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We got up a search party, and with the aid of the man who had driven you, ran you to earth in a dirty alley behind the mosque of El-Azhar. Four kindly mendicants, who reside upon the steps of the establishment, had been awakened by your blundering in among them. They were holding you yes, you were raving pretty badly. You are a lucky man, Cairn. You were inoculated before you left home?"
From the "Red Mosque" I went to the great mosque of El-Azhar, to the wonderful mosque of Sultan Hassan, which unfortunately was being repaired and could not be properly seen, though the examination of the old portal covered with silver, gold, and brass, the general color-effect of which is a delicious dull green, repaid me for my visit, and to the exquisitely graceful tomb-mosque of Kait Bey, which is beyond the city walls.
"Yes, the City of the Horizon, the capital he built when he found it necessary for the progress of his new religion to get away from Thebes, from the priests of Amon-Ra." Michael's thoughts became absorbed. They travelled to the mid-African in el-Azhar and then became mixed up with this meeting with the desert-saint.
Then it is true!" Margaret, the old man in el-Azhar, and the saint, they had all seen and spoken the truth. For a moment the stranger was forgotten. It was Margaret who was looking at him with glad triumphant eyes. Happy Meg! "Yes, the heretic Pharaoh," the stranger said, as he gazed fixedly at Michael. Was this man more than a little touched with the sun? He felt nervous of how to proceed.
He showed great favour to the Christians, especially to Severus, Bishop of El-Ashmunein, and the patriarch Ephrem; and under his orders, and with his assistance, the church of the Mu'allakah, in Old Misr, was rebuilt. Gohar, when he founded that city, built the great mosque named El-Azhar, the university of Egypt, which to this day is crowded with students from all parts of the Moslem world.
Spite of ourselves we raise our heads, fascinated by all the beauty that is in the air; but there is only this square of marvellous sky, a sort of limpid sapphire, set in the battlements of El-Azhar and fringed by those audacious slender towers.
And in the sky, to which they raise their eyes, the heavens framed always by the battlements of El-Azhar are almost white from the excess of light, with a border of tall, red minarets, which seem to be aglow with the refection of some great fire.
It was the forerunner of a higher civilization. He put his head between his hands and rested it on his knees. He knew that his words were true. And yet, had not his old friend in el-Azhar been as sincerely convinced that this war which he had visualized was to be fought for the triumph of Islam?
His nerves chafed at the unnecessary delay. And yet he must not hurry, for his mind foresaw great difficulty, even in the matter of persuading the holy man to travel with them. The seer at el-Azhar had promised him that a "child of God" would lead him. If he waited and trusted and just let things take their course, all things would come right.
If the king is merely a picturesque figure-head, like the carved heads of Venus on a vessel's prow, I'd have no objection, but a despotic and vain peacock like the Kaiser, who turns his subjects into military instruments, in my opinion wants destroying along with the other rubbish." "But to go back," Meg said, "to your old friend in el-Azhar do tell me more about him."
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