Assuming The
Population To Be 16,000 (Burckhardt Raises It As High As 20,000), Of
Which 9000 Occupy The
City, and 7000 the suburbs and the fort, this
would give a little more than twelve inhabitants to each house,
A fair
estimate for an Arab town, where the abodes are large and slaves
abound.[FN#20]
The castle joins on to the North-West angle of the city enceinte, and
the wall of its Eastern outwork is pierced for
[p.394]a communication through a court strewed with guns and warlike
apparatus, between the Manakhah Suburb and the Bab al-Shami, or the
Syrian Gate. Having been refused entrance into the fort, I can describe
only its exterior. The outer wall resembles that of the city, only its
towers are more solid, and the curtain appears better calculated for
work. Inside, a donjon, built upon a rock, bears proudly enough the
banner of the Crescent and the Star; its whitewashed walls make it a
conspicuous object, and guns pointed in all directions, especially upon
the town, project from their embrasures. The castle is said to contain
wells, bomb-proofs, provisions, and munitions of war; if so, it must be
a kind of Gibraltar to the Badawin and the Wahhabis. The garrison
consisted of a Nisf Urtah,[FN#21] or half battalion (four hundred men)
of Nizam infantry, commanded by a Pasha; his authority also extends to
a Sanjak, or about five hundred Kurdish and Albanian Bash-Buzuks, whose
duty it is to escort caravans, to convey treasures, and to be shot at
in the Passes.
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