One of the great institutions of Sanaa are the khans, or caravanserais, of which there are a considerable number, the greater part being situated near the gates of the city. These buildings vary in size, but some are very large, though nearly all in bad repair. They usually consist of large houses three and four storeys in height, open to the sky in the centre. The lower floor forms stabling for the animals, while a number of rooms of various sizes open out on to the balconies which surround the court on the upper storeys. The hire of these rooms is very small, something like twopence a night, and as many as like to crowd into it do so. There is nearly always a _café_ attached, where cooking can be done, either by the visitors themselves, or, if more extravagantly inclined, by the servants of the khan. Assembled round the gates of these khans are to be seen the tribes-people from every part of the interior—bringers of salt from Mareb, the modern Saba or Sheba; of coffee from the northern districts; of indigo and grain and spices from wherever the soil is suitable to their growth. Caravans from the Hadramaut and Yaffa discharge their goods here too, to reload their camels with the produce of the largest city of Southern Arabia. The population of Sanaa, although there is no official census to base one’s calculation upon, probably numbers some forty to fifty thousand people, of whom twenty thousand are said to be Jews. These, as has already been stated, have a quarter entirely to themselves; and although many hire shops in the bazaars, and are daily engaged in the town in attending to them, or in carrying on their respective trades, at night retire to the _ghetto_, with the exception of a few who are servants, and who sleep in their masters’ houses. There seems to be no more oppression of the Jews in the Yemen than there is of the Arabs. They are free to carry on whatever trade they will; to attend their synagogues and schools, and, in fact, seem very little interfered with by the Turks. They, of course, pay their regular share in the taxation, as is only right they should; and if it be exceptionally heavy in their case, it is so also in the case of the Arab inhabitants—though naturally the Jews, as to nature born, cry out a great deal more than the natives.