3-021-647 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Prince and Princess of Wales in Egypt: procession of the Holy Carpet at Cairo, 1869. Religious festival, the start of the journey to Mecca with new coverings '...for the Caaba...They are carefully folded up and placed on the camel with the very elaborate canopy of embroidered gold...So holy are these coverings that when the procession passed there was a rush made at it by the members of the crowd, who madly pressed forward to kiss the golden folds which hung round, and the guards had to use their sticks in defence. There was a vast number of troops out, and some regiments marched before and after the Mahmel...One man, the Sheik-el-Gamel, has a function which is hereditary in his family: he rides on a camel, bareheaded and naked to the waist, the whole journey to Mecca and back; he rolls his head of shaggy black hair, and derives a great odour of sanctity from performing the hadj under such fantastic circumstances. Kettle-drums on camels and musicians of all kinds follow in the distance. The women in the crowd greet the procession with a curious sound called the 'zarloota'...it is sweet and liquid like the cooing of doves...Gaily-decorated camels, bearing the richer class of travellers in easy litters, passed along'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.