“Welcome. I've been waiting for you all day.” Such is the greeting, or something like it, when you enter Cairo's famous Khan el-Khalili. The stallholders are well-versed in every line that might entice passers-by to pause for just a moment and engage in conversation. They know that once a conversation begins, a sale is possible. Respond to their approach, and your money is as good as parted with already. Even when your reply to the question, “What are you looking for, sir?” is a cool, “Nothing. I'm not looking for anything,” the riposte will be just as quick, “I have plenty of nothing. Step inside and take a look.” Khan el-Khalili is a centuries old mix of stalls and alleyways, with everything on sale from ebony statues of Tutankhamun to pots and pans, from perfumes and spices to clothes and furniture. If you need to buy the hilal, or crescent for the top of a mosque, this is the place you will get it. In what seems like a warren of alleyways with neither rhyme nor reason to its plan, the Khan is actually divided up into particular sections. In one area you will find gold, in another spices, in another precious stones and so on. This most definitely the place for tourists to flock to and it does draw busloads of travellers from morning to late at night, looking for papyrus and plastic pyramid souvenirs to take home from their holiday to Egypt. If you need a belly dancing costume or a tarboosh, the famous Turkish headdress sometimes known as a fez, this is the place to look. Whatever you want, it's all waiting for you, at a bargain price. Khan el-Khalili, though, is not only a tourist venue, exciting though it might be for those who have never visited the mysterious East and who are prepared to turn their hand to haggling over prices for the first time in their lives. It is also the home and the workplace of thousands of Cairenes who will stay on once the busloads have moved off to the next site. It is the place, also, where many housewives will come to buy cotton sheets, towels and fabrics, at prices that will compete with anyone. Around the next corner from a café catering to tourists you will find another café where the locals are taking a rest from the heat of the day. All of life is here. Bordered to the east by Midan el-Hussein, to the south by Al-Muski Street and to the west by the great Muizz li-Din Allah Street, the thoroughfare of the walled city of Qahira that stretches from Bab el-Futuh in the north to Bab Zuweyla in the south, Khan el-Khalili has been here for over six hundred years. It started as a single caravanserai or khan for merchants, built by Sultan Barquq's master of the horse, Amir Garkas el-Khalili. As we saw in Wikalat Bazar'a, a Khan, also known to Egyptians as a wikala, was the mediaeval equivalent of a modern motel. Merchants would unload their wares from camels in the courtyard below and would store their goods and find lodgings for the night in the upper floors. Cairo was once full of these wikalas, and a few still remain to be explored in this area. Garkas el-Khalili built his Khan in 1382, but it was replaced and the whole area rebuilt on a grander scale by Sultan al-Ghuri in 1511. Somehow, though, the name stuck and it has remained Khan el-Khalili to this day, although only the gateway known as Bab al-Badestan is all that remains of the original area. A great centre of trade and commerce, the area fell into decline during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, during the time of the Ottomans, but it rose to importance once again during the reign of Muhammad Ali, when Egypt's fortunes began to increase, and it has been firmly on the map of Cairo since then. Busy at all times of the day or night, it is especially during Ramadan when the whole area comes to life, drawing the people of Cairo like a magnet to the place where they know everything will be happening. It has a great nostalgia in their lives, taking them back to the time of their childhood and to happy, family times. Many of them will make a visit to the Mosque of el-Hussein, which dominates the area. They will pray and then go on about their business. This is one of the things that so fascinates foreign visitors to the Arab world, that religion and life are one and cannot be separated. Muslims read in the Holy Qur'an in Surat at-Tur: Say (O Muhammad to them): Wait! I am with you, among the waiters! Holy Qur'an 52:31 Life is surely very busy. We see it in the stalls and the alleyways of Khan el-Khalili. We see it at work and all around us. Muslims know that amidst all the activity of life, just like the boy in the Khan who has been waiting for them all day to sell them this or that trinket, Allah is waiting for them and will continue to wait for them to turn to Him and to pour all their troubles onto Him. Just as the mosque of al-Hussein provides a moment's respite from the heat and the haggling of Khan el-Khalili, so Almighty Allah waits to provide respite for us from the cares of life. Let us not waste the chance to take up such an offer. British Muslim writer, Idris Tawfiq, is a lecturer at Al-Azhar University. The author of eight books about Islam, he divides his time between Egypt and the UK as a speaker, writer and broadcaster. You can visit his website at www.idristawfiq.com.
