Читать книгу Marcus Simaika - Samir Simaika - Страница 14
Оглавление| 1 | Cairo |
Marcus Simaika was born in the reign of Isma‘il Pasha on February 28, 1864, to one of the oldest Coptic families in Cairo. The Simaikas were wealthy notables from Old Cairo who could trace their ancestry to the middle of the seventeenth century through records and manuscripts in the Mu‘allaqa Church and the Coptic Museum. They were mostly magistrates who prospered in the service of the state and the Church. One of Marcus’s ancestors presented the Mu‘allaqa Church with a set of illuminated service books in Coptic and Arabic; another provided the funds for the Holy Chrism at the church, as attested by a procès-verbal held in the library of the Coptic Museum. His forebears also donated manuscripts and other treasures to the Mu‘allaqa Church.
Marcus was born in the house of his maternal grandfather, Hajj2 Boutros al-Birmawy, a Coptic notable who had accompanied Ibrahim Pasha on his Syrian campaign in the aftermath of Muhammad Ali Pasha, viceroy (wali) of Egypt’s ill-fated Greek campaign. After an appeal for help by the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808–39), Muhammad Ali Pasha had sent his army under his eldest son, Ibrahim Pasha, to quell the Greek uprising. The Egyptians conquered Crete between 1822 and 1824, and in 1825 quickly subdued the whole peninsula of Morea. On October 20, 1827, as part of the Greek War of Independence, the British, French, and Russian squadrons destroyed the combined Egyptian and Ottoman navies had entered Navarino harbor. Ibrahim Pasha had been tricked by Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, who had induced him to remain in the harbor and await instructions from Muhammad Ali Pasha. An Anglo-French convention with Muhammad Ali provided for the evacuation of the Egyptian forces from Greece in the winter of 1828–29.
Having lost his fleet, Muhammad Ali now demanded the compensation promised from the Ottoman sultan. This was the naming of Ibrahim “Wali of Syria” as a reward for crushing the Greek revolt in Crete and Morea, and the ceding of the province of Syria, which included modern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine, to Egypt. When the sultan refused, Muhammad Ali picked a quarrel with the pasha of Acre, and sent Ibrahim with an army that rapidly conquered Syria and invaded Anatolia just six months later, completely defeating the grand vizier and the main Turkish army at Koniah on December 21, 1832, and reaching Bursa. After that battle nothing remained between Ibrahim Pasha’s army and Istanbul. He was on the point of overthrowing the Ottoman Empire when, at the convention of Kutahia, France induced the sultan to grant all Syria and Adana to Muhammad Ali, as well as Crete and the Hijaz. Ibrahim Pasha was also proclaimed “Wali of Syria.” Seven years after the convention of Kutahia, the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II abrogated the Peace of Kutahia, and attacked the Egyptian forces at the Battle of Nizib on the frontier between the Ottoman Empire and Syria on June 24, 1839, but was again routed by the Egyptians.
Muhammad Ali had, in the meantime, pushed his conquests in Arabia as far as the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, and in Africa he greatly extended his empire, reaching Ethiopia and Uganda. This was accomplished with encouragement of the French, who pressed on the wali their approval of his plans for a vast Egyptian empire. Muhammad Ali Pasha had transformed Egypt into a regional power that he saw as the natural successor to the decaying Ottoman Empire. He summed up his vision of Egypt as follows: “I am well aware that the Ottoman Empire is heading by the day to destruction. On her ruins I will build a vast kingdom up to the Euphrates and the Tigris.”3
All this caused widespread European dismay, and on July 15, 1840, the Treaty of London was signed, in which Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia agreed to force a settlement on Muhammad Ali, who was to give up Crete, northern Syria, Mecca, and Medina and to return the Turkish fleet, which had surrendered to him in Alexandria. In return, Egypt and Sudan were offered as a hereditary possession, and southern Syria for life. When Muhammad Ali, with encouragement from the French, rejected these terms, the British navy bombarded Beirut on September 11, 1840, and the British army landed troops in Syria. After having encouraged Muhammad Ali, the French decided not to support him in his fight with the British forces, and Muhammad Ali was finally left with only the hereditary possession of Egypt and Sudan.
Marcus’s grandfather, Hajj Boutros al-Birmawy, accompanied Ibrahim Pasha on the Syria campaign as one of the pasha’s secretaries and later rose to become chief of the administrative service in Syria, an office he held for ten years. It was in Damascus that the mother of Marcus was born. By a curious coincidence, Marcus’s future wife’s grandfather, Hajj Makramallah Tawadros, was present in Damascus at the same time as Birmawy. He was secretary to the great Sherif Pasha, the katkhuda (lieutenant) of Muhammad Ali Pasha. Hajj Makramallah was to become a member of the first Coptic Majlis al-Milli (community council) in 1874. In his memoirs, Marcus recounts a family anecdote about his ancestors’ sojourn in Damascus.
Both were merry young men. One day, when they had singers and dancers in their apartment in the Palace, they got the worse for drinking and were making merry. The Pasha and his guests overhearing the noise they made, ordered them both to be flogged; but as they were loved by the members of the Court, the flogging was inflicted upon mattresses while the two culprits shouted for mercy until the order for flogging was stopped.4
It was at that time that some fanatical Syrian notables complained to Ibrahim Pasha that regulations forbidding Christians from riding horses were being ignored, and that many Christians were riding the noble steed, preserved so far exclusively for the use of Muslims. Ibrahim Pasha, after listening to their complaints said, “Let the faithful be more exalted; let them ride camels.”
On his return to Egypt Haj Butros el Birmawi, who was a widower, insisted that my mother should continue to live with him after her marriage, and I and all my brothers and my only sister were born in his beautiful ancient house at Darb el Wase‘.5
Hajj Birmawy’s house in Cairo was situated at the entrance of Darb al-Wasi‘ Street, within two hundred meters of the Coptic cathedral at Azbakiya, a mostly Coptic quarter of Cairo. It was the corner house on the street and overlooked the great gate of that quarter. Cairo was founded in 969 by Jawhar al-Siqilli, a Fatimid general, as the royal city of the Fatimid Caliphate (969–1171) with a defensive wall. Badr al-Jamali (1015–94), a Muslim convert of Armenian Christian extraction, built a second wall around Cairo in 1092. Al-Jamali was the commander of the forces under the caliphate and imamate of al-Mustansir and the de facto ruler of the Fatimid Empire at the time. This double-walled city had a significant number of fortified gates, protecting both the inner and outer city areas.
The primary purpose of these gates was defense, but they were also essential for management and administrative affairs. The gates delineated districts and movements of the various social and economic classes. No one was allowed to enter Cairo or stay there except its residents or those with a special purpose, and only during the daytime. At night, the gates of the city were locked and many of the streets with large wooden doors at either end were shut for the night as well. One of these gates, protected by strong iron plates and bolts, is displayed in the Coptic Museum.
In Cairo, as in most other Egyptian towns, families preserved old religious customs and traditions by living together in one quarter. The city was divided into various quarters where each community lived together, with its places of worship and its schools. The gates of these quarters were closed during the frequent uprisings that occurred prior to the reign of Muhammad Ali Pasha. The Copts favored three quarters: the first at Azbakiya, the second at Haret al-Saqqayin, including the district around the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, and the third at Haret Zuweila. They lived in their quarters as members of one big family, spending their evenings at the houses of the leading members of their communities. The men gathered on the ground floor while the upper stories were exclusively reserved for the women. This arrangement enabled both rich and poor families to keep their social customs and their religious traditions intact. These gates were demolished by order of Napoleon Bonaparte during the French occupation of Cairo (1798–1801) to facilitate the movement of troops necessary to repress the frequent local uprisings. With the demolition of the gates and the rapid growth of Cairo, families and communities dispersed and old customs were soon neglected.
The house in which Marcus was born consisted of three stories surrounded by a big courtyard. At that time, architects never prepared a general plan of the houses they built; they made separate plans for each floor, with no regard to the rest of the house. The ground floor consisted of reception rooms which had ceilings six to ten meters high, as well as storerooms with ceilings from three to three and a half meters in height. As a result, the rooms on the upper floors were not all on the same level and one had to go up or down from two to as many as ten steps in passing from one room to another.
The house was built like a small fortress and could withstand weeks of siege. This was a necessary precaution as uprisings, anarchy, and looting were frequent before Muhammad Ali Pasha seized power in 1805. Disputes would often arise between the Mamluks, the Albanian soldiery, and the Sudanese soldiery. These uprisings would last a number of days or weeks, until order was restored. In the meantime, shops in the marketplace would close and supplies would become scarce.
The ground floor consisted of two large reception mandaras (rooms) for men and an open takhtabush (portico), as well as several storerooms, a stable, a mill, a well of brackish water, and a water cistern paved and lined with marble slabs. Once a year, at the time of the Nile floods, this cistern was thoroughly cleaned, fumigated with incense, and refilled with pure water. The stores contained a plentiful supply of wheat, beans, maize, jars of clarified butter, different jams, pickled olives, and cheese. Sheep, poultry, and pigeons were also kept. No importance was given to the main staircase, which did not receive light by any window. The bathrooms were on the second floor and consisted of two apartments, an outer one where clothes were removed and an inner one which had hardly any ventilation, light being admitted through glazed holes in the ceiling. This was to better concentrate the heat. All the windows of the upper stories were adorned with fine wooden mashrabiyas (latticework) which enabled the female occupants to see—without being seen—what passed in the courtyard and the surrounding streets.
The uppermost story was reserved for the master of the house. On account of his great age, he preferred to be undisturbed by the children—of whom Marcus was one—who were allowed to go up to kiss his hand once a day. His private drawing room was reached by an open portico covered by a slanting malqaf (roof), constructed so as to catch the northern breeze. This portico ended in a large latticed window facing north and was the antechamber to the qa‘a, this last room being the most important and best adorned in the house. It was divided into two liwans, separated by a turka (passage) about ten centimeters lower than the level of the two liwans. Guests would leave their shoes and slippers in this turka, before stepping barefooted into the carpeted liwans. The turka extended from the door of the qa‘a to a suffa—a characteristic low mantelpiece adorned with tiles and surrounded by stained glass windows—at the other end. On the suffa were placed coffee cups, narguiles, a basin and ewer for washing hands before and after meals, water bottles, and ashtrays. The gullas (alcazars) were generally placed in a receptacle in the middle of the latticed windows, so that the drafts could keep the water cool, while the several-feet-long, long-stemmed chibouks (pipes) had a special place in the wall cupboards. The furniture of the room was simple. Its floor was strewn with mats covered with carpets, and seating accommodation consisted of mattresses and cushions covered with rugs of fine workmanship. There were also a number of cupboards fixed to the walls with shelves and pigeonholes, where Hajj Birmawy kept a beautiful collection of blue china and urns in carved copper.
The work of the house was carried out by female slaves. These were supplied by gallabs (slave dealers), who generally sent a batch of three or four for the mistress of the house to choose from. They were usually young girls, twelve to fifteen years of age. They would be displayed to the lady of the house naked, but for a girdle around their loins, and a few beads around their necks, resembling bronze statues. If the mistress of the house was dissatisfied with any of her slaves, the gallab was sent for and a substitute chosen, taking into account any difference of price between the two. When their good fortune led them to a kindly household, these slaves were generally well treated, and on growing old, regarded themselves and were looked upon as members of the family.
The household duties were divided among the slaves. Some prepared bread with great skill. On baking day, they would rise at dawn, particularly during the summer months to avoid flies, there being no glass panes to the kitchen windows. Other slaves were responsible for the washing, others for the cleaning and tidying of rooms; still others cooked or looked after the children. Slavery in Egypt was to disappear gradually in the 1880s and the 1890s.
The ladies of the house supervised the work of the slaves and did the sewing and mending. They were skilled at embroidery, and ecclesiastic vestments were often made by their pious hands. In those days, unfortunately, very few women were taught reading and writing. Upon his grandfather’s death, Marcus recounted how the house was plunged into deep mourning according to Coptic tradition.
On my grandfather’s death, my mother and her sisters, as was the custom in those days, turned down the carpets, had all furniture covered with black sheets, veiled the mirrors, sprinkled the walls with indigo, and in their grief they broke the fine collection of old blue china which adorned the shelves of the drawing room. I still remember vividly my pain as I piously collected some fragments. Later I searched and found a few dishes and bowls that are still in my possession.6
