The camp court was the travelling capital of the Seljuk Sultans. This imperial camp was laid out into squares and streets. We read how in a few hours a city, as if built by enchantment, would rise on the uninhabited plain. The camp exhibited a motley collection of tents and dwellings and palm-leaf huts. The only regular part of the encampment were the streets of shops, each of which was constructed in the manner of a booth at an English fair. Moore gives us the picture in these words:
“Whose are the gilded tents that crowd the way,
Where all was waste and silent yesterday?
This City of War, which, in a few short hours,
Hath sprung up here, as if the magic powers
Of him who, in the twinkling of a star,
Built the high pillar’d halls of Chilminar,
Had conjured up, far as the eye can see,
This world of tents and domes and sun-bright armoury.—
Princely pavilions, screen’d by many a fold