The City of the Caliphs - A Popular Study of Cairo and Its Environs and the Nile and Its Antiquities #248926

Cairo is full of these picturesque associations connected with the magnificent age of the Mameluke Sultans, but most visitors know little about them. Probably this is mainly attributable to the fact that most of the books on Egypt rather ignore its capital; and the age of the Sara cens is a period as much overlooked by modern historians as that of the Ptolemies. There are, of course, the standard guide-books, a most skilful condensation of a mass of erudition, — but the compilers find the Upper Nile, with its antiquities, of such surpassing interest, that little room can be found for Cairo itself. Besides, guide-books are read of necessity, and not for pleasure or continuously; and in the wealth Of dry detail it is difficult sometimes to see the wood for the trees.