From the beginning, I was treated well by those charged with my captivity. Perhaps they were not told the circumstances of my imprisonment. Then again, as my little jailer, Wazim Kadi, told me when I was brought to the caliph's palace, 'The Seljuqs are barbarians. Everyone knows this. They are coarse ruffians from out of Rhum where they live like wandering beasts.'

Of all the many contending races in the turbulent East, the Saracens consider themselves the most civil and refined, with a duty to impart their singular virtues and qualities to those less enlightened than themselves. It may be that when they learned I had been a captive of the Seljuqs, the courtly and cultured Saracens took it upon themselves to demonstrate their courtesy.

Nevertheless, it was with no little trepidation that I disembarked on the wooden quay which serves the impossible sprawl that is al-Qahirah, as the Arabs call it – the Victorious, for it overwhelms all would-be conquerors, and vanquishes all with its inexhaustible wealth of seductions.

I looked out from the quay at the dizzying tumult, masses of bodies which seemed to ebb and flow like a mottled flood, shimmering with sweat in the midday swelter, and I quailed before the sight. My reprieve, as Sahak called it, merely exchanged one captivity for another. I did not know what manner of reception awaited me with the Saracens; I did not know whether I should be set free, or executed before the day was finished.

The Black Rood, still bound in the rug in which I had wrapped it, went with me. In this only was I content; the holy relic was my strength and my consolation as we made our way up from the river with a train of bearers and handlers hired from the quayside to carry the caliph's treasure. Passing through one squalid settlement after another, we made our slow way towards the massive iron gates that guard the inner city. The poor and wretched of the East have heard that the streets of Cairo are paved with bricks of gold, and the city cannot hold them all; so, they build their hovels between the banks of the Nile and the high city walls, and every spring the floods come and wash these pitiful dwellings away. Many are drowned and their corpses are eaten by crocodiles-ravenous dragon-like river monsters that bedevil the lower marshes of the river.

Another variety of fierce and loathsome creature infests the stinking waste heaps outside the walls, and throng the gates of Cairo, preying on the unwary: beggars. At first I was moved with Christian pity and charity at the appalling sight of them. God have mercy, there were so many- blind and dumb, halt and lame, leprous, maimed, deaf, starving, naked, and sick. My soul quailed before their misery. But the hostile and belligerent bearing of these unfortunates quickly drove out all compassion. Like jackals they prowl the crowds looking for victims, hobbling pathetically or dragging their wizened and mangled bodies along the streets, bleating out their pitiful, and practised, wails of woe.' Although I was a prisoner and had nothing at all to give, that did not stop them from descending upon me, grabbing and snatching at my clothes with their withered hands, mewling and bawling their pitiful cries. God forgive me, I soon learned to ignore them and, like the guards, moved quickly through the shabby ranks, pushing aside any who were stubborn enough to stand in the way, turning a deaf ear to their shrieks, and hurrying on.

Anxiety over my impending fate did not survive beyond a few hundred paces inside the gates. For the city was not only larger, noisier, and more crowded than any I had ever seen, it was also more fabulous in every way. Instantly, my sun-dazed senses were overwhelmed and submerged beneath the dizzying inundation of sight and sound-and smell – for the slops and refuse of the street-dwellers are allowed to stew in the sun and infuse the air with noxious and pestilential odours.

While the smells steal the breath away, the sounds buffet and batter: the beggars with their insistent cries, the street merchants with their shrill demands, dogs barking, children screeching, the press of the populace, talking, shouting, calling to one another-a thousand voices clamouring at once. The resulting welter of confusion is dizzying as it is deafening.

And the sights! Gait, in the space of a few dozen paces beyond Cairo's gates you will see more extraordinary things than most people see in their entire lives. Wherever the eye happened to light, some new and startling view presented itself. I saw men and women of wealth swathed head to foot in the most startling robes -the colour of which changed with every movement through all the shifting, radiant hues of the rainbow. I saw copper-domed mosqs covered with gleaming Persian tiles so that they looked as if they had been spun of peacock-coloured glass.

And the people, Gait, were the most unusual to walk under God's wide heaven. The colours of their skin ranged from black as dark as midnight shadow, through browns of every hue from the deep rich tones of walnuts, baked earth, and old leather to the fair pallor of fine parchment. Their shapes and sizes were no less various. I saw men as tall and gaunt and black as ebony pillars, and others small as half-grown children. The fairest of all were the Egyptians themselves. Fine featured, with high noble brows, straight white teeth, and rich black hair that glistens in the sun, they stand erect and move with unhurried grace, gazing upon the world with quiet amusement in their dark, almond-shaped eyes. They say they are descended from gods of old, and you only have to look at them to believe it. A more handsome race you cannot imagine.

To move about the city is to confront wonders on every side. There is more colour, more noise, more everything to be found on the streets of Cairo than anywhere else under the sun. Hanging from upper windows I saw gilded cages with birds as big as ravens, but more brightly-coloured than kings, long-tailed and hook-beaked, with feathers scarlet and green, jade blue, white, and yellow. I have no idea what they were or whence they came, but they screeched like the bhean sidhe to burst the ear. There were dogs unlike any I have seen before or since: lean and slender, narrow beasts with long, thin faces, hollow haunches and muscled shoulders, almost as big as wolf hounds, but sleek and fine-footed for running in the sand.

Also, though it was a while before I noticed them, cats. Once I began to see them, however, I was astonished at the numbers. There were very multitudes of the creatures, and they were everywhere. Not a shadow in the city, but you did not see the glint of a yellow eye looking back; not a tree, not a market stall, not a doorway, nor window, nor ledge, nor wall, nor rooftop where a cat did not sit, or walk, or stretch itself.

The crooked streets swarmed with every variety of merchant and seller known-some working from stalls, others carrying their wares stacked on their heads, or dangling from their arms-and every last one shouting to make himself heard above the din. Here a candlemaker walked with hundreds of candles attached by their wicks to a long pole; there a butcher shouted for custom with rings of sausage looped round his outstretched arms; next to him, a carpenter balanced four chairs on his back; and over here, an ironmonger jangled examples of the various chains he could make-and more: goldsmiths, gem dealers, slave merchants, and every kind of food vendor ever known.

Any space on the street, large or small, became a veritable marketplace for vendors to tout for business. I saw carts heaped high with hairy coconuts, others with mounds of sweet black dates, and still others with persimmons, or pears, lemons, almonds, or green bitter quinces.

People thronged these impromptu markets, or bazaars as they are called, eagerly bargaining with the merchants so that the din was a stupendous uproar. Through the tumult scampered lithe, brown children, darting around the legs of their elders, contributing to the havoc with shrill squeals and shouts. Barefoot ragged youths darted quickly here and there and, more than once as I witnessed with my own eyes, relieved unwary passersby of the burden of any unattended purses or belongings.