sanctuary or eastern arcade of the mosque is sometimes railed off from the court by a turned wooden screen. And as many of the mosques of Cairo have chapels, where the founder or members of his family are interred, the Muslim artist would sometimes employ his skill in carving the wooden casing of the tomb with elaborate arabesques, arranged in intricate panels.

The form of a Cairo pulpit, termed in Arabic i minbar (pronounced mimbar), is seen in fig. 34. It represents a pulpit, now in the South Kensington Museum, which bears the name and titles of the Mamluk Sultan Kaït Bey, who reigned in the last third of the sixteenth century, but the precise mosque from which it came is not known. As one Sultan would

sometimes place a pulpit in the mosque of another, and Käït Bey was especially generous in this kind of restoration, it is possible that the pulpit did not come from any of his own mosques; and the tradition is that it belonged to that of ElMuayyad, which, however, has a pulpit of its own, bearing its founder's name. Wherever it originally stood, the pulpit is an admirable example of the typical Cairene mimbar. It consists of a staircase, entered through folding doors, and enclosed by high sides, and terminating at the top in a sort of niche, surmounted by stalactites and a copper cupola. The position of the pulpit was always on the left side of the niche, as you look out towards the court, and the doors were turned to face the con

gregation. The mimbar is only required during the Friday (or Muslim Sunday) prayers, when the weekly sermon is preached by the Imām or Khatib of the mosque, who is a layman selected from the people of the neighbourhood, and in no special sense a priest. Standing on the topmost step but one, and holding in his right hand a long wooden sword, which is kept for the purpose behind the doors of the pulpit, he delivers the oration of the Friday Service. The reason for the position on the second step is rather curious: Mohammad the Prophet always preached from the top step, and the Khalifs, his successors, modestly descended each a step lower than the preceding, in order to reserve the post of honour to the most worthy. But when two

or three steps had thus been descended, it was discovered that the process if continued long enough would land the preacher in the bowels of the earth, and it was accordingly decided to reserve the top step for Mohammad himself, and to preach from the next lower on all future occasions.

The ornament of the pulpit is generally elaborate. Some of the more modern pulpits are indeed very plain, and constructed merely of panelled and painted wood. On the other hand, one mimbar, erected by Käït Bey in the mosque of Barkūk, in the eastern burial-ground of Cairo, is of solid stone slabs, admirably carved with arabesques and geometrical designs (fig. 16). But most of the pulpits are like that of Kaït Bey, engraved in fig. 34, and are covered with carving and inlaid with ivory and ebony. The amount of work involved in the complicated arrangement of little panels, each of which is supported in a frame of wood beading, which is itself chiselled and sometimes made in two or three envelopes, must have been very considerable; and the carving of the panels with arabesques of varying designs, no two of which are alike, in work of the best period, must have involved incredible toil and ingenuity. It may be taken as a rule, which is exemplified in most arts, that the older the work is, the simpler, freer, and more varied it is; while

CARVED PANELS OF LAGIN'S PULPIT, ONCE IN THE MOSQUE OF IBN-TULUN.

A.D. 1296.

(South Kensington Museum.)

K

complexity, intricacy, and a tendency to repetition, are signs of a later style.

The specimens engraved in figs. 35-43 will convey a fairly complete conception of the character of this typically Cairene mode of carving. The panels figs. 35-40 originally formed part of a pulpit which the Mamluk Sultan Lagin erected in the mosque of Ibn-Tūlūn in the year 1296 A.D., when he undertook the restoration of this ancient mosque. In the present day there is a very inferior pulpit there, and this must have been introduced when the fine work of which these panels formed part was taken away, by whom we do not know. The removal must however have been effected in comparatively recent times, for when Mr. James Wild, the present Curator of Sir John Soane's Museum, was in Cairo, about 1845, the older pulpit was still standing; and he made a drawing of the geometrical arrangement of the panels, which is still preserved in his sketch-books, and which was turned to advantage some years ago, when the fragments of the pulpit sides were acquired by the South Kensington Museum from M. Meymar. This sketch shows that the side included one large circular geometrical arrangement (comprising eight large octagonal panels, carved alternately with stars and arabesques round a central star), and four half-systems of the same plan, two of which were placed so that their diameters coincided with the edge of the balustrade or border of the pulpit, while the other two touched the back. The balustrade was of open lattice work, something like the narrow open panels in the Käït Bey pulpit engraved in fig. 34, and the length of the base and back of the triangular portion of the side, occupied by the carved panels, was 15 feet 9 inches. The doors were filled with carved geometrical panels, with the usual arrangement of two horizontal panels, filled with Arabic inscriptions, one above and one below each door, and a longer inscription on the lintel. The pulpit did not arrive in England in its original shape, but consisted merely of a collection of loose panels, which Mr. Wild, with the help of his sketch, arranged in a