Cretan house

Long ago and right now, in one of the oldest quarters of Cairo, on top of the hill Yashkur, there it stood, the fascinating ninth century mosque of Ibn Tulun and it's unique spiral minaret.For hundreds of years the area around the mosque of Ibn Tulun was one of the busiest quarters of Cairo, It was there that caravans and traders came to unload exotic spices and strange cargo from the Far East and Africa, the narrow ally way and stone court yard were alive with sights and smiles of a thriving commercial district. The area fell in hard times, houses were abandoned, fill into decay, and were then destroyed , save one house clinging into the walls of the mosque remained,The House of the Cretan Woman - Bait al-Kretliya.The immediate physical proximity of Bait al-Kretliya to The Mosque of Ibn Tulun is paralleled by a mythic connection that is recorded in a once popular now forgotten legends and myths."when Ibn Tulun was building his mosque, a genie appeared to him and showed him a treasure that he devoted completely to building the mosque. He proceeded to build it with his own hands working along side the laborers until he became known as the Sultan Of Bricklayers. The rest of the gold from this miraculous treasure remains to this day in a haunted passageway, long forgotten and neglected, that runs from the Bait al-Kretliya under the mosque."The legendary house of the Cretan woman is in fact a two sixteenth century houses, Beit el-Kretliya from 1632 and Beit Amna Bent Salim from 1540, linked together with a bridge on the third floor, framing a gate way to the mosque. The house was repeated to be haunted by djinn, djinn which either could be good or bad spirits featured extensively in Arabic folklore.they said to particularly like living inside watery places such as wells and were in past feared for their abilities to posses humans ."It said that the House of Cretan Women is built around the Well of the Bats - which has been here since the days of Noah's flood - and that it was the King of the djinn the Sultan of Bats who advised my ancestors on this place so that the house may protect the well where he and his seven daughters sleep around their magical golden treasure which has cost the lives of those who were tempted to find it. Playing on the parody of greed, the well is said to have compensated their families over the years by placing gold coins in the water bucket." The history of the house as well as those joined to it is rather unique.In 1930's the house became the home of Major Gayer-Anderson, an eccentric retired English doctor and art collector, who collected and translated the stories and the myths from Sheikh Suleiman, the last head of the Kretli family and guardian of the Saint's Harun tomb that flanks the house. "Ages ago, the rulers of Egypt were the

This link to a 3D virtual tour of the house which I strongly encourage you to visit.Some places capture your soul without a known reason. This was what happened to me when I saw the house for the first time. Maybe this because it is very old and it seems untouched by time or maybe because the whole house is an exceptionally wealthy source of strangeness, tales and myth.Every ancient house, and this one even more than most, has strange legends attached to it which, though of the past, are yet kept in mind from generation to generation Soon I shall bring you tales & rhymes along with the imagery I created inspired by some of the legends of the Cretan woman house - a handful of folkloric tales, some are delightful and some are frightening, a glimpse into a landscape where the world of spirits and Djinn is not far away and enchantment is always peering through Mashrabiya screens.

Fatimid Caliphs, who built Cairo, they had brought the body of our master Harun-son of the prophet's grandson al-Hasan. They buried it under a tomb adjacent to the house. It is known and Harun's Tomb - The guardian of the neighborhood and whose benefices still protect the people." Mysticism has colluded over time with pop culture, often clashing with historical and geographical facts, to describe the hill of Yashkur as a holy site. Legend has it that not only was it here that Abraham was ordered by God to sacrifice his son but that it was the port where Noah's Ark came to port following its tempestuous journey. It is also said that it was there that Moses first spoke to God, and had his famous staff turned into a giant snake. All of this provided Ibn Toulun with enough reason to build his huge mosque there. The house is a living legend in itself, with a chamber of secrets, a lovers well, the snake of the house, the good spirit of Sheikh Harun, the djinn King of bats and his seven daughters and a hidden treasure of gold.. it is the house of Scheherazade.Anderson commissioned a local artisan, the unique Abdl al-Aziz Abdu, commonly known as "Abu Shanab" ("Father of Mustachios" ) to create a series of illustrations on copper plates to depict each of the fourteen legends, and published the stories together with these illustration and his own description of the house, in a small edition in England is now long out of print. The original illustrations of the Legends of the House of the Cretan Woman by Abd al-Aziz Abdu are bound in an album now in the possession of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London."When Abd al-Aziz heard that I intended to make a book of the Legends with his design as illustrations, he drew and engraved another design and presented the drawing and plate to me as a surprise backsheeh (tip). This drawing I have included as a headpiece to the Legends. It is a portrait group of the three colaborators, each plainly labelled, Sheikh Sulaiman, Abd al-Aziz, and myself with my beloved Dachshund "Fadle Effendi" ("Make yourself at home, sir".)" ~R.G Gayer-Anderson PashaMajor Gayer-Anderson furnished the house with a remarkable vast array of different items from various historical periods collection of Oriental furniture, glassware, crystal, carpets, silks, and embroidered Arab costumes. He also collected beautiful works of art from Turkey, Persia, Syria, and other Oriental locations which he installed into the house, turning his house into a historical treasure. In 1945 Gayer-Anderson died equating everything for the Egyptian people, and the house had turned into a museum ever since, The Gayer Anderson-Museum.The house remains a masterpiece, as do the art collection displayed beneath the gold-plated wooden ceilings, which were made 300 years ago by the hands of skillful determined craftsmen.The house consists of extraordinary 22 rooms medieval in origin, and laid out like an interlocking puzzle. I will take you by the hand

Kret (Krete, ethnic Kretes, Ac 2:11; Tit 1:12): An island bounding the Aegean Sea on the South. It stretches from 34 degrees 50' to 35 degrees 40' North latitude and from 23 degrees 30' to 26 degrees 20' East long. With Cythera on the North and Carpathos and Rhodos on the Northeast, it forms a continuous bridge between Greece and Asia Minor. The center of the island is formed by a mountain chain rising to a height of 8,193 ft. in Mt. Ida, and fringed with low valleys beside the coast. There are no considerable rivers; the largest, the Metropole, on the South, is a tiny stream, fordable anywhere. An island of considerable extent (156 miles long, and from 7 to 30 miles broad), in several districts very fertile and possessing one or two good harbors, it seems marked out by its position for an important role in the history of the eastern Mediterranean. But never since an age which was already legendary when Greek history began has Crete occupied a dominating position among the powers of the surrounding continents. Internal dissensions, due in ancient times to the diversity of races inhabiting its soil (Eteocretans--the original inhabitants--Pelasgians, Acheans, Cydonians and Dorians), and in modern times to the fact that a large minority of the population has accepted the Ottoman religion along with Ottoman government, have kept Crete in a position of political inferiority throughout the historical period.⇒See a list of verses on CRETE in the Bible. 1. Early History:Mt. Ida in Crete was famous in Greek legend as the birthplace of Zeus. The half-legendary, half-historical King Minos was said to be the son of Zeus, and to have derived from his father the wisdom to which, by a type of myth common in Greek lands, the constitution of the Cretan cities was ascribed. Minos was accepted as a historical personage by Thucydides and Aristotle, who say that he was the first dynast in Greece to establish dominion on the sea. One of his exploits was the suppression of piracy in Cretan waters, a feat which had to be repeated by the Roman Pompeius at a later period. Aristotle compares the Cretan institutions with those of Sparta; the island was said to have been colonized by Dorians from Peloponnesus (Politics ii.10). The most important cities in Crete were Knossos (whose palace has been excavated with fruitful results by Mr. Arthur Evans), Gortyna, near the Gulf of Messara, and Cydonia, with its river Iardanus. The excavations of Mr. Evans at Knossos and of the Italians at Phastos (near Fair Havens) prove that Crete was a center of Mediterranean civilization in an early age. In the Homeric poems, Crete is said to have contained an hundred cities; at that period the Cretans were still famed as daring sailors. In the classical age of Greek history they never held a leading position. They are mentioned chiefly as traders and mercenary soldiers, skilled especially in archery. During the Hellenistic period Crete remained free. Demetrius Nicator