ABSTRACT

Now let us turn to the pardoning of the said pilgrims. In the midst of the said city there is a very beautiful temple, similar to the Colosseum o f Home, but not made o f such large stones, but of burnt bricks, and it is round in the same manner; it has ninety or one hundred doors around it, and is arched, and has many of these doors.2 On entering the said

1 Bengal, pronounced Bangala by the Arabs (1) a Joseph Pitts, who visited Meccah in 1608, describes the Great

Mosque as having “ about forty-two doors to enter into it,— not so much, I think, for necessity, as figure; for in some places they are close by one another.” A li Bey says : “ The temple has nineteen gates with

temple you descend ten or twelve steps of marble, and here and there about the said entrance there stand men who sell jewels, and nothing else. And when you have descended the said steps you find the said temple all around, and every­ thing, that is, the walls, covered with gold.1 And under the said arches there stand about 4,000 or 5,000 persons, men and women, which persons sell all kinds of odoriferous things; the greater part are powders for preserving human bodies,2 because pagans come there from all parts of the world. Truly, it would not be possible to describe the sweetness and the odours which are smelt within this temple. It appears like a spicery full o f musk, and of other most delicious odours. On the &3rd of May the said pardon commences in the above-mentioned temple. The pardon is this : Within the said temple, and uncovered, and in the centre, there is a tower, the size of which is about five or six paces on every side,3 around which tower there is

thirty-eight arches.” Burckhardt, in 1814 : “ The gates of the mosque are nineteen in number, and are distributed about without any order o f symmetry. As each gate consists o f two or three arches or divisions, separated by narrow walls, those divisions are counted in the enumera­ tion o f the gates leading into the Kaabah, and thus make up the number thirty-nine.” Burton says : “ The principal gates are seventeen in num­ ber. In the old building they were more numerous.” The latter fact, coupled with Burckhardt’s description o f the double and triple division in each gate, may account for Varthema’s approximate estimate, and might have spared him Burton’s remark thereon, who calls it “ a pro­ digious exaggeration.”