Soon after sunset, a cannon announced the close of the fast.  We waited an hour or two longer, to allow the people time to eat, and then sallied out into the streets.  Every minaret in the city blazed with a crown of lighted lamps around its upper gallery, while the long shafts below, and the tapering cones above, topped with brazen crescents, shone fair in the moonlight.  It was a strange, brilliant spectacle.  In the square before the principal mosque we found a crowd of persons frolicking around the fountain, in the light of a number of torches on poles planted in the ground.  Mats were spread on the stones, and rows of Turks of all classes sat thereon, smoking their pipes.  Large earthen water-jars stood here and there, and the people drank so often and so long that they seemed determined to provide against the morrow.  The boys were having their amusement in wrestling, shouting and firing off squibs, which they threw into the crowd.  We kicked off our slippers, sat down among the Turks, smoked a narghileh, drank a cup of coffee and an iced sherbet of raisin juice, and so enjoyed the Ramazan as well as the best of them.

Numbers of True Believers were drinking and washing themselves at the picturesque fountain, and just as we rose to depart, the voice of a boy-muezzin, on one of the tallest minarets, sent down a musical call to prayer.  Immediately the boys left off their sports and started on a run for the great mosque, and the grave, gray-bearded Turks got up from the mats, shoved on their slippers, and marched after them.  We followed, getting a glimpse of the illuminated interior of the building, as we passed; but the oda-bashi conducted us still further, to a smaller though more beautiful mosque, surrounded with a garden-court.  It was a truly magical picture.  We entered the gate, and passed on by a marble pavement, under trees and arbors of vines that almost shut out the moonlight, to a paved space, in the centre whereof was a beautiful fountain, in the purest Saracenic style.  Its heavy, projecting cornices and tall pyramidal roof rested on a circle of elegant arches, surrounding a marble structure, whence the water gushed forth in a dozen sparkling streams.  On three sides it was inclosed by the moonlit trees and arbors; on the fourth by the outer corridor of the mosque, the door of entrance being exactly opposite.

Large numbers of persons were washing their hands and feet at the fountain, after which they entered and knelt on the floor.  We stood unobserved in the corridor, and looked in on the splendidly illuminated interior and the crowd at prayer, all bending their bodies to the earth at regular intervals and murmuring the name of Allah.  They resembled a plain, of reeds bending before the gusts of wind which precede a storm.  When all had entered and were united in solemn prayer, we returned, passing the grand mosque.  I stole up to the door, lifted the heavy carpet that hung before it, and looked in.  There was a Mevlevi