Kandahar is approximately a square-built city, surrounded by a wall of about 3(3/4) m. circuit, and from 25 to 30 ft. high, with an average breadth of 15 ft. Outside the wall is a ditch 10 ft. deep. The city and its defences are entirely mud-built. There are four main streets crossing each other nearly at right angles, the central "chouk" being covered with a dome. These streets are wide and bordered with trees, and are flanked by shops with open fronts and verandas. There are no buildings of any great pretension in Kandahar, a few of the more wealthy Hindus occupying the best houses. The tomb of Ahmad Shah is the only attempt at monumental architecture. This, with its rather handsome cupola, and the twelve minor tombs of Ahmad Shah's children grouped around, contains a few good specimens of fretwork and of inlaid inscriptions. The four streets of the city divide it into convenient quarters for the accommodation of its mixed population of Duranis, Ghilzais, Parsiwans and Kakars, numbering in all some 30,000 souls. Of these the greater proportion are the Parsiwans (chiefly Kizilbashes). It is reckoned that there are 1600 shops and 182 mosques in the city. The mullahs of these mosques are generally men of considerable power. The walls of the city are pierced by the four principal gates of "Kabul," "Shikarpur," "Herat" and the "Idgah," opposite the four main streets, with two minor gates, called the Top Khana and the Bardurani respectively, in the western half of the city. The Idgah gate passes through the citadel, which is a square-built enclosure with sides of about 260 yds. in length. The flank defences of the main wall are insufficient; indeed there is no pretence at scientific structure about any part of the defences; but the site of the city is well chosen for defence, and the water supply (drawn by canals from the Arghandab or derived from wells) is good. About 4 m. west of the present city, stretched along the slopes of a rocky ridge, and extending into the plains at its foot, are the ruins of the old city of Kandahar sacked and plundered by Nadir Shah in 1738. From the top of the ridge a small citadel overlooks the half-buried ruins. On the north-east face of the hill forty steps, cut out of solid limestone, lead upward to a small, dome-roofed recess, which contains some interesting Persian inscriptions cut in relief on the rock, recording particulars of the history of Kandahar, and defining the vast extent of the kingdom of the emperor Baber. Popular belief ascribes the foundation of the old city to Alexander the Great.