When the Masjid was quite completed and thrown open for public service, no expense or trouble was spared to make it as attractive as possible to the worshippers. Every morning a number of attendants were employed in pounding saffron, and in making perfumed water with which to sprinkle the mosque, as well as in preparing and burning incense. Servants were also sent into the Hammám Suleimán (“Solomon’s bath”) to cleanse it out thoroughly. Having done this they used to go into the store-room in which the _Khalúk_[33] was kept, and changing their clothes for fresh ones of various costly stuffs, and putting jewelled girdles round their waists, and taking the _Khalúk_ in their hands, they proceeded to dab it all over the Sakhrah as far as they could reach; and when they could not reach with their hands they washed their feet and stepped upon the Sakhrah itself until they had dabbed it all over, and emptied the pots of _Khalúk_. Then they brought censers of gold and silver filled with _‘ud_ (perfumed aloes wood) and other costly kinds of incense, with which they perfumed the entire place, first letting down the curtains round all the pillars, and walking round them until the incense filled the place between them and the dome, and then fastening them up again so that the incense escaped and filled the entire building, even penetrating into the neighbouring bazaar, so that any one who passed that way could smell it. After this, proclamation was made in the public market, “The Sakhrah is now open for public worship,” and people would run in such crowds to pray there, that two _reka‘as_ was as much as most men could accomplish, and it was only a very few who could succeed in performing four. Footnote 33: A species of aromatic plant rather larger than saffron. So strongly was the building perfumed with the incense, that one who had been into it could at once be detected by the odour, and people used to say as they sniffed it, “Ah! So and so has been in the Sakhrah.” So great, too, was the throng that people could not perform their ablutions in the orthodox manner, but were obliged to content themselves with washing the soles of their feet with water, wiping them with green sprigs of myrtle, and drying them with their pocket-handkerchiefs. The doors were all locked, ten chamberlains were posted at each door, and the mosque was only opened twice a week—namely, on Mondays and Fridays; on other days none but the attendants were allowed access to the buildings.