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In 1762 a fire did considerable damage, which was not repaired till 1805. The inscriptions are of no great historical interest. "Wa lá ghálib ílá Allah" "there is none victorious but God" abounds here, as at the Alhambra, and there are some very neat specimens of the Kufic character.
Three large cisterns for water are still in a fair state of preservation, and I am told that a Kufic inscription was found here some years ago. There seems no doubt that this town is the one mentioned by the Arab geographers, Abou'lfida and Edrisi, by the name of Aydab, which was a place of considerable importance between Ras Bernas and Sawakin.
Hard by the Debalohp mausoleum was another Kufic tower, though much smaller than those we had seen on the coast, and not covered with white cement, and in the same locality were several foundations of circular buildings very neatly executed in dry masonry, which appeared to have at either end the bases of two circular towers and curious bulges, which at once reminded us of our South African ruins.
On the hill immediately above us was the circular fort, with its door to the east, to which I shall later allude, and on the plain below was another and smaller Kufic tower, several round buildings, and large stones erected on several of the adjacent hills evidently to act as landmarks.
Then, when the destruction of the seat of the brutal autocrat was complete, the débris with the torn silk, and the long strips of crimson cloth, whereon good counsels from the Korân were embroidered in Kufic characters of gold, that had formed a kind of frieze to the chamber, were carried out into the court by fifty willing hands, heaped up and there burnt.
Around the body of the mosque runs a fine inscription in Kufic letters, and from the fact that the name of Ali is joined with that of the Prophet in the profession of faith, we may argue that this mosque was built during some Persian occupation, and was a Shiite mosque.
In the cathedral of Tarragona an elegant Moorish arch is noticeable, with a Kufic inscription giving the date as 960 A.D. For four centuries after this city was destroyed by Tarîf it remained unoccupied, so that much cannot be expected to call to mind his dynasty.
This mine was visited and identified by MM. Linant and Bonomi; there they found an excavation 180 feet deep, handmills similar to ours, and traces of about three hundred miners' huts, also several Kufic inscriptions on a rock. The mines, Edrisi tells us, were twelve days inland from Aydab. We must therefore look elsewhere for a notice of another mine nearer the Red Sea.
Sawakin Kadim is like Berenice, nothing but a mass of mounds, but it must at some time or another have been a much larger place. We excavated one of these mounds, but found nothing earlier than Kufic remains, unless the graves, which were constructed of four large blocks of madrepore sunk deep into the ground, may be looked upon as a more ancient form of sepulture.
The land approach is still guarded by Moorish towers and citadel. In Zocodovar which takes its name from the word sôk, "market-place" we find a very Moorish "plaza," with its irregular windows and balconies, and in San Eugenio are some remains of an old mosque with Kufic inscriptions, as well as an arch and tomb of elaborate design.
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