The Houses Surrounding This Place Are Handsome Buildings, And Here The Richest Foreigners, In The Time Of The Pilgrimage, Take Up Their Abode.

In a large house here resides the Aga of the eunuchs belonging to the temple, together with all the eunuch boys, who are educated here, till they attain a sufficient age to allow of their living in private lodgings.

We now turn into the Mesaa, the straightest and longest street in Mekka, and one of the best built. It receives its name from the ceremony of the Say, which is performed in it, and which I have already described: from this circumstance, and its being full of shops, it is the most noisy and most frequented part of the town. The shops are of the same description as those enumerated in the account of Djidda, with the addition of a dozen of tin-men, who make tin bottles of all sizes, in which the pilgrims, upon their return, carry the water of Zemzem to their homes. The shops are generally magazines on the ground-floor of the houses, before which a stone bench is reared. Here the merchant sits, under the shade of a slight awning of mats fastened to long poles; this custom prevails throughout the Hedjaz. All the houses of the Mesaa are rented by Turkish pilgrims. On the arrival of a party of hadjys from Djidda, which happens almost every morning, for four or five months of the year, their baggage is usually deposited in this street, after which they pay their visit to the mosque,

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Words from 44076 to 44337 of 182297