Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/72

54 Othman fifty years ago, and have founded a new dynasty of his own upon the ruins. Not many yards from here rises the magnificent mosque which bears his name, and uprears the two exquisitely graceful minarets which form a landmark visible for many miles to the traveller in the desert. Within its walls, rich with shafted alabaster, lie Mohammed Ali's remains, and he built and dedicated it, the grim old satrap, on the very scene of the most ruthless and most treacherous massacre by which any ruler ever swept political enemies from his path. It was here on this height—or, rather, in the narrow way, with a high wall, which leads to it through the Bab-el-Azab—that the wretched Mamelukes and their followers, to the number of 450, lured thither by a pretended offer of hospitality, were slaughtered in huddled heaps by the soldiery of the Pasha in 1811, one only escaping, who had refused to enter the narrow way, and had cleared one of the walls of the courtyard on horseback, alighting on the steep