The Hammam of Emir Sheikhou

On the corner next to Emir Sheikhou’s Khanqah is a small row of shops: a butcher, a paints store and Faraj Plumbing Supplies. Next to the butcher’s block, hidden behind the tree, is a small doorway where the butcher’s apprentice can be found stuffing sausages.

This is the entrance to what remains of Sheikhou’s Hammam, or Bathhouse, part of the complex of the mosque and khanqah that he built in the 1300s.

Like many old hammams in Cairo, it’s not a registered monument. Authorities rent it out to workshops, which would be a fine way to put it to use since there’s little demand for bathhouses anymore. But shamefully, since it’s unregistered, authorities do nothing to protect it and leave it to decay, probably hoping to one day have an excuse to tear it down, as has happened to others.

The interior is carved up into workshops manufacturing purses, and while the guys working there are friendly and welcoming, ask first before you go barging in.

Inside, a narrow, winding passage leads into the hammam. It feels almost subterranean. Old stone entranceways open to worktables and sewing machines, the men drinking tea while they work. Kittens dart in the darkness behind rolls of vinyl and piles of cut scraps. In some of the rooms, you have to crane over the partitions, but you can see the distinctive domes of the bathhouse, pierced with light-holes, or “jamaat.”

Views of the hammam’s interior, showing the domes in the ceiling, pierced with light holes known as “jaamat.”

Back in the day, the hammam – there were two actually, one for men and one for women -- would have been a center of the local community, used by the Sufis residing at the khanqah, the staff of the khanqah and mosque and people from the surrounding markets and homes.  It was also a source of income; proceeds from the bathhouse, as well as rents from the shops outside it, would have gone towards funding Emir Sheikhou’s religious institutions next door.

In the last years of the 1400s, one of the stores in front of this Hammam was a sweets shop run by a young man named Ali ibn Abi al-Joud, who had inherited it from his father. Ali became well known, especially for his mushabbak, fried twirls of dough drenched in honey and rosewater, a specialty of the holy month of Ramadan.

He must have been an enterprising guy. Clearly, he had a knack for making connections, especially with his prime location on Saliba Street, where every day the top emirs of the state passed and where household staff from the nearby mansions of the elite ran errands in the markets. Somehow, Ali made his way into the employ of one of the most important officials in the palace, the Grand Chamberlain. He worked as one his “bard-dars,” a sort of bailiff implementing his orders. From there, he jumped from household to household among the emirs until he secured a bard-dar position serving Grand Chancellor Qansouh al-Ghouri.

This al-Ghouri then just happened to become sultan, and when Sultan al-Ghouri needed someone to fill key financial positions, he turned to Ali ibn Abi al-Joud.

Ali was made overseer of religious endowments, or awqaf; he was put in charge of the sultan’s private purse and of the finances of the wazir and chancellor’s offices.

The holders of these positions were responsible for gathering funds to pay state and military salaries, with few questions asked about how they imposed taxes or fees or what they took for themselves.

Ali went at it ruthlessly. He seized goods and money from merchants and hiked up import duties so much that the ports of Alexandria and Dumyat in Egypt and Jeddah in the Hijaz nearly shut down. Rulers from as far away as Istanbul complained of his harassment of foreign traders.

Drawn by his wealth and influence, petitioners lined up to seek his help: artisans seeking relief from a tax, merchants informing on the hidden wealth of a rival for him to confiscate, slaves complaining against masters, wives complaining against husbands. He became more feared and powerful than the most senior emirs.

Everyone had to pay their respects. As a poem of the time said:

“When a scoundrel rises to the top, bide your time and prepare to suck up / When he extends his hand, if you can’t cut it off, you’ve no choice but to pucker up.”

Things turned sour for Ali when the sultan began to eye his wealth. In 1503, Ali was arrested, his mansions sealed. He was handed over to the sultan’s new favorite, al-Zeini Barakat, who was tasked with torturing Ali until he surrendered his money. Ali was beaten, his limbs twisted, and sugar cane stalks were hammered under his fingernails, then they set the stalks on fire. Ali was then hanged from Bab Zuweila, and his body left there for days to rot before he was buried.

No one, it is said, mourned him.

(This al-Zeini Barakat, by the way, is the protagonist of the landmark modern Arabic historical novel of the same name by Egyptian writer Gamal al-Ghitani. In fact, Ali ibn Abi al-Joud makes an appearance in the novel, though there he is executed by being forced to dance to death.)

Lurid details aside, what’s going on here? How did a sweets seller in front of Sheikhou’s Bathhouse rise to such power?

He’s not an isolated case. Traditionally, these powerful posts in the court and bureaucracy were reserved for the military elite of Mamluk emirs or for the “turbaned” cultural elite of the ulema — scholars with a religious education. But during the 15th Century, a number of commoners, some from extremely lowly origins, were brought in to fill senior positions, particularly financial offices.

Mohammed al-Bibawi, for example, was said to have originally been a herdsman in a village outside Beni Soueif in Upper Egypt. He made his way to Cairo and worked as a servant for the cooks in the Citadel. Then he became an apprentice to the palace meat suppliers. Then he became a meat dealer himself, supplying the monthly allotment of meat for the Royal Mamluks. This made him wealthy. Looking to tap into his riches, the sultan of the time, Khoshqadam, appointed him Overseer of the State Budget in 1463, then quickly promoted him to wazir.

Each rise in station also brought a step up in the highly regimented hierarchy of attire. Once he became a meat distributer, al-Bibawi left the simple clothes of a market butcher and donned the fine blue shirt of a merchant. He went from going on foot to riding a mule. When Khoshqadam gave him his appointment, he took on the distinctive garb of a chancery official — a turban, the farjiya robe with its long, wide sleeves and the boots known as the “khiffa.” He also graduated to riding a horse.

Al-Bibawi met an early end, drowning in 1465 when his boat overturned as he tried to cross the Nile during a flood.

That opened the way for his assistant, Qassim Shugheita.

Shugheita started as a baker selling bread at Bab al-Qarafa, the gate of the southern cemetery. Somehow he linked up with al-Bibawi and started working with him in the Citadel kitchens,. Then he became his deputy in the meat supply business. When al-Bibawi became wazir, he brought Shugheita with him to do most of the actual work. After his mentor’s death, Shugheita was elevated to his positions.

The rise of these upstarts horrified the educated elite. In their writings, each time another commoner gets into the halls of power, they tear their hair and rend their garments over the Mamluk Sultanate’s decline into corruption.

The historian ibn Taghribirdi practically has an aneurysm. In his history al-Nujoum al-Zahira, he calls al-Bibawi and Shugheita’s appointments “a mark of shame upon the Kings of Egypt that will endure until Resurrection Day.”

Ibn Taghribirdi was the quintessential courtier; he revered the trappings of court and wrote his histories in hopes of guiding rulers toward restoring what he considered a lost golden age. So he is furious over the intrusion of al-Bibawi, whom he denounces as illiterate, barely able to pronounce Arabic properly and “rude to the great and the elite.” He goes on a long screed about how it used to be that only the noblest of men served as wazir and that the post of wazir was “the most sublime and esteemed of offices, from east to west, perhaps second only to the caliph.” Now it was being sullied by rabble from the market.

To punctuate his woe, ibn Taghribirdi summons up a verse written three centuries earlier by the poet al-Tughra’i in a poem mourning the decline of the once glorious Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad:

“I’d never hoped to live so long as to see such rule by lowlifes and bastards / Such is the punishment for clinging to life when your equals have all gone, headed to better pastures.”

Of course, this idea of the wazir as a noble prime minister and sage adviser to sultans and caliphs was a romanticized relic of the past. By ibn Taghribirdi’s time, the wazir had been an almost purely financial position for more than a century.

What’s actually going on is a social transformation during the 1400s that modern-day scholar Amina Elbendary describes in her book “Crowds and Sultans.” As multiple economic crises strained the sultan’s resources, power diffused, and there was a greater degree of social mobility. Some commoners were able to become wealthy, and by turning to them to fill palace postings, sultans could tap into that money.

Sultans at this time were also trying to concentrate wealth in their own hands, rather than in the coffers of the state, to give themselves leverage. By appointing commoners, they ensured that those handling the money were loyal only to them, sidelining the ulema and emirs who had their own independent power networks. Commoners also brought special skills to the posts; from years of experience as merchants or artisans, they knew how to extract money from the markets.

In fact, Qassim Shugheita seems to have been pretty successful at his job. Over the course of 20 years, mostly under Sultan Qaitbay, he served multiple long stints as either wazir or overseer of state finances, or both.

Sure, he had ups and downs. Twice, Shugheita had to flee into hiding because of disputes with more powerful players. Royal Mamluk soldiers rioting over high prices set fire to his home and those of several other officials.

But the sultan was pleased with how Shugheita cut salaries for various hangers-on in the palace payrolls, like the sons of Mamluks and some religious scholars. When merchants complained that the muhtasib, or market inspector, was neglecting his duties and the markets were sliding into unregulated disarray, Qaitbay gave Shugheita the job, and the complaints ceased.

Nevertheless, Qaitbay turned on him in 1495. Shugheita was imprisoned and there he died, aged around 67.

In contrast to the venom from ibn Taghribirdi and most other chroniclers, the historian ibn Iyas praises Shugheita, saying he performed his duties well. He even calls him “one of the best wazirs.”

And he mourns Shugheita’s fate with a line of doggerel from a popular poet of the time, Serajeddin al-Warraq:

“Many a good man who deserves to rise is brought low, bemoaning what his era inflicts/ While many a fool is called the best of his people, like calling a eunuch the best of all dicks.”