To house these treasures Sultan Selim I, who captured them among the spoils of Cairo, built a pavilion in the grounds of the Seraglio, which was restored and enlarged at immense cost by Mahmoud I. Those who have seen it say that the Chamber of the Noble Robe is a great domed room lined with magnificent tiles, and that the sacred relics, under a sort of silver baldacchino, are kept behind a wrought-silver screen in a chest of beaten gold. The ceremony of opening them is performed by the Sultan in person, who is supposed to oversee the necessary preparations on the fourteenth, and who, on the morning of the fifteenth, goes in state to the Seraglio accompanied by the members of his family and the grandees of the empire. The mantle is said to be wrapped in forty silk covers. Whether all of them or any of them are removed for the ceremony I cannot say. At all events, those who attend it are given the privilege of kissing the relic, in order of rank. Each time the spot is wiped with a silk handkerchief inscribed with verses from the Koran, which is then presented to the person whose kiss it removed. At the end of the ceremony the part of the mantle or of its cover which received the homage of those present is washed in a silver basin, and the water is preserved in ornamental bottles for the Sultan and a few other privileged persons. A drop of this water is considered highly efficacious against all manner of ills, or is a much-prized addition to the drinking water of _iftar_. The ceremony is repeated for the benefit of the ladies of the palace and other great ladies. And a sort of replica of it takes place in the mosque of Hekim-zadeh Ali Pasha, in the back of Stamboul, where a second mantle of the Prophet is preserved. Mohammedan doctors have greatly disagreed as to the most important date of Ramazan. The Turks, at all events, now celebrate it on the twenty-seventh. They then commemorate the night when the Koran was sent down from the highest heaven to the lowest and when Gabriel began to make revelation of it to the Prophet. Mohammedans also believe that on that night are issued the divine decrees for the following year. They call it the Night of Power, after the ninety-seventh chapter of the Koran, and keep it as one of the seven holy nights of the year. Consequently, there is little to be seen in the pleasure resorts of Stamboul on the Night of Power—which, as foreigners are inclined to forget, is the eve of the anniversary. Most people spend the evening in the mosques. A special service takes the place of the usual prayer, and after it the larger congregations break up into a series of groups around _mollahs_, who expound the events of the sacred day.