Bensalem Himmich - The Polymath

The serenity I am feeling tonight is just a small part of what ‘Amr himself — peace be upon him — must have felt.

Fustat is the place I love. To how many companions has she offered a refuge in abodes that time has worn away? How often have destructive hands roamed over her and piles of refuse accumulated in her confines? She has now become a haven for riff-raff and indigents, people who eat beans and peeled chickpeas!

There is Fustat, the place I love, spread out in front of me, with its houses, ancient mosque, baths, bazaars, and promenades, all bunched close to the Nile, with the islands of Roda and Giza close at hand on the other bank. Even closer than Fustat is the mosque of Sayyida Nafisa, the mosque of Ibn Tulun, and the Elephant Lake.

Anyone who can gaze out on the sights that I see has to feel a sense of enormous pleasure!

By this time night was falling. With it came a cool breeze, presaging the appearance of the stars in the night sky and lights. The entire spot where I was sitting was suffused with a gentle serenity. I had no idea how long it had lasted until I heard the call to evening prayer. I immediately stood, performed my ritual ablutions, and prayed the proper number of prostrations. Once I had finished, I went back to the balcony, wrapped myself in my cloak, and lay down. With that, I let sleep have its way, but not before I had recited to myself some lines of poetry that suddenly occurred to me:

When night clothed me in its apparel ,

it was a young man in pain that donned it .

“Prayer is better than sleep, sir.” That was the wake-up call I heard through the door of my room. I woke up with a start, and found myself on the silk bed. I allowed the owner of the voice to come in. My sense of shock disappeared when he told me that he had been worried about my catching cold, so he had carried me from the balcony to the bed. The exhausting journey had, no doubt, sent me into a deep sleep and made me lose all consciousness. The servant placed a breakfast tray in front of me and laid out some white robes. Reminding me that the Friday noon prayers would be happening soon, he went out and closed the door.

I leapt out of bed and went to the bathroom. After completing my toilet and washing, I hurriedly performed the morning prayer. I was especially anxious to have everything done before my appointment with the sultan. On the dressing table I spotted a container with toothpicks, a brush, and ajar of kohl. I started putting on my new clothes: a brocade kaftan and woolen mantle with green lining. I left the headcloth and cope to one side, and made do with cleaning my teeth and sprinkling my body and beard with rose water. Tying the turban around my head, I yelled for the servant. He came in with a thurible full of sweet-scented incense which he put down in front of me and left there till the smoke began to dwindle. I now tied the burnons round my shoulders and suggested we leave.

So there I was, about to enter the sultan’s presence, perfumed to the hilt and decked out in a finery that was not my own; almost as though I had been transformed into someone else. I prayed, “Dear God, give this day a happy outcome, and shower me with Your pardon and triumph!”

The servant went on his way apace. I tried valiantly to keep up and kept snatching glances at the servants and soldiers in the courtyards and stables or standing at various gateways. Once he had escorted me as far as the congregational mosque, he left me to join all the other people going to prayer and make my way to a point close by the mosque’s mihrab. My ritual ablutions were still valid, so I made a point of hurrying so as to avoid the possibility of being assaulted by any of the criminals that I had either slapped or thrown in jail while I was the Maliki judge in al-Salihiya. It was only with great difficulty that I managed to make my way to the front row close by the sultan’s private prayer space. People stared at me, showing a mixture of respect and curiosity. Some of my acquaintances in the administration or the coterie of intellectuals came over and congratulated me on having completed the pilgrimage; my expressions of thanks took the form of embraces and as much cordiality as I could muster. The last of them was the military commander, or dawadar , Yahya Qutuz, who whispered in my ear that his master intended to accord me an audience in his reception room just before noon. Just then it was announced that the exalted sultan, al-Malik al-Zahir, had entered his prayer space. Everyone stood up and bowed in his direction. There were so many armed men shielding him from the congregation of worshippers that he was scarcely visible. “Praise to Him who makes the manumitted slave into a sultan,” I said to myself. “He who makes whomsoever He pleases into a monarch, even were he to be a well-marked slave.”

Once everyone sat down, the preacher, all dressed in black, mounted the pulpit which was draped in two black flags, the symbols of the ‘Abbasi caliphate. Taking a sword from the muezzin who announced the call to prayer, duly followed by the other muezzins, the preacher greeted the congregation and recited the hadith: “If you are talking to your companion on Friday while the imam is preaching, then listen instead. You have been in error.” This served as a prelude to the preacher reading from the prepared text normally used during Friday prayers. However, the obligatory mention of the ‘Abbasi caliphs was significantly truncated, while prayers for the success, support, glory, and empowerment of the sultan were elaborate, almost as if the sultan were beset by a variety of dangers and a host of foes. Once he had finished and somewhat hurriedly led the prayers, he gave the people his farewell greetings. The sultan and his entourage departed, and people began leaving in droves.

I stayed where I was till there was some more space. Looking to left and right I spotted the dawadar waiting for me to stand. I got up and went over, and he ordered a slave to accompany me to the darga .

The darga , you ask!

After crossing a stone staircase and lengthy courtyard via a gently tiered stairway, I came to realize that this darga was a large space where people with an appointment to see the sultan would await permission to enter. I took a deep breath, fondly imagining that here I was, right next to the huge colonnade in the Ablaq Palace and that the hour of my deliverance was at hand.

I sat down on a bench by an iron window through which could be seen part of the sultan’s stables. I could only imagine the well-coddled lifestyle the horses and camels enjoyed with all their servants, grooms, and doctors. One well-known fact about this Mamluk dynasty, as well as others like them, was that making a big display of stables was a source of enormous pride. Every ruler was anxious to outdo his predecessors by expanding them and making plans for still more enlargements, whether it involved workhorses from Barqa or more resplendent Arabian stallions. This window also provided a glimpse of the Citadel’s large square, with soaring fountains, lofty palms, and fruit and sweet-basil trees. When I took a closer look, I even spotted a private playing field reserved for sultans and their coterie to one side.

So, here in this darga , with its vaulted roof, lofty pillars, and marble floor, here is where mankind has to wait for admission to the presence of the one who has the power to authorize salary increases and taxes or to cut them off; someone who can release people or have them strangled, one who may question but never be questioned. His long arm extends everywhere, taking and giving as he sees fit. He has eyes in every nook and cranny, and he alone is both ruler and overseer.

This waiting room is like the way of life itself. You’re left standing behind the walls, while the lord of the state kitchen forces you to mark time by the beats of your own heart. It leaves you feeling distraught, shattered, and utterly impotent, trying to remain patient as you swallow your anger along with your spittle. The point of it all is to make you doubt both who you are and why you’re there: you start to think about what it was you said that was inappropriate or what mistake you might have made. The tissue of rumors about you has turned into a veritable volcano of royal aggravations, then full-scale disasters.