THE DARK AGES 23 



Great was the solicitude manifested throughout all 

 Islam for the welfare of these favoured animals, 

 whose brooding reserve and wise impassiveness 

 seemed but a reflection of the unchanging and un- 

 communicative East. M. Prisse d'Avennes tells us 

 that the Moslem warrior, El-Daher-Beybars, " brave 

 as Caesar and cruel as Nero," had so true an affec- 

 tion for cats that he bequeathed a fertile garden 

 called Gheyt-el-Ouottah (the cat's orchard) for the 

 support of homeless and necessitous pussies. This 

 garden lay close to his own mosque, and but a 

 short distance from Cairo. With the revenue it 

 yielded, food was bought and distributed every 

 noon in the outer court of the Mehkemeh to all 

 cats who, wishing to live in freedom, were yet 

 driven by hunger or neglect to accept the generous 

 alms. There is an admirable permanence about 

 Oriental customs which we of the West — unstable 

 citizens of a protean world — regard with envious 

 scorn. Seven centuries have elapsed since El- 

 Daher-Beybars atoned for the misdeeds of his fierce 

 life by gentle charity. His gilded mosque has 

 crumbled into ruins, the site of his orchard is un- 

 known, his legacy has lapsed into oblivion. Yet as 

 late as 1870 the cats of Cairo received their daily 

 dole, no longer in memory of their benefactor, but 

 in unconscious perpetuation of his bounty. 



"How far that little candle throws his beams ! 

 So shines a good deed in a naughty world." 



