We had a very pretty festival for the Sheykh, whose tomb you have a photograph of, and I spent a very pleasant evening with Sheykh Abd el-Mootooal, who used to scowl at me, but now we are ‘like brothers.’  I found him very clever, and better informed than any Arab I have met, who is quite apart from all Franks.  I was astonished to find that he abondait dans man sens in my dispute with Sheykh Abdurrachman, and said that it was the duty of Muslims to learn what they could from us, and not to stick to the old routine.

On Sunday the Patriarch snubbed me, and would not eat with me, and on Monday a Walee (saint) picked out tit-bits for me with his own fingers, and went with me inside the tomb.  The Patriarch has made a blunder with his progress.  He has come ostentatiously as the protege and pronem of the Pasha, and he has ‘eaten’ and beaten the fellaheen.  The Copts of Luxor have had to pay fifty pounds for the honour of his presence, besides no end of sheep, poultry, butter, etc.  If I were of a proselytising mind I could make converts of several whose pockets and backs are smarting, and the American missionaries will do it.  Of course the Muslims sympathize with the converts to a religion which has no ‘idols,’ and no monks, and whose priests marry like other folk, so they are the less afraid.  I hear there are now fifty Protestants at Koos, and the Patriarch was furious because he could not beat them.  Omar cooked a grand dinner for him last night for our neighbour Mikaeel, and the eating was not over till two in the morning.  Our Government should manage to put the screw on him about our Abyssinian prisoners.  I dare not say who told me all he said, but he was a truthful man and a Christian.  The Patriarch answered me sharply when I asked about the state of religion in Abyssinia that, ’they were lovers of the faith, and his obedient children.’  Whenever there is mischief among the Copts, the priests are at the bottom of it.  If the Patriarch chose those people would be let go; and so it would be but he hates all Europeans bitterly.

I should like to have the Revue des Deux Mondes of all things, but I don’t know how it is to come here, or what the postage would cost.  They send nothing but letters above Cairo by post, as all goes on men’s backs.  ‘Inshallah!  I am the bearer of good news,’ cries the postman, as he flings the letter over the wall.  I am so glad of the chance of getting news to you quick by Giafar Pasha, who came here like a gentleman, alone, without a retinue; he is on his way from two years in the Soudan, where he was absolute Pasha.  He is very much liked and respected, and seems a very sensible and agreeable man, quite unlike any Turkish big-wig I have seen.  Great potentate as he is, he made Yussuf Mustapha and Abdallah sit down, and was extremely civil and simple in his manners.

June 30, 1867:  Sir Alexander Duff Gordon