22
Pharos
Only occasionally does the note of disillusionment and bitterness creep in. Jelaled Din ibn
Mokram complains that:
The visitor to Alexandria receives nothing in the way of hospitality except some water and a description of Pompey's Pillar.
Those who make a special effort sometimes give him a little fresh air too, and tell him where the Pharos is, adding a sketch of the sea and its waves and an account of the large Greek ships.
The visitor need not aspire to receive any bread, for to an application of this type there is no reply.
As a rule, life in its shadow is an earthly ecstasy that may even touch heaven. Hark to Ibn Dukmak:
According to the law of Moses, if a man make a pilgrimage round Alexandria in the morning, God will make for him a golden crown set with pearls, perfumed with musk and camphor and shining from the east to the west.
Nor were the Arabs content with praising the lighthouse: they even looked at it. "El Manarah," as they called it, gave the name to, and became the model for, the minaret, and one can still find minarets in Egypt that exactly reproduce the design of Sostratus—the bottom story square, second octagonal, third round.
The Fort of Kait Bey, built in the fifteenth century and itself now a ruin, stands to-day where the Pharos once stood. Its area covers part of the ancient enclosure—the rest is awash with the sea—and in its containing wall are embedded a few granite columns. Inside the area is a mosque, exactly occupying the site of the lighthouse, and built upon its foundations: here, too, are some granite blocks standing with druidical effect at the mosque's entrance. Nothing else can be attributed to the past, its stones have vanished and its spirit