s which the wall
cupboards often hide, and may well have occurred in houses we may visit
to-day in Cairo, for, more than any other, Cairo is the city of the
"Arabian Nights," and in our walks one may at any moment meet the
hunchback or the pastry-cook, or the one-eyed calender, whose adventures
fills so many pages of that fascinating book; while the summary justice
and drastic measures of the old khalifs are recalled by the many
instruments of torture or of death which may still be seen hanging in
the bazaars or from the city gates.

Everyone who goes to Cairo is astonished at the great number and
beauty of its mosques, nearly every street having one or more.
Altogether there are some 500 or more in Cairo, as well as a great
number of lesser shrines where the people worship. I will tell you how
this comes about. We have often read in the "Arabian Nights" in what a
high-handed and frequently unjust manner the property of some poor
unfortunate would be seized and given to another. This was very much
the case in Cairo in the olden days, and khalifs and cadis, muftis and
pashas, were not very scrupulous about whose money or possessions they
administered, and even to-day in some Mohammedan countries it is not
always wise for a man to grow rich.

[Illustration: A MOSQUE INTERIOR.]

And so it was that in order to escape robbery in the name of law many
wealthy merchants preferred to build during their lifetime a mosque or
other public building, while money left for this purpose was regarded
as sacred, and so the many beautiful sebils and mosques of Cairo
came into existence.

Egypt is so old that even the Roman times appear new, and one is
tempted to regard these glorious buildings of the Mohammedan era as
only of yesterday. Yet many of the mosques which people visit and
admire are older than any church or cathedral in England. We all think
of Lincoln Cathedral or Westminster Abbey as being very venerable
buildings, and so they are; but long before they were built the
architecture of the Mohammedans in Egypt had developed into a perfect
style, and produced many of the beautiful mosques in which the Cairene
prays to-day.

As a rule the mosque was also the tomb of its founder, and the dome
was designed as a canopy over his burial-place, so that when a mosque
is _domed_ we know it to be the mausoleum of some great man, while the
beautiful minaret or tower is common to all mosques, whether
tomb-mosque or not.

One of the m