Two chambers are used as barley stores.
Fatima, Mohammed’s mother, has a room, and beside it is another to which Mohammed’s second wife was brought. Exactly opposite lives Mohammed’s first wife, and, on the same side, Mansur and his only wife.
Last of all comes the kitchen.
I visited all these caves; each woman had her household pots and pans prettily arranged on the inner wall of the chamber, as our cooks do their brass utensils on their kitchen walls. Ranged on the sides were various articles, while in the centre of the clay floor, adorned, as a rule, with rush matting or with carpets, stood what appeared to be a low table. This is the sleeping couch, on which carpets are generally spread; on this the inmates sleep without undressing.
The whitewashed walls are bare but for the guns which are sometimes hung there, as also keys, yarn, etc.
In Mohammed’s and Mansur’s rooms I saw some frightful framed pictures, apparently supposed to represent the Prophet, and evidently cheap rubbish bought at Gabés, corresponding in all respects to the coloured prints of the Christ which we find in every cottage in our country.
The comfortable cave rooms, and even the courtyard, were clean and well kept. The fowls, indeed, had the run of yard No. II., but it was evidently forbidden to cattle, which were restricted to the first yard. By a long underground passage, provided with side recesses for horses and donkeys, one entered yard No. III.; its chambers included a large banqueting hall, the roof of which was composed of two parallel vaults, supported where they met by a central row of pillars. This hall occupied one entire side of the court, and opposite to it were two rooms, used when I was there as guest-chambers; one of these I occupied. They could also be utilised as corn stores; to this end a shaft is dug from the surface, through the solid earth to the dome, so that the corn may be poured down; and when the camels bring the grain, it is unloaded near the mouth of the shaft.
Near the entrance to the passage are two rooms, also available as stores for grain, but during my visit they were used as dwellings for several male servants.
In yard No. IV. lived a negro family, who were entrusted with the care of Mohammed’s and Amar’s two horses, and the two mules belonging to the Khalifa and Mansur which were stabled there. There was also a corn store, where the barley for the horses and mules was kept, a writing-room, and a tank.
These four yards were used indiscriminately by the Khalifa and his household.