[p.132] of gardens in this valley, and describes different springs and wells that no longer exist, having probably been choked up by the violent torrents. El Fasy likewise affirms that in his days the town contained no less than fifty-eight wells. But, in the earliest times of Arabian history, this place was certainly barren; and the Koran styles it accordingly the valley without seeds. Azraky further says, that before houses were constructed here by the Kossay, this valley abounded with acacias and various thorny trees.
Nothing is more difficult than to compute exactly the population of eastern towns, where registers are never kept, and where even the number of houses can scarcely be ascertained. To judge from appearances, and by comparison with European towns, in which the amount of population is well known, may be very fallacious. The private habitations in the East are generally (though the Hedjaz forms an exception to this rule) of one story only, and therefore contain fewer inmates in proportion than European dwellings. On the other hand, Eastern towns have very narrow streets, are without public squares or large market-places, and their miserable suburbs are in general more nurously peopled than their principal and best streets. Travellers, however, in passing rapidly through towns, may be easily deceived, for they see only the bazars and certain streets, in which the greater part of the male population is usually assembled during the day. Thus it happens that recent and respectable authorities have stated two hundred thousand souls as the population of Aleppo; four hundred thousand as that of Damascus; and three hundred thousand as that of Cairo. My estimate of the population of the three great Syrian towns is as follows:—Damascus two hundred and fifty thousand; Hamah (of which, however, I must speak with less confidence) from sixty to one hundred thousand; and Aleppo, daily dwindling into decay, between eighty and ninety thousand. To Cairo I would allow at most two hundred thousand. As to Mekka, which I have seen both before and after the Hadj, and know, perhaps, more thoroughly than any other town of the East, the result of my inquiries gives between twenty-five and thirty thousand stationary inhabitants, for the population of the city and suburbs; besides from three to four thousand Abyssinian and
[p.133] black slaves: its habitations are capable of containing three times this number. In the time of Sultan Selym I. (according to Kotobeddyn, in A.H. 923) a census was taken of the inhabitants of Mekka, previous to a gratuitous distribution of corn among them, and the number was found to be twelve thousand, men, women, and children. The same author shows that, in earlier times, the population was much more considerable; for when Abou Dhaher, the chief of the Carmatis, (a heretic sect of Moslims) sacked Mekka, in A.H. 314, thirty thousand of the inhabitants were killed by his ferocious soldiers.
[p.134] DESCRIPTION OF THE BEITULLAH, OR GREAT MOSQUE, AT MECCAH.
WHERE the valley is wider than in other interior parts of the town, stands the mosque, called Beitullah, or El Haram, a building remarkable only on account of the Kaaba, which it encloses; for there are several mosques in other places of the East nearly equal to this in size, and much superior to it in beauty.
The Kaaba stands in an oblong square, two hundred and fifty paces long, and two hundred broad, none of the sides of which run quite in a straight line, though at first sight the whole appears to be of a regular shape. This open square is enclosed on the eastern side by a colonnade: the pillars stand in a quadruple row: they are three deep on the other sides, and united by pointed arches, every four of which support a small dome, plastered and whitened on the outside. These domes, according to Kotobeddyn, are one hundred and fifty-two in number. Along the whole colonnade, on the four sides, lamps are suspended from the arches. Some are lighted every night, and all during the nights of Ramadhan. The pillars are above twenty feet in height, and generally from one foot and a half to one foot and three quarters in diameter; but little regularity has been observed in regard to them. Some are of white marble, granite, or porphyry, but the greater number are of common stone of the Mekka mountains. El Fasy states the whole at five hundred and eighty-nine, and says they are all of marble, excepting one hundred and twenty-six, which are of common stone, and three of composition. Kotobeddyn reckons five hundred and fifty-five, of which, according to him, three hundred and eleven are of marble, and the rest of stone taken from the neighbouring mountains; but neither of these authors lived to see
[p.135] the latest repairs of the mosque, after the destruction occasioned by a torrent, in A.D. 1626. Between every three or four columns stands an octagonal one, about four feet in thickness. On the east side are two shafts of reddish gray granite, in one piece, and one fine gray porphyry column with slabs of white feldspath. On the north side is one red granite column, and one of fine-grained red porphyry: these are probably the columns which Kotobeddyn states to have been brought from Egypt, and principally from Akhmim (Panopolis), when the chief El Mohdy enlarged the mosque, in A.H. 163. Among the four hundred and fifty or five hundred columns, which form the enclosure, I found not any two capitals or bases exactly alike: the capitals are of coarse Saracen workmanship; some of them, which had served for former buildings, by the ignorance of the workmen have been placed upside down upon the shafts. I observed about half a dozen marble bases of good Grecian workmanship. A few of the marble columns bear Arabic or Cufic inscriptions, in which I read the dates 863 and 762. (A.H). A column on the east side exhibits a very ancient Cufic inscription, somewhat defaced, which I could neither read nor copy. Those shafts, formed of the Mekka stone, cut principally from the side of the mountain near the Shebeyka quarter, are mostly in three pieces, but the marble shafts are in one piece. Some of the columns are strengthened with broad iron rings or bands, as in many other Saracen buildings of the East: they were first employed here by Ibn Dhaher Berkouk, King of Egypt, in rebuilding the mosque, which had been destroyed by fire in A. H. 802.
This temple has been so often ruined and repaired, that no traces of remote antiquity are to be found about it. On the inside of the great wall which encloses the colonnades, a single Arabic inscription is seen, in large characters, but containing merely the names of Mohammed and his immediate successors: Abou Beker, Omar, Othman, and Aly. The name of Allah, in large characters, occurs also in several places. On the outside, over the gates, are long inscriptions, in the Solouth character, commemorating the names of those by whom the gates were built, long and minute details of which are given by the historians of Mekka. The inscription on the south side, over Bab
[p.136] Ibrahim, is most conspicuous; all that side was rebuilt by the Egyptian Sultan El Ghoury, in A.H. 906. Over the Bab Aly and Bab Abbas is a long inscription, also in the Solouth character, placed there by Sultan Murad Ibn Soleyman, in A.H. 984, after he had repaired the whole building. Kotobeddyn has given this inscription at length; it occupies several pages in his history, and is a monument of the Sultan's vanity. This side of the mosque having escaped destruction in 1626, the inscription remains uninjured.
Some parts of the walls and arches are gaudily painted, in stripes of yellow, red, and blue, as are also the minarets. Paintings of flowers, in the usual Muselman style, are no where seen; the floors of the colonnades are paved with large stones badly cemented together.