Consulate which now houses the Medina Museum. Many of the early British expeditions undertaken in the discovery of sub-Saharan Africa left from here. Most of them came to grief one way or another - I trust I will have better luck in Cyrenaica with my own discovery.

Just for good measure, Ibn B ends his sojourn in Libya by saying that at Qabbat Sallam;

“I became involved in a dispute with my father-in-law which made it necessary for me to separate from his daughter. I then married the daughter of a talib* of Fez and when she was conducted to me at Qasr al-Za’afiya I gave a wedding feast at which I detained the caravan for a whole day and entertained them all.”

* jurists of religious law

This place has not been identified either – and we have so far not found other reference to it. So to summarize Libya for the Prince of Travelers, in the space of approximately 4 months he got married twice, divorced once, and was constantly harassed by bandits. Meanwhile I am off to a Libyan wedding - the closest I am going to come to marriage in Libya methinks, and on Friday I leave for Cyrenaica in the quest to find the Qubbat!

Tripoli and the Barbary Coast

“We then left the town of Gabes making for Tarabulus (Tripoli) and were escorted for some stages of our journey thither by about a hundred or more horsemen. There were also in the caravan a troop of archers with the result that the roving Arabs, in fear of them, avoided their vicinity, and God preserved us from them.”

Ibn B. says nothing at all about the city of Tripoli except to mention that during his stay he celebrated Eid al-Adha (the 3-day celebration which marks the end of the Haj) and he got married.

A Brief Look at Tripoli
Medieval travelers in general had little to say about Tripoli, and indeed Al-Abthery, a traveler who passed by about 60 years prior to Ibn Battuta was scathing in his denouncement of the city as a cultural wasteland. Tripoli may have been nominally under the control of the Hafsids in Tunis, but while they were strong enough to provide for its defense, the city being frequently the object of local power struggles between competing Berber tribes, it remained far removed from the great intellectual centers of medieval learning. (In Roman times, a succession of castles and watchtowers was built across an area in the hinterland from the coast called the ‘limes’, which was essentially the dividing line between civilization and the ‘barbarians’ or Berber tribes, throughout North Africa.) In the 11th century the Fatimid dynasty in Cairo unleashed two tribes into the Maghreb; the Beni Hillal and the Beni Sulaim – both originally from the Arabian peninsula. This was an act of revenge due to the local Fatimid ruler in Mahdia (in Tunisia) having converted back to Sunni Islam from Shi’ism. Nomadic Berber tribes (there were – confusingly - settled Berber tribes also) joined with the two invading Arab tribes in an orgy of destruction and much of what was left of the Roman and Byzantine civilizations was destroyed and abandoned. The three Roman centers of Tripolitania; Oea (Tripoli), Sabratha and Leptis Magna, did not escape and today there is only an arch left of the original Roman city in Tripoli, the arch of Marcus Aurelius.

The medina
The Spanish, who were briefly masters of the Mediterranean, annexed Tripoli in 1510, it then passed to Malta in 1530 and eventually fell to the privateer Dragut in 1551. From then until the end of WWI, Tripoli and the ‘Barbary Coast’ were under Ottoman control, or at least the control of the Ottoman-appointed beys. The oldest buildings in Tripoli date from this period, namely Dragut’s Mosque, al-Saraya al-Hamra (Red Castle), and Nagha Mosque, said originally to have been built during the time of the Fatimids in the 10th century, although the existing building dates from1610. The medina is similar to other North African medinas in its plan of narrow streets leading to cul-de-sacs and courtyards for the privacy of residents, but unlike other medinas it is not usually roofed, but there are exceptions to this. Some streets and alleys are heavily buttressed which not only hold up the walls but give a degree of protection from the sun.

Like all other medieval medinas there was a Jewish section, here called the hara, which has now largely fallen into ruin although a synagogue still stands. In the wake of independence in 1951, many families moved out of the medina and it now tends to house the poorer segments of Libyan society as well as immigrant workers from sub-Saharan Africa, Morocco and Algeria. If much of the housing needs attention, Mosques, former churches, banks and important houses have been renovated and an organization has been set up dedicated to the historic preserve of the medina.

Minarets
Minarets in Libya are very different from those of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, and one does not find here the solid square Almohad or Almoravid style minarets. (Firstly, Libya lay outwith their area of control, and secondly it has no mosques dating back as far as their era of the 11th and 12th centuries.) Mosques here have more slender round or octagonal minarets often capped with green ‘witch’s hats’ much more in keeping with those found in Turkey; the Ottomans who controlled the area introduced their building style even if the schools of Islam were different.

The advent of the Italians
The ‘Villa Moderna’, lying west of Green Square which links the old and new cities, is the city laid out by the Italians who declared Libya a part of Italy in 1939. The architecture of Tripoli’s new city is in parts magnificent, and was built in a variety of styles. Some public buildings such as the Post Office are in grandiose Fascist 1930’s style, others such as the cinema have a decided late art deco look, galleries recall those of Milan, while many streets are fronted by elegant Italianate arcaded buildings. (Sadly, some of this eclectic architecture is in a state of considerable deterioration and it is to be hoped that efforts are made either publicly or through the emerging private sector to restore what is, after all, part of the country’s heritage before it is too late.)

The School of Islamic Arts and Crafts
One building in the ‘Villa Moderna’ not built by the Italians, is the School of Islamic Arts and Crafts. Built in 1898 in traditional courtyard style, it was paid for by local Libyans who wanted to educate and train the poorer members of society in ways that would enable them to earn a living. (Legend says that every woman in Tripoli gave up a piece of gold towards it.) The school first opened in 1901 and today it still educates orphans (male) and boys from low-income families. The boys are trained in carpentry and furniture-making, ceramics, leatherwork, tailoring and metalwork, graduating after 3-4 years.

In the summer computer courses are held and girls can attend those and different other classes. I walked in on one mixed class of boys and girls being trained in calligraphy – the exquisite art of Arabic script being fashioned into something far beyond mere writing. The class is taught by Abdul Majeed Shafah who designed the calligraphic form of my name that can be found on my website title. I was very graciously, at short notice, given a private tour by architect, Azza Al-Shahah, who teaches at the school. The school is located on September 1 street and within its arches are small shops, the rent of which pays for the running of the school. It receives no other funding other than this and charitable donations. The school will shortly have its own website detailing its considerable history, and examples of the students’ work is available for sale in the school. What is required is ongoing funding as well as work for the students when they graduate.