The Republican., 1895-05-09
IN ORIENTAL FUNERAL.
The Procession Lasted an Hour, and 800
Midnnvs Were Absent

CFuneral pageants and the stately
etiquette of European court mourning
are entirely foreign to the spirit of
Islam, but Cairo has long been accus.
toned to compromises which are la
memted only by the strictest Moham-
medans now remaining. No funeral,
however, has hitherto been surrounded
with SO much pomp and circumstance.
At an early hour in the morning the
funeral procession, which must have
numbered some ten Thousand people.
began TO muster near the railway sta.
ton, where Ismail's remains had been
lying in state since their arrival from
Alexandria, and the Egyptian and
British troops lined the streets past
Shepheard's and the Opera up the
Boulevard Mehemet Ali to the Rifai
mosque under the citadel. Along the
whole route, distance of nearly three
miles, the pavement, windows, balco
MES and housetops were thronged with
spectators, blending the bright colors
of the east with the more somber raj.
ment of the west. But, except for the
few flags draped with Grape and the
shrill lamentations here and there OF
native women. it was difficult to real.
ize that this chattering. laughing, in
different crowd was gathered together
to witness pageant of death.
The procession itself, which defled
for almost an hour in one unbroken
column, presented the same strange
contrasts, the same curious tumble OF
eastcrn and western life. Its very
composition reflected all the anomalies
of modern Egypt. Behind detachments
of mounted police and the Egyptian
cavalry came the Sirdar and staff OF
the Egyptian army, Enthusiastically
English in spite of their Egyptian
uniforms. Immediately behind them
walked readers of the Koran, reciting
the sacred verses in a high nasal chant,
deputations from the native guilds and
corporations bearing flags and banners
embroidered with sacred devices, de-
scendants of the prophet in green tur-
bans and flowing robes, mollahs and
ulema in long kaftans, dervishes in tall
felt caps, students from El-azhar-in
fact, the militant and uncompro-
missing Islam in all the old-world
picturesqueness. Then, in sharp con.
trast TO the medieval scholasticism of
the great Mohammedan university,
came hundreds of black coated boys
and youths from the modern schools
and colleges, with their European
masters. Behind them, again, in GU
rious alienation, native and European
notables, judges from the native and
mixed tribunals, gold-laced pashas and
beys, English government officials in
plain Stambouline, the European com.
missioners of the national debt, appro-
priately conspicuous on such an occa-
sion as the representatives of the body
which can more directly than any
other Egyptian institution trace its
existence to the ex-knedive, the long
robed clergy of the different Chris
tian denominations and rabbis of the
Jewish community, relocated officers
of the British army of occupation,
headed by Sir F. Forester Walker, the
diplomatic corps in full uniform, with
Lord Cromer as its doyen, the minis.
ters and English advisers for finance,
justice and the interior. and with
Ghazi Mukhtar, the imperial Ottoman
commissioner, at his side, the khedive,
followed by all the male members of
his family. Behind the chief mourn
ers and the household of the deceased
khedive a double row of youths
sprinkled perfumes and burned incense
in front of the coffin. Covered with an
embroidered pail, ON which were dis
played the uniform and decorations of
the deceased, the mortal remains of
lsmail We're borne on the shoulders of
twenty men from the khedivial body
guard, hard pressed by weird crowd
of hired female mourners, who rent
the air with their shrieks of woe. An
other body of troops, with arms re-
versed, closed the strange pageant.
The ladies of the eX-khedlves harem,
who, to the number of some eight hun
dred have been holding funeral wakes
for the last week at the Kasr-el-Nil
palace, had expressed their intention
of following barefooted the remains of
their former lord and master. but
orders from the palace ultimately for
bade such a public manifesto ton of
lllCh SIlt1s
Near the opera house the khedive, to
whom walking is a serous physical ef-
fort, quilted the cortege to return
straight to Abdeen-an example which
many others followed-while the bulk
OF the procession wended its way slow
ly on, first to the mosque of Sultan
Hassan, where the usual prayers
were recited, and then to the
Rifal mosque, an ambitious but
unfinished pile, the construction
of which was begun by the de-
ceased khedive on his wonted
scale of reckless magnifcence, and
was interrupted by the financial dis
asters of his reign. There, beside the
tombs of his mother and two of his
daughters, he was fin ally laid to rest in
the mausoleum which he had designed
for himself, but which will probably
never be completed, for the founda-
tions are already showing siges of sub
sidence-a moment perhaps not alto
gether inappropriate to the prince
whose life, after brief period of arti-
fetal splendor, ebbed drearily away
amid the ruins of his shattered arbi-
tionS-London Times,