Saliba Street

What we’re looking at here is not a monument (1), it’s the intersection itself. This is Saliba, literally, “the Cross,” the intersection of the two most important streets in Mamluk Cairo.

The importance of the north-south street is clear on the map. This is the 1,000-year-old central spine of Historic Cairo. It runs from the necropolis around the shrine of Sayeda Nefisa in the south, past this intersection, up through Bab Zuweila into the walled city of el-Qahira and out its northern end at Bab el-Futouh. This was the Grand Avenue, and its most famous section is Bein el-Qasrein, the Palace Walk, the symbolic heart of the old city.

But what is so significant about the east-west street here, best known as Saliba Street?

Let’s put it this way: Bein el-Qasrein has all the fame, but Saliba Street is where the action happened.

Saliba Street was the main access route in and out of the Citadel, the seat of the sultan’s power. The mansions of all the most powerful emirs were massed in the neighborhoods around Saliba Street and the nearby Birket el-Fil Lake. These were the warlords who filled the sultan’s court and commanded his armies, who conspired with him or against him.

Just by virtue of its physical location and these connections, many of the Mamluk era’s dramas played out on Saliba Street. When emirs rose up against the sultan or clashed with each other, the battles often happened here. Every army marching off to war in Syria passed through this intersection, every hajj caravan heading for Mecca, every sultan riding to a country pleasure palace north of Cairo, every emir going to Giza for a hunting trip.

The maps below give an idea of the layout. They work off the maps from the French Description de l’Egypte published in 1809, but the shape of the city would have been roughly the same in the Mamluk era. Saliba Street is in green, the Grand Avenue (or el-Shari’ el-A’zam in Arabic) in red.

The second map below gives a wider picture. Whenever a sultan had a grand procession, it would almost always go from the Citadel through the Saliba intersection, turn a right and head to Bab Zuweila to parade through Bein el-Qasrein. (You might say, isn’t the route via el-Darb el-Ahmar quicker to reach the walled city, but the chroniclers of the era never talk of a sultan going that way.)

Or, you could continue straight through the Saliba crossroads, cross the canal at the Bridge of Lions and make your way to the polo grounds at Midan el-Zahiri, located in what’s now Bab el-Louq, or to the Nile port at Boulaq. This was the route of shame taken by emirs and officials who fell out of favor with the sultan, led in chains to Boulaq to be transported by boat to Alexandria Prison.

The name Saliba first starts to appear in the Mamluk chronicles at the end of the 13th Century.

At first, it referred specifically to this intersection, but it later expanded to encompass the whole street. At the time, Ibn Touloun Mosque was the only major monument along its length, and the areas around it were largely undeveloped gardens surrounding Birket el-Fil Lake.

In those early days, it was important mainly as the route sultans took to their polo grounds.

Sultan Lajin, for example, was famed for his polo skills. He liked to show off on the field by hurling his mallet high in the air as he galloped, then stand in his saddle to catch it. One autumn day in 1297 as he did his trick for the crowds, he tumbled off his horse. The crowd was stunned for a tense few moments until Lajin stood and, to show he was ok, waved his mallet — hiding the hand he had broken.

Two months later, after he healed, the length of Saliba Street was decorated in celebration as he rode down it back to the polo grounds. Throngs turned out along the street for his procession. Shops and houses on Saliba made a fortune renting out their rooftops for people to watch as he went by.

It was one of the earliest recorded of the many celebrations that would take place along Saliba Street. (2)

Over the next decades, Saliba came to life as houses and mansions sprang up in the neighboring districts and grand monuments arose along it.

Today at this intersection, as buses and taxis wedge through the narrows between the monuments, there’s little sense of how vibrant the street was during the Mamluk era. Men and women filled its markets. Processions of Persian Sufis passed to and from the Sarghatmish Madrasa. Outside Saliba’s madrasas and khanqahs, public notaries and scribes at their stands drew up letters and documents for petitioners. Sounds rang from every direction. The tap-tap of cobblers’ hammers in the nearby shoemakers’ market. The drone of Quran recitals from the grilled windows of the mausoleums. And music: the boom of kettle drums, flourishes of trumpets and the jingling of cymbals from the personal military bands of the top emirs, which gave daily performances at the entrances of their palaces.

View of Saliba Street between the Khanqah and Mosque of Emir Sheikhou

Saliba Street was a theater, and the real-life dramas that played out along it ultimately had only one protagonist: “el-Dahr.”

El-Dahr in Arabic literally means “the age,” “the epoch” or “the times.” But it denotes something far greater; it’s the fickleness of fate that rules over us all. It raises the lowest and just as quickly brings down the highest.

The theme of el-Dahr pervaded the literature of the unruly and unpredictable Mamluk Era. “El-Dahr is nothing but a ladder: The further one climbs it, the further one falls,” the 15th century poet ibn Arabshah wrote. Over in Medieval and Renaissance Europe during the same era, they had a similar concept, found in monks’ illuminations and in Chaucer’s stories — the Wheel of Fortune, on which some went up and others went down as it turned.

“Ma al-dahr ila sullam,” by ibn Arabshah, in a manuscript of the poetry anthology, Fakihat al-Khulafa wa Mufakahat al-Zurafa, Leiden University manuscript OR135

No one was immune to the caprices of el-Dahr.

Not even, for example, Emir Sheikhou, the most powerful man of his time. In 1351, banners were unfurled up and down Saliba Street and candles glowed in all its shops and houses as Emir Sheikhou passed in a grand procession. It was a moment of triumph as he took his place in the Citadel as the real power behind the sultan.

Six years later, he was carried back down Saliba Street, unconscious and bleeding after an angry soldier sprung out and stabbed him during a gathering of the sultan’s court in the Citadel. Taken to his mansion here on the street, he died a few months later.

Saliba Street witnessed how el-Dahr toyed with Lady Fatima al-Khasbakiyya, one of the greatest and wealthiest Mamluk noblewomen.

She had been the only wife of Sultan Qaytbay during his nearly 30-year rule, enjoying influence and power. But after her husband’s death in 1496, Lady Fatima had to leave the Citadel down Saliba Street to be consigned to her mansion, located on what is now Port Said Street. For the next few years, she suffered multiple indignities at the hands of Qaytbay’s successors, who repeatedly strong-armed her for money.

But she was a skilled political player. In her 50s and still enormously rich, she married the head of the military, Toman Bay. Not long after, Toman Bay overthrew the sultan and installed himself on the throne.

To proclaim to the world that she was once more the wife of a sultan, Lady Fatima returned to the Citadel in a dazzling spectacle in February 1501. From her mansion, she was paraded up Saliba Street in a decorated litter, escorted by her husband’s military officers and bodyguards, along with the governor of Cairo, the chief eunuchs, the senior officials of the chancellery and the servants of the palace. Behind her followed the era’s greatest women — 200 wives of emirs, religious officials and other elites.

Silk carpets were rolled out for her at the Citadel gates, and she was showered with flakes of gold and silver. Over her head, a palace servant held the sultan’s silk umbrella, laced with threads of gold and topped with a golden bird. Inside, she was restored to her residence in the harem. To celebrate the occasion, the historian ibn Iyas recited to her a poem which, he proudly reports, pleased her:

“After marrying the most just of sultans, the Lady in glory was brought home / ... She rose like the sun on the horizon and like a maiden of Paradise she shone / Her procession rivalled Persia’s king of kings and the triumphs of Caesar in Rome.”

But less than two months later, Lady Fatima had to quietly slink back down Saliba Street to her mansion, after her husband was ousted and beheaded.

She would make one more grand trek up Saliba Street, when she died three years later. Her body was carried from her home along the street in a procession led by the senior emirs and top judges, as crowds rushed to grab the money thrown to them in charity. In a mosque at the foot of the Citadel, Sultan el-Ghouri honored her by joining the funerary prayers over her body — then promptly confiscated every property she owned.

My favorite metaphor for el-Dahr comes in a popular saying quoted by the historian ibn Taghribirdi:

“You see, for those who realize it, el-Dahr is a polo match. People rotate through it one by one, a ball put before the mallets to be struck by man after man.”

What an image of our place in the universe! Each of us batted back and forth around a playing field by forces beyond our control or prediction. The writers of the era of course believed everyone’s fate is determined by God alone. But when they evoke el-Dahr and its twists and turns, God’s hand is nowhere to be seen. It was a way to comprehend the seeming randomness of the age, when all your preparations, all your qualifications, your virtues, wisdom and strengths could not protect you.

Like the day in Ramadan 1461, when the ousted Sultan al-Moayyad Ahmed was led out of the Citadel in humiliation onto Saliba Street.

The son of Sultan Inal, al-Moayyad Ahmed had seemed like a promising ruler when he came to power only a few months earlier. He was 30 years old, not a child like many of the other sons of sultans who succeeded their fathers. He had been his father’s top military commander and was experienced in war and politics. But when multiple factions teamed up against him, it took only a brief fight at the Citadel to sweep him off the throne.

He was taken down Saliba Street on a horse, shackled by the neck and surrounded by armed guards. “Al-Moayyad rah wa huwa muqayyad,” people mocked him as he passed: “Al-Moayyad has left in chains.” (3)

At the far end of the street, he passed by the palace of his sister. When she saw him in his miserable state, she and all the women and slaves of her retinue screamed and wept, slapping their faces and baring their heads in grief. Moved by this, everyone on the street turned from mockery to weeping as well.

“It was a lesson for all in the reversals and humiliation that strike even those with the greatest security and strength,” the historian al-Maqrizi wrote.

But it was a lesson few learned.

For example: Emir Qonsouh Khumsumiya, or Qonsouh 500. He was an emir of overweening ambition, determined to be sultan. After the death of the long-ruling Sultan Qaytbay in 1496, Qansouh 500 raised a revolt against Qaytbay’s teenage son and successor, Sultan Mohammed.

He seemed assured of taking the throne. With overwhelming backing from the other emirs, Qansouh waltzed into the Citadel and took over its lower level without a fight. The caliph declared him Sultan al-Ashraf Qonsouh. All he had to do was move up to the inner sections of the Citadel and take the royal regalia from Mohammed and he would be the new ruler.

But Mohammed and his few remaining supporters lashed back. Fierce fighting ensued at the foot of the Citadel. Qonsouh threw himself into the battle, and his forces inexorably began to overcome the sultan’s resistance.

Then el-Dahr intervened.

In the hail of arrowfire, one arrow happened to hit Qonsouh 500 in the face. He toppled from his horse, unconscious. His servants lifted him on their shoulders and carried him off, accidentally flipping open his robe to show his underclothes and knocking off his headgear to reveal his bald head.

In this ignominious state, they ran him down Saliba Street, through this intersection and all the way to the Mausoleum of Sanjar and Salar. There, they loaded him onto a donkey and continued their flight down the street to his palace near the Bridge of Lions.

Qonsouh and his supporters escaped to Gaza, but there they were soon defeated by the sultan’s allies. The victorious troops returned carrying the heads of 34 defeated emirs on their lances, including that of Qonsouh 500, his eyes replaced by colored glass to distinguish him from the others.

A member of Sultan Mohammed’s court who wrote a blow-by-blow account of the battle (4) marked Qonsouh 500’s end with a flurry of moralizing epigrams:

“Ambition burns those who have it, and the wheel always turns against the greedy,” he declared. “Ambition gives nothing without taking it back tenfold.”

Qansouh 500’s end described in “al-Badr al-Zahir fi Nusrat al-Malik al-Nasir”

Still, el-Dahr granted Qonsouh 500 an unusual afterlife.

Though his head was paraded throughout the city and was hung from Bab Zuweila for days, no one believed it was really his. For years afterward, people were convinced he was still alive and in hiding.

Each time a sultan fell after that, the top emirs sent heralds around the city calling for Qonsouh 500 to come out of hiding so they could give him the throne. Even a quarter century later after the Ottomans had swept away the Mamluk Sultanate, Qonsouh’s daughter received letters from a man claiming to be her father. It turned out to be an impoverished Persian, hoping to milk money from her. Determined to snuff out any figure the defeated Mamluks might rally around, even a fraud, the Ottomans promptly executed him.

Mamluk writers tried to shape these rises and falls into moral lessons. But they knew el-Dahr’s cruelty struck the undeserving as much the deserving.

Not long after Qonsouh’s downfall, Saliba Street saw perhaps the saddest reversal of all, that of Emir Timraz el-Shamsi.

Timraz had passed through this intersection many times in glory, riding out in military campaigns where he won his reputation as a heroic fighter. The nephew of Sultan Qaytbay, everyone expected him to one day be sultan himself.

“Be patient,” he told allies urging him to take the throne, “until the time is right.”

His time never came.

In 1497, now nearly 80, Timraz backed a second rebellion against Qaytbay’s son, Sultan Mohammed. After a monthlong battle at the Citadel, the revolt collapsed, and when it did the streets fell into chaos as the sultan’s supporters looted homes and hunted down their opponents.

Timraz decided it was best to get out of the city and fled on horseback from his mansion.

He had only gone a few hundred meters when a group of the sultan’s soldiers caught him. They dragged him to a sword shop on Saliba Street, pinned the old man down on the counter and hacked off his head.

The chronicler ibn Iyas mourned Timraz with a poem that addresses el-Dahr itself — and holds out a glimmer of hope of ultimately cheating el-Dahr’s dictates:

“El-Dahr, with Timraz’s murder, you have left the faithful as orphans, you have stained our faces with humiliation / The great commander, his decency shined to the farthest nation / ... But in his murder, he becomes like al-Hussein, the son of Imam Ali, the hero / They thought they sent him to his grave, but oh, so wrong! He lives in the hearts of all creation.”