I do not propose to make any such study of them now. The variety of these small monuments is so great, however, that I must be academic enough to divide them into four or five categories. Of which the first would include the private fountains alluded to in earlier chapters. Numerous and interesting as private fountains are, a foreigner naturally has little opportunity to become acquainted with them. Their commonest form is that seen in all Turkish houses—of a niche in the wall containing a tap set over a marble basin. This arrangement, of course, amounts to nothing more or less than a wash-stand. But mark that the hole in the bottom of the basin contains no stopper. A Mohammedan would consider that we wash our hands in dirty water, preferring, himself, to use only the stream running from the faucet. Turkish houses—real Turkish houses—are like Japanese ones in that they contain very little furniture or bric-à-brac. The old architects, therefore, made the most of the opportunity afforded by the ritual use of water, and found nothing incongruous in treating a sanitary fixture architecturally, or even in making it an important feature of decoration. This they oftenest accomplished by setting the tap in the lower part of a tall marble tablet, called the _aïna tashi_, or mirror stone, which they shaped to suit the niche in which it stood and ornamented more or less elaborately with carving and sometimes with painting too. [Illustration: Wall fountain in the Seraglio Photograph by Abdullah Frères]