Ibn Battuta leaves for Cairo via Damietta
We rode from here to Damietta through a number of towns, in each of which we visited
the principal men of religion. Damietta lies on the bank of the Nile, and the people in
the houses next to the river draw water from it in buckets. Many of the houses have steps
leading down to the river. Their sheep and goats are allowed to pasture at liberty day and
night; for this reason the saying goes of Damietta "Its walls are sweetmeats and its
dogs are sheep." Anyone who enters the city may not afterwards leave it except by the
governor's seal. Persons of repute have a seal stamped on a piece of paper so that they
may show it to the gatekeepers; other persons have the seal stamped on their forearms. In
this city there are many seabirds with extremely greasy flesh, and the milk of its
buffaloes is unequalled for sweetness and pleasant taste. The fish called buri is exported
thence to Syria, Anatolia, and Cairo. The present town is of recent construction; the old
city was that destroyed by the Franks in the time of al Malik as as-Salih.
From Damietta I travelled to Fariskur, which is a town on the bank of the Nile, and
halted outside it. Here I was overtaken by a horseman who had been sent after me by the
governor of Damietta. He handed me a number of coins saying to me "The Governor asked
for you, and on being informed about you, he sent you this gift"--may God reward him!
Thence I travelled to Ashmun, a large and ancient town on a canal derived from the Nile.
It possesses a wooden bridge at which all vessels anchor, and in the afternoon the baulks
are lifted and the vessels pass up and down. From here I went to Samannud, whence I
journeyed upstream to Cairo, between a continuous succession of towns and villages. The
traveller on the Nile need take no provision with him because whenever he desires to
descend on the bank he may do so, for ablutions, prayers, provisioning, or any other
purpose. There is an uninterrupted chain of bazaars from Alexandria to Cairo, and from
Cairo to Assuan [Aswan] in Upper Egypt.
Arrival in Cairo pp. 50-55.
I arrived at length at Cairo, mother of cities and seat of Pharaoh the tyrant, mistress
of broad regions and fruitful lands, boundless in multitude of buildings, peerless in
beauty and splendour, the meeting-place of comer and goer, the halting-place of feeble and
mighty, whose throngs surge as the waves of the sea, and can scarce be contained in her
for all her size and capacity. It is said that in Cairo there are twelve thousand
water-carriers who transport water on camels, and thirty thousand hirers of mules and
donkeys, and that on the Nile there are thirty-six thousand boats belonging to the Sultan
and his subjects which sail upstream to Upper Egypt and downstream to Alexandria and
Damietta, laden with goods and profitable merchandise of all kinds.
A pleasure garden
On the bank of the Nile opposite Old Cairo is the place known as The Garden, which is a
pleasure park and promenade, containing many beautiful gardens, for the people of Cairo
are given to pleasure and amusements. I witnessed a fete once in Cairo for the sultan's
recovery from a fractured hand; all the merchants decorated their bazaars and had rich
stuffs, ornaments and silken fabrics hanging in their shops for several days.
Religious institutions
The mosque of 'Amr is highly venerated and widely celebrated. The Friday service is
held in it and the road runs through it from east to west. The madrasas [college mosques]
of Cairo cannot be counted for multitude. As for the Maristan [hospital], which lies
"between the two castles" near the mausoleum of Sultan Qala'un, no description
is adequate to its beauties. It contains an innumerable quantity of appliances and
medicaments, and its daily revenue is put as high as a thousand dinars.
There are a large number of religious establishments ["convents "] which they
call khanqahs, and the nobles vie with one another in building them. Each of these is set
apart for a separate school of darwishes, mostly Persians, who are men of good education
and adepts in the mystical doctrines. Each has a superior and a doorkeeper and their
affairs are admirably organized. They have many special customs one of which has to do
with their food. The steward of the house comes in the morning to the darwishes, each of
whom indicates what food he desires, and when they assemble for meals, each person is
given his bread and soup in a separate dish, none sharing with another. They eat twice a
day. They are each given winter clothes and summer clothes, and a monthly allowance of
from twenty to thirty dirhams. Every Thursday night they receive sugar cakes, soap to wash
their clothes, the price of a bath, and oil for their lamps. These men are celibate; the
married men have separate convents.
At Cairo too is the great cemetery of al-Qarafa, which is a place of peculiar sanctity
and contains the graves of innumerable scholars and pious believers. In the Qarafa the
people build beautiful pavilions surrounded by walls, so that they look like houses. They
also build chambers and hire Koran-readers who recite night and day in agreeable voices.
Some of them build religious houses and madrasas beside the mausoleums and on Thursday
nights they go out to spend the night there with their children and women-folk, and make a
circuit of the famous tombs. They go out to spend the night there also on the "Night
of midSha'ban," and the market-people take out all kinds of eatables. Among the many
celebrated sanctuaries [in the city] is the holy shrine where there reposes the head of
alHusayn. Beside it is a vast monastery of striking construction, on the doors of which
there are silver rings and plates of the same metal.
The great river Nile
The Egyptian Nile surpasses all rivers of the earth in sweetness of taste, length of
course, and utility. No other river in the world can show such a continuous series of
towns and villages along its banks, or a basin so intensely cultivated. Its course is from
South to North, contrary to all the other great rivers. One extraordinary thing about it
is that it begins to rise in the extreme hot weather at the time when rivers generally
diminish and dry up, and begins to subside just when rivers begin to increase and
overflow. The river Indus resembles it in this feature. The Nile is one of the five great
rivers of the world, which are the Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, Syr Darya and Amu Darya; five
other rivers resemble these, the Indus, which is called Panj Ab [i.e. Five Rivers], the
river of India which is called Gang [Ganges]--it is to it that the Hindus go on
pilgrimage, and when they burn their dead they throw the ashes into it, and they say that
it comes from Paradise--the river Jun [Jumna or perhaps Brahmaputra] in India, the river
Itil [Volga] in the Qipchaq steppes, on the banks of which is the city of Sara, and the
river Saru [Hoang-Ho] in the land of Cathay. All these will be mentioned in their proper
places, if God will. Some distance below Cairo the Nile divides into three streams, none
of which can be crossed except by boat, winter or summer. The inhabitants of every
township have canals led off the Nile; these are filled when the river is in flood and
carry the water over the fields.
Upriver
From Cairo I travelled into Upper Egypt, with the intention of crossing to the Hijaz.
On the first night I stayed at the monastery of Dayr at-Tin, which was built to house
certain illustrious relics--a fragment of the Prophet's wooden basin and the pencil with
which he used to apply kohl, the awl he used for sewing his sandals, and the Koran
belonging to the Caliph Ali written in his own hand. These were bought, it is said, for a
hundred thousand dirhams by the builder of the monastery, who also established funds to
supply food to all comers and to maintain the guardians of the sacred relics.
Thence my way lay through a number of towns and villages to Munyat Ibn Khasib [Minia],
a large town which is built on the bank of the Nile, and most emphatically excels all the
other towns of Upper Egypt. I went on through Manfalut, Asyut, Ikhmim, where there is a
berba with sculptures and inscriptions which no one can now read-another of these berbas
there was pulled down and its stones used to build a madrasa--Qina, Qus, where the
governor of Upper Egypt resides, Luxor, a pretty little town containing the tomb of the
pious ascetic Abu'l-Hajjaj, Esna, and thence a day and a night's journey through desert
country to Edfu.
Camels, Hyenas, and Bejas
Here we crossed the Nile and, hiring camels, journeyed with a party of Arabs through a
desert, totally devoid of settlements but quite safe for travelling. One of our halts was
at Humaythira, a place infested with hyenas. All night long we kept driving them away, and
indeed one got at my baggage, tore open one of the sacks, pulled out a bag of dates, and
made off with it. We found the bag next morning, torn to pieces and with most of the
contents eaten. After fifteen days' travelling we reached the town of Aydhab, a large
town, well supplied with milk and fish; dates and grain are imported from Upper Egypt. Its
inhabitants are Bejas. These people are black-skinned; they wrap themselves in yellow
blankets and tie headbands about a fingerbreadth wide round their heads. They do not give
their daughters any share in their inheritance. They live on camels milk and they ride on
Meharis [dromedaries]. One-third of the city belongs to the Sultan of Egypt and two-thirds
to the King of the Bejas, who is called al-Hudrubi. On reaching Aydhab we found that
al-Hudrubi was engaged in warfare with the Turks [i.e. the troops of the Sultan of Egypt],
that he had sunk the ships and that the Turks had fled before him. It was impossible for
us to attempt the sea-crossing [across the Red Sea], so we sold the provisions that we had
made ready for it, and returned to Qus with the Arabs from whom we had hired the camels.
Back downriver to Cairo; from Cairo to Syria and Jerusalem
We sailed thence down the Nile (it was at the flood time) and after an eight days'
journey reached Cairo, where I stayed only one night, and immediately set out for Syria.
This was in the middle of July, 1326. My route lay through Bilbays and as-Salihiya, after
which we entered the sands and halted at a number of stations. At each of these there was
a hostelry which they call a khan, where travellers alight with their beasts. Each khan
has a water wheel supplying a fountain and a shop at which the traveller buys what he
requires for himself and his beast.
