[p.332] Having now performed all the duties of a good Zair, I was permitted by Shaykh Hamid to wander about and see the sights.  We began our circumambulation at the Bab al-Salam,[FN#69] the Gate of Salvation, the South-Western entrance pierced in the long wall of the Mosque.  It is a fine archway handsomely encrusted with marble and glazed tiles; the many gilt inscriptions on its sides give it, especially at night-time, an appearance of considerable splendour.  The portcullis-like doors are of wood, strengthened with brass plates, and nails of the same metal.  Outside this gate is a little Sabil, or public fountain, where those who will not pay for the water, kept ready in large earthen jars by the “Sakka” of the Mosque, perform their ablutions gratis.  Here all the mendicants congregate in force, sitting on the outer steps and at the entrance of the Mosque, up and through which the visitors must pass.

About the centre of the Western wall is the Bab alRahmah, the Gate of Pity, which admits the dead bodies of the Faithful when carried to be prayed over in the Mosque.  There is nothing remarkable in its appearance; in common with the other gates it has huge folding doors, iron-bound, an external flight of steps, and a few modern inscriptions.

The Bab Majidi, or Gate of the Sultan Abd al-Majid, stands in the centre of the Northern wall; like its portico, it is unfinished, but its present appearance promises that it will eclipse all except the Bab al-Salam.

The Bab al-Nisa, or Gate of Women, is in the Eastern wall opposite the Bab al-Rahmah, with which it is connected by the “Farsh al-Hajar,” a broad band of stone, two or three steps below the level of the portico,

[p.333] and slightly raised above the Sahn or the hypaethral portion of the Mosque.  And lastly, in the Southern portion of the same Eastern wall is the Bab Jibrail, the Gate of the Archangel Gabriel.[FN#70]

All these entrances are arrived at by short external flights of steps leading from the streets, as the base of the temple, unlike that of Meccah, is a little higher than the foundation of the buildings around it.  The doors are closed by the attendant eunuchs immediately after the night prayers, except during the blessed month Al-Ramazan and in the pilgrimage season, when pious visitors pay considerable fees there to pass the night in meditation and prayer.

The minarets are five in number; but one, the Shikayliyah, at the North-West angle of the building, has been levelled, and is still in process of being rebuilt.  The Munar Bab al-Salam stands by the gate of that name:  it is a tall, handsome tower, surmounted by a large ball or cone[FN#71] of brass gilt or burnished.  The Munar Bab al-Rahmah, about the centre of the Western wall, is of more simple form than the others:  it has two galleries, with the superior portion circular, and surmounted by the conical “extinguisher"-roof so common in Turkey and Egypt.  On the North-East angle of the Mosque stands the Sulaymaniyah Munar, so named after its founder, Sultan Sulayman the Magnificent.  It is a well-built and substantial stone-tower divided into three stages; the two