Plate 221 One of the Tombs of the Caliphs, Cairo - After David Roberts
Roberts drew this composition on the 16th January 1839. It is one of the rarest of the half plate lithographs.
'When [he] visited Cairo, many of the most glorious monuments of the past were in a sad state of neglect, and all memory of many had been lost. The artist also had little if any knowledge of the local language, which made it very difficult for him to obtain information about the magnificent buildings he took as his subjects. This explains the rather vague titles sometimes given to Haghe's lithographs. Although this one is simply described as 'One of the Tombs of the Caliphs', it is actually the Khanqa of Sultan Faraj Ibn Barquq, one of the greatest masterpieces of Circassian Mamluk architecture. Although he had already built a mausoleum inside the city walls, Sultan al-Zahir Barquq, founder of the Circassian dynasty, asked on his deathbed to be buried next to the tombs of the Sufis, in the cemetery to the east of the Fatimid city. In order to grant his request, his son al-Nasir Faraj built a great Khanqa with two mausoleums, one for his father and the other for himself.
Even though he had been a brave warrior who repulsed the Ottomans and Tamerlane's Mongol hordes, al-Zahir was attracted by the ascetic-mystic practices of the Sufis, which explains his request. Sufism, though originally opposed by the orthodox schools of theology, became popular in the 11th century, and came to exercise considerable political and social influence over Islam, giving rise to the cult of the saints, religious brotherhoods, and Arabic-Persian poetry that speaks of divine love in the guise of amatory and Bacchic verses. The Khanqa, built between 1400 and 1411, is a huge structure with a square plan, with two minarets and a dome surmounting each mausoleum. The symmetry of the whole is almost perfect, and quite rare for the architecture of the period. The lithograph shows the north entrance of the building, and the nearby arched gallery supported by columns, called a sabil-kuttab.
The funerary complex was intended to include a camel market and other commercial buildings, which were never completed because of the premature death of al-Nasir, executed by his emirs on the instigation of Sheik al-Mahmudi, the future Sultan al-Muayyad. What might seem a strange mixture of functions was by no means unusual, as cemeteries were not considered to be the sole province of the dead. They even included residential blocks and mansions, where the wealthy resided on the occasion of festivals in honour of the dead and during their regular visits to the tombs of their loved ones.' [1]
The drawings and watercolours from this tour by David Roberts of the Holy Land and Egypt were collated together into folios and released over a seven-year period by the publisher F.G. Moon from 20 Threadneedle Street London. This lithograph was published on December 1st 1848.
Medium: Original First Edition Lithograph, with later hand-colouring on thick woven paper.
Half Plate 221.
Inscribed l.l. 'David Roberts R.A. L Haghe Lith' and l.r. 'One of the Tombs of The Kalifs Cairo', 24.3 x 34.2cm (lithograph size), mounted (42.4 x 51.4cm).
The original title is visible through a cut out on the mount 'One of the Tombs of the Caliphs, Cairo' and the original text from the publication in 1848 is included attached to the back of the mount.
References:
[1] Fabio Bourbon (ed). Yesterday and Today: Egypt. Swan Hill Press: London, 1996, p.242. Translated by A.B.A. Milano.
Condition report: very good for its age. A few small markings, please see photos. Recently put into a new acid free mount.