The principal entrance then, as now, was the Bâb-i-Humayûn, or Imperial Gate, opening on the little square in which stands the fountain of Sultan Ahmed, back of St. Sophia. It is a lofty portal of white and black marble, richly adorned with arabesques and crowned by a high superstructure with eight windows and a spreading roof, the architecture being that mixture of the Arabian and Persian styles by which almost everything erected by the Turks in the years immediately following the conquest can be so readily distinguished, before they began to copy the Byzantine architecture around them. Above the entrance, on a marble scroll, are the inscriptions of Muhammad II.: “May Allah preserve the glory of its possessor for ever! May Allah strengthen its buildings! May Allah establish its foundations!”[F] Before this gate the populace of Stambul used to assemble in the morning to see which of the great men of the court or state might have been decapitated during the previous night, it being customary in such cases to either suspend the heads in the niches which may still be seen almost intact to right and left of the entrance, or else place them in a silver basin, with the accusation and sentence exhibited alongside, the bodies of those victims who were sentenced to be strangled being thrown out into the square. Here detachments of troops from far-off armies awaited the necessary permission to enter the outer court bearing their victorious trophies and heaping on the imperial threshold arms, flags, the skulls of vanquished enemies, and magnificent uniforms stained with blood. [F] The present gate is built upon the site of (but is not) the original gate of Muhammad II.--TRANS. The entrance was guarded by a powerful band of _kapuji_, the sons of beys and pashas, gorgeously arrayed, who, from the windows and summits of the towers overlooked the continual procession of people coming and going below, or held back with their great cimeters the silent curious throng collected without in the hope of catching, through some crack, a fleeting glimpse of the courtyard, a brief view of the second gateway, a suggestion at least of that enormous and mysterious abode which was the object of so much conjecture and dread. Passing by, the devout Mussulman would pause to murmur a prayer for his sublime lord; the poor and ambitious youth picture to himself the day when he too might possibly cross that threshold to receive the horse-tail; the pretty ragged little maid of the street dream gorgeous dreams, not unmixed with hope, of the splendid existence of a kadyn; and the relatives of state victims avert their heads and shudder; while throughout the entire square a strict silence was observed, broken only three times a day by the muezzin’s voice on St. Sophia.