You must understand that the Babylon of which I have spoken, where the sultan dwells, is not that great Babylon where the diversity of languages was first made by the miracle of God when the great tower of Babel was begun, of which the walls were sixty-four furlongs high; for that is in the great deserts of Arabia, on the way as men go toward the kingdom of Chaldea. But it is full long since any man dare approach to the tower; for it is all desert and full of dragons and great serpents, and infested by divers venomous beasts. That tower, with the city, was twenty-five miles in the circuit of the walls, as they of the country say, and as men may judge by estimation, according to what men of the country tell. And though it is called the tower of Babylon, yet there were ordained within it many mansions and great dwelling-places, in length and breadth; and it included an extensive district, for the tower alone was ten miles square. That tower was founded by king Nimrod, who was king of that country, and he was the first king in the world. He caused an image to be made in the likeness of his father, and obliged all his subjects to worship it, in imitation of which other lords begun to do the same, and this was the commencement of idols and simulacres[305]. The town and city were situated in a fair country on a plain, which they call the country of Samar: the walls of the city were two hundred cubits in height, and fifty cubits in breadth. The river Euphrates ran through the city and about the tower; but Cyrus, king of Persia, took from them the river, and destroyed all the city and the tower also, for he divided the river into three hundred and sixty small rivers, because he had sworn that he would put the river in such point that a woman might easily pass it without taking up her clothes; because he had lost many worthy men that tried to pass the river by swimming[306]. And from Babylon, where the sultan dwells, to go right between the east and the north, towards the great Babylon, it is forty days across the desert. But the great Babylon is not in the land and power of the said sultan, but in the power and lordship of the king of Persia, who holds it of the great chan, who is the greatest emperor and the most sovereign lord of all the parts beyond; and he is lord of the isles of Cathay and of many other isles, and of a great part of India. His land borders unto Prester John's land; and he possesses so much land, that he knoweth not the end of it. And he is a mightier and greater lord without comparison than the sultan. I shall speak more fully of his royal estate and of his might when I treat of India.