DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11636#0141
AND LOWER EGYPT. I 15
same kind with that of the walls of Cairo, which
were incontestably built by them. The columns,
and other fragments of monuments really antique,
employed in building them, prove, beyond the
power of contradiction, that their construction is
more modern ; and the inscriptions in Arabic and
Kufique characters, with which the towers are
charged in several places, leave no doubt with re-
spect to their origin. It never was called in ques-
tion by the greatest part of travellers, of whom I
shall satisfy myself with quoting one, the learned
Pocock, whose researches into antiquity are, of all
others, the most profound. " It was," says he,
" in the year 600 of the Hegira, answering to the
" year 1212 of the Christian era, that one of the
" successors of Saladin, who had just taken Egypt
" out of the hands of the caliphs of the race of
" Fatima, ordered the walls of modern Alexandria
" to be reared : he employed in this work, which
fc is two French leagues in circumference, the
" wreck of the ancient city. The walls, and the
" hundred towers which flank them, are composed
" of fragments of marble and broken columns,
" confounded with common stones*."
The thick walls, and the hundred towers with
which they are flanked, embrace only, as we see
from this quotation, a circuit of about two leagues;
* Richard Pocock's Travels, vol. i. p. 493.
1 z whereas,
same kind with that of the walls of Cairo, which
were incontestably built by them. The columns,
and other fragments of monuments really antique,
employed in building them, prove, beyond the
power of contradiction, that their construction is
more modern ; and the inscriptions in Arabic and
Kufique characters, with which the towers are
charged in several places, leave no doubt with re-
spect to their origin. It never was called in ques-
tion by the greatest part of travellers, of whom I
shall satisfy myself with quoting one, the learned
Pocock, whose researches into antiquity are, of all
others, the most profound. " It was," says he,
" in the year 600 of the Hegira, answering to the
" year 1212 of the Christian era, that one of the
" successors of Saladin, who had just taken Egypt
" out of the hands of the caliphs of the race of
" Fatima, ordered the walls of modern Alexandria
" to be reared : he employed in this work, which
fc is two French leagues in circumference, the
" wreck of the ancient city. The walls, and the
" hundred towers which flank them, are composed
" of fragments of marble and broken columns,
" confounded with common stones*."
The thick walls, and the hundred towers with
which they are flanked, embrace only, as we see
from this quotation, a circuit of about two leagues;
* Richard Pocock's Travels, vol. i. p. 493.
1 z whereas,