The police of the metropolis is more under the direction of the military than of the civil power. A few years ago it was under the authority of the “Wálee” and the “Zábit;” but since my first visit to this country the office of the former has been abolished. He was charged with the apprehension of thieves and other criminals; and under his jurisdiction were the public women, of whom he kept a list, and from each of whom he exacted a tax. He also took cognizance of the conduct of the women in general; and when he found a female to have been guilty of a single act of incontinence, he added her name to the list of the public women, and demanded from her the tax, unless she preferred, or could afford, to escape that ignominy, by giving to him, or to his officers, a considerable bribe. This course was always pursued, and is still, by a person who farms the tax of the public women,[218] in the case of unmarried females, and generally in the case of the married also; but the latter are sometimes privately put to death, if they cannot, by bribery or some other artifice, save themselves. Such proceedings are, however, in two points, contrary to the law, which ordains that a person who accuses a woman of adultery or fornication, without producing four witnesses of the crime, shall be scourged with eighty stripes, and decrees other punishments than those of degradation and tribute against women convicted of such offences. The office of the Zábit has before been mentioned. He is now the chief of the police. His officers, who have no distinguishing mark to render them known as such, are interspersed through the metropolis: they often visit the coffee-shops, and observe the conduct, and listen to the conversation, of the citizens. Many of them are pardoned thieves. They accompany the military guards in their nightly rounds through the streets of the metropolis. Here, none but the blind are allowed to go out at night later than about an hour and a half after sunset, without a lantern or a light of some kind. Few persons are seen in the streets later than two or three hours after sunset. At the fifth or sixth hour, one might pass through the whole length of the metropolis and scarcely meet more than a dozen or twenty persons, excepting the watchmen and guards, and the porters at the gates of the bye-streets and quarters. The sentinel, or guard, calls out to the approaching passenger, in Turkish, “Who is that?” and is answered in Arabic, “A citizen.”[219] The private watchman, in the same case exclaims, “Attest the unity of God!” or merely, “Attest the unity!”[220] The reply given to this is, “There is no deity but God!” which Christians, as well as Muslims, object not to say; the former understanding these words in a different sense from the latter. It is supposed that a thief, or a person bound on any unlawful undertaking, would not dare to utter these words. Some persons loudly exclaim, in reply to the summons of the watchman, “There is no