Red Nile: The Biography of the World’s Greatest River (23 page)

The final descent into madness, and its resolution, were caused by the Nile itself. A persistent drought had meant food shortages. Hakim called forth his advisers and rebuked them for failing to solve the problem of the drought. Bread prices rose as grain grew ever scarcer. Bread is a sensitive issue to all Egyptians. There were bread riots in the 1970s that almost toppled Sadat. Hakim decided to tax it in order to dissuade people from buying too much. Instead the people revolted and bread riots spread through the city. It was a merciful release from all the restrictions they had been labouring under.

The increasingly lonely and ascetic Hakim took to wandering in a simple woollen robe among the hills of Moqattam. One day he disappeared. His sister ordered the hills from Moqattam to Helwan to be combed and all they found was a donkey with its leg gashed. It was said that this beast belonged to the mad Caliph. It was clear, to most Cairenes, that his sister, who would go on to rule for the next four years (using her infant nephew as a proxy and excuse), had killed Hakim. Allowing her to rule was not a problem. Hakim had been so hated that the person – man or woman – who removed him deserved to rule.

Yet Sitt al-Mulk had seemed genuinely upset by her brother’s death.
Rumours abounded about how he had really died. It was claimed the real killer was a member of the Beni Husayn tribe who had killed the Caliph with three other men. This man was captured and interrogated. ‘This is how I did it,’ he announced, shoving a previously hidden stiletto blade between his own ribs and dying in front of his inquisitors.

3
•
The strange confession of Ibn al-Haytham

One does not learn fully from one’s host by remaining a guest
.
Ethiopian proverb

‘For ten years I have been under house arrest. It has been a fruitful time for me but I grew weary of the solitude. My single window, from which I could see the palace and the Moqattam Hills behind, was my sole joy for many months. The light that entered through this window was life to me. When the light ceased it was as if I were dead. The fellow who brought my food, and later his son, were contemptuous of me at first. I was known as the madman. But they brought me paper and ink, I was allowed to work. Using shadows cast by various engines and contrivances I made I was able to calculate all the distances outside my window. I knew, for example, that the Caliph left from a door 560 cubits from my window. That he passed under an arch on his nocturnal visits to the Moqattam at exactly 879 cubits. That he entered a cave exactly 17,987 cubits from the arch. This last was discovered by the warder’s son who became my unwitting accomplice. I am getting ahead of myself. First I needed to demonstrate my use to them. I was mad, yes, but I had the power of seeing into the future, the power of curing all ills. The boy suffered from a partially severed finger. The stench of it was appalling but sheer ignorance and fear allowed the infected digit to remain, hanging on by little more than a thread of skin. He began to sicken and I saw that infection would set in and he would die. The father agreed to hold the boy down. I severed the finger using a barber’s razor cleansed in a flame. Then I applied a poultice of honey and myrrh. The hand, and the boy, recovered quickly and I was now their physician. I took care to treat only the obviously curable. If they brought a relative who would be impossible to improve I would go into a trance, roll my eyes and pronounce them incompatible with
my peculiar talents. Over time I had sufficiently few of such cases to win their trust – knowing that many of those I cured were going to get better anyway.

‘The warder’s son, on my instructions, paced out the required distances into the Moqattam Hills and left two polished flat-bottomed pots at locations I informed him of. When the sun was high the reflections off these pots could be calculated as angles with a quadrant device I fashioned. I instructed the boy to scatter lentils across the paths at regular distances beyond the copper pots. Each day he reported whether the lines of lentils had been disturbed. Quite soon I obtained a detailed account of where my former lord and master took himself off to in the lonely hills. There were rumours he belonged to a strange sect who promised power in the other world . . . It was no concern of mine. I was busy at the time constructing light boxes that contained one or more candles. With these I proved that light beams that are separated by holes in a screen do not merge when they cross over. Light must therefore be composed of particles of some sort that interact, but not in the way, for example, particles of a liquid interact.

‘I adapted one of these boxes so that a precisely directed sunray could be captured by a curved mirror and then ignite a candle into flame. Here I drew on the experiments written about in my book
On parabolic burning mirrors
. This sun-powered device was placed in the wilderness, its position noted on the quadrant. I ought to say that the area of the hills his majesty entered was always checked and emptied of people by a squadron of his trusted troops. My royal tormentor would, when his troops had gone, then head towards the cave of his sect of fellow idiots. This place was lit by a single flickering candle which served like the lighthouse in Alexandria, to draw him in. With my device located on the opposite side of a perilous ravine I waited for a moonless night. Reflecting the rays of the setting sun with a mirror, I directed a light stream at the capturing mirror in the device. I kept my burning mirror still, using a heavy blacksmith’s vice that held the quadrant with the mirror attached. I had to trust that the candle was now alight, though, as it was still daylight, I could not tell.

‘The sun set in layers of glowing yellow and red, making the hills look wonderfully wholesome. The squadron were completing their inspection. Night fell. Yes! I could see my little candle flickering, some way ahead of the second candle that indicated the cave. I knew, though, that the second candle would not be visible until it was a little too late.

‘The following morning the blood-stained clothes of the Caliph Hakim were found at the bottom of the rocky wadi. He had fallen and his body was taken away by whoever wished to profit by such a manoeuvre. In my own case I was released a few days later and took ship to Basra without further incident.’

The disappearance of Hakim, who was missed by very few, caused great consternation nevertheless. A caliph, God’s representative on earth, does not just disappear. The conundrum led to one of the major tenets of a religion still with us today. The Druze are the remnant cult of those who believe that Hakim will return. They had been formed from an Ismaili sect by an itinerant astrologer who had wormed his way into the confidence of the mad Caliph. Hamza ibn Ali told Hakim what he most wanted to hear: that he would never die because he was actually God himself. In a mystical sense this might have been true, but Hamza went one further and announced that Hakim would one day return in person, a statement that qualified him in the eyes of the Cairene populace as being just as mad as Hakim. The Druze were driven out of Egypt for their unorthodox views, finally taking up their current residence in the mountains of Lebanon.

4
•
Ibn al-Haytham and the student

The road and an argument end when one wants them to end
.
Nubian proverb

Ibn al-Haytham was free to get home to Basra, which he did. In his later years all the knowledge of his scientific exploits joined with the years of contemplation: he became known as a wise man, someone to be consulted, someone from whom one could learn what life was really about. It was said that by talking to Ibn al-Haytham one’s best course in life would be revealed twenty years earlier than if one relied on the natural abrasions of life experience. If you listened, he could save you time.

Naturally this made him popular. He took measures to be hard to reach and sometimes did his old trick of acting mad to dissuade the unsuitable from bothering him for advice they would never take. But some, a minority, he was able to help.

Surkhab, a rich nobleman, asked to study with Ibn al-Haytham. ‘Of
course,’ said the scientist. ‘But you must pay me.’

‘How much?’ asked the bemused Surkhab, for in all honesty he had thought the bearded one would have been pleased to have a student, so pleased that he would teach him for free – for is it not written that ‘wisdom cannot be bought or sold’?

Ibn al-Haytham still had the reputation of being mad. Or being struck down from time to time by bouts of madness. Surkhab knew this but he also trusted his own judgement. He was thirty-five years old and had seen enough of life to know these things:

Surkhab had mixed travel with pleasure, riding on his fine horse searching for men of wisdom and knowledge. He was interested in science, but he was equally interested in what men called the ‘higher science’, the science of how men could perceive God more clearly, know the future and live in greater harmony with themselves and others. By observing Ibn al-Haytham, covertly, over a few months’ residence in Cairo, he saw that he was smiling, never ill-humoured, spoke well of people, yet was considered eccentric, possibly a little mad. He saw that Ibn al-Haytham knew about far more than he did; more to the point, he had a different perspective on what he knew. It was as if that perspective sharpened his interactions in daily life rather than, as he had seen with many learned men, muted or blunted them.

But he did not expect to have to pay money. Probably he thought to himself, This is a nominal amount enabling Ibn al-Haytham to ‘prove’ to his student that the learning was worth something. But calmly the wise man asked for 100 dinars a month. That is the equivalent of about £450 at present prices. Things were cheaper then because Ibn al-Haytham was supposed to live off copying one set each of Euclid’s
Elements
and Ptolemy’s
Almagest
, together with Euclid’s
Data
,
Optics
and
Phenomena
. He earned 150 dinars for this – about £675 at current calculations. And we can safely say that 100 dinars a month was a surprisingly large sum for the young seeker to have to pay. He could afford it, but that wasn’t the point. ‘I’ll have to think about it,’ he told Ibn al-Haytham.

‘As you wish,’ said the scientist, ‘though of course I may not be here next time you seek me.’

Surkhab finally decided to say yes, and pay the money.

He studied with Ibn al-Haytham for three years. When it was time to go Ibn al-Haytham gave him 3,600 dinars. ‘You deserve this money all the more for having trusted your intuition that I had something to give. I, in turn, wished to test your sincerity. But when I saw that for the sake of learning you cared little for money I devoted full attention to your education. Do remember that in any righteous cause it is not good to accept a return, a bribe or a gift.’

5
•
The grandmaster of the Assassins

Introducing oneself does not insult another
. Sudanese proverb

Everything connects. The Druze, remnants of the cult of Hakim, had started life as Ismailis – that is, one of the two branches of Shiaism, itself a schismatic sect within Islam. Ismailis, or one significant branch of that sect, took up living in the mountains of Lebanon not so far from the Druze, whom they naturally disagreed with on many issues. But on one issue they agreed, and that was the elimination of the un believer. For the Druze this meant ardent fighting against the new menace from the West: Frankish crusaders. For the Ismailis it meant cutting out the rotting heart of Islam itself, by assassinating Islamic leaders. And from then on their name changed and they became known as the Assassins.

One hundred years after Ibn al-Haytham, the Islamic renaissance that encompassed the River Nile was already under attack. From roughly the twelfth to the fourteenth century, crude violent men from the West who called themselves crusaders sought to gain control of the Holy Land. It was related that these Franks did not even know soap or perfume and had lost contact with the advanced learning of the Greeks. All this they had to relearn from the Arabs, having forgotten everything
except monastic rites after the downfall of the Roman Empire. They even indulged in cannibalism during their heroic attacks on Jerusalem.

The crusades were a holy jihad – by Europeans, whipped into a frenzy by the monastic-based culture of Europe, who feared that Christian access to Jerusalem would be barred for ever. Because they were rooted in primitive notions of revenge and ‘rewards in heaven’ rather than intermarriage and cultural assimilation, the crusades were characterised by acts of cruelty and strategic folly – in many but not all cases. By some law of unintended consequences, the crusaders and their enemies both learnt to appreciate the qualities of the other, and took such understanding home with them. But such judgements were far from the minds of the native people of the Middle East, including the Christians who already lived there.

Into this turmoil stepped a Kurd born in Syria: Saladin. He promised to free the Nile of the Frankish invaders and their allies. Unfortunately he had other enemies apart from freebooting European knights – the Assassins were after him. Some dispute the origin of the name. Did it derive from their use of hashish – still an export of the Lebanese valleys – or did it stem from the Arabic
assass
, which means ‘foundation’, and
assassyoun
, which means ‘he who is most faithful to the foundation’?