AND LOWER EGYPT. 1 1 5 



same kind with that of the walls of Cairo, which 

 were incontesiably 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 12 12 of the Christian era, that one of the 

 a successors of Saladin, who had just taken Egypt 

 " out of the hands of the caliphs of the race of 

 a Fatima, ordered the walls of modern Alexandria 

 " to be reared : he employed in this work, which 

 " 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 arc flanked, embrace only, as we see 

 from this quotation, a circuit of about two leagues; 



* Richard Pocock 's Travels, vol. i. p. 493. 



1 2 whereas, 



