been said we know almost nothing of Mamlūk armour; and although there is undoubtedly a "Market of Arms" in Cairo which once plied a busy trade, it is doubtful whether their work did not chiefly consist in fitting and adapting the weapons and armour of Persia and the Indies. Two helmets in the Tower of London have indeed an Egyptian look, and I should be inclined to ascribe them to Cairo workmen of the period of Kalaūn (end of the thirteenth century). These are, however, quite exceptional; and most of the arms attributed to Egypt are undoubtedly Syrian or Persian. It must not be forgotten that, to the Mamlūks, Damascus was almost as much their capital as Cairo; and while Damascus blades were to be had there was little inducement for the establish

ment of an Egyptian school of armourers. The list of Beybars' presents (p. 28) includes Damascus weapons, and pikes tempered by the Arabs, but no Cairo armour is mentioned.

CHAPTER VIII.

GLASS.

IT is interesting to remark that the Saracens, while they had to begin with no art of their own, and learned all their aesthetic training from their foreign subjects, yet contrived to introduce some element of distinctive originality into almost every branch of artistic work. Thus the carved panels of the Cairo pulpits are a genus by themselves; only in Cairo can such work be seen. The metal-work of Mesopotamia, Damascus, and Cairo, is wholly unlike any other metal-work in the world, except that which was avowedly an imitation of it. It is not merely that the designs are varied, or new shapes introduced; the whole character of the work is distinct from any other style. The chased inlay of silver in the metal-work, and the self-contained arabesques and geometrical panelling of doors, ceilings, and stone-work, are features which we may seek in vain to match in Europe.

So is it with their glass; it is absolutely unique in character. Without prejudging the question whether some of the mosque lamps were imitated in Italy or not, at least no one will dispute that they form a distinct class by themselves, and that no other glass resembles them in the shape, the general style, or the details of the ornament. Nor do the stained glass windows of the mosques and houses of Cairo offer any analogy to the windows of our cathedrals, or any other windows at all. In glass, as in most other artistic industries, the differentiating genius of the Saracen artist displays itself in a special character persistently maintained through many centuries.

The oldest glass in the world belongs to Egypt. The dull

green and opaque blue glass of the Pharaohs is well known, and there can be little doubt that the art was not suffered to die out under the Greek and Roman governors, though examples of these periods are not numerous. The Arab and other Mohammadan rulers of this province of the Muslim empire encouraged the manufacture of glass, at least in the insignificant form of small weights for testing the accuracy of coins. The British Museum possesses a large collection of these glass weights, bearing inscriptions which assign them to definite dates. Some have the names of the early Egyptian governors under the Damascus and Baghdad Khalifs, of the eighth and ninth centuries, but most of them present the names of the Fatimy Khalifs of the tenth and especially of the eleventh century, more rarely the twelfth. These coin weights prove at least that the making of glass had not become a lost art in Egypt. We read in the life of St. Odilo, bishop of Fulda, of a vas pretiosissimum vitreum Alexandrini generis, which was on the table of the Emperor Henry in the first half of the eleventh century. There is a vase in the treasury of St. Mark's, at Venice, of nearly opaque turquoise paste, inscribed with Arabic characters, which may probably be of the tenth century. "The bowl is fivesided, and on each side is the rude figure of a hare. These figures, as well as the inscription, are in low relief, and were probably cut with the wheel. The setting is in filigree, with stones and ornaments of cloissonné enamels." Cups of rock crystal of the same century are in existence and are frequently mentioned by the Arab historians, who even describe thrones and other large objects made of this mineral, which offers some analogy to glass in the process of cutting on the wheel, and which must have induced imitations in the cheaper substance.

Most of the existing glass-work of Egypt, however, belongs to the fourteenth century, and consists of lamps intended to be suspended in the mosques of Cairo. "All show that the

* A. Nesbitt, Descriptive Catalogue of the Glass Vessels in the South Kensington Museum, lxiv., &c.

makers were tolerably expert glass-blowers, and could produce vessels of considerable size; but the glass is of bad colour and full of bubbles and imperfections. The makers had learnt, probably from the Byzantines, the art of gilding and enamelling glass, and made much use of it. Inscriptions in large characters are favourite ornaments; figures of birds, animals, sphinxes, and other monsters, are found. The outlines are generally put on in red enamel, the spaces between being often gilt. The enamels are used sometimes as grounds and sometimes for the ornaments; the usual colours are blue, green, yellow, red, pale red, and white."*

There is every reason to believe that these mosque lamps were made at Cairo, or at all events that the best and oldest specimens were made there,† though the coarser and more modern sort has been attributed to imitators at Murano (Venice), who are believed to have worked for the Mamluk Sultans. It is true that Damascus and Tyre had a greater name for glass-working; Nasir-i-Khusrau, remarks that Tyre exported glass vessels worked on the wheel; William of Tyre writes to the same effect; and Benjamin of Tudela, in the twelfth century, speaks of ten glass-manufacturers at Antioch, and four hundred Jews at Tyre (Sūr) "shipowners and manufacturers of the celebrated Tyrian glass." In the Royal Inventories of France are notices of several glass vessels, among the possessions of Charles V., in 1380, described as "of the Damascus style," among others une lampe de voirre outrée en façon de Damas sans aucun garnison. It was, however, the custom among our mediaeval chroniclers to regard Damascus as the centre of Saracenic art, and to call everything Oriental à la façon de Damas, and the term must not be pressed too far. Some lamps may, indeed, be the product of the glass-workers of Tyre or Damascus ; and one in the South Kensington Museum is stated to have come from a mosque

* A. Nesbitt, Descriptive Catalogue of the Glass Vessels in the South Kensington Museum, lxiv., &c.

They were called Kandil Ka'aūny, "Kalaūn's lamp."

which seems to be near Damascus, and another believed to be from Damascus is in the British Museum. Most of the Cairo lamps, however, were doubtless made in the city where they were destined to hang, or at the not far distant Mansūra, famous for its glass-works. It must always be remembered that the probability of fragile objects, such as glass and pottery, being made in the immediate neighbourhood of their destination is very strong, in the absence of distinct evidence of importation. We know that there were glass-works at Cairo. Nasir-i-Khusrau* states that a transparent glass of great purity was, in his time, made at Misr, by which he means Fustāt, or Old Cairo; and if he had not said this, the numerous fragments which are constantly picked up on the mounds of rubbish which lie between Cairo and the site of Fustāt would be proof enough. It is curious, however, that lamps should be almost the only objects of glass that seem to have been made at Cairo. It is recorded that the Mamluks used glass drinkingvessels, and so much might be inferred from the representation of cups on their metal-work, which are plainly intended for glass or horn vessels. Nevertheless, there is a complete absence of mediaeval glass cups, or other vessels of undoubted Egyptian manufacture; and the only glass objects besides the lamps are a few bottles, decorated with enamel like the lamps, but in more delicate lines, chiefly of red and gold; and the coin weights, to which we have already referred.

Of the enamelled glass mosque lamps there are five examples of the finest kind at the British Museum, three equally superb specimens belong to the South Kensington Museum, besides four others exhibited there on loan by the Khedive. A few are to be found in private collections, of which that of M. Charles Schefer, at Paris, is among the most remarkable; Mr. Magniac has a lamp of Sultan Hasan, and Linant Pasha had others of the Amirs Sheykhu and Almās. So few now come into the market that the

*Sefer Nameh, ed. C. Schefer, 152.