Sultán Mohammed the Conqueror also determined to place his honourable harem in Islámból. In an airy and elevated position, on the side of the city which overlooks the canal, there was an old convent, built by King Púzantín, and placed in the midst of a delightful grove, full of all sorts of beasts and birds. This convent, in the time of Púzantín and Kostantín, had been occupied by twelve thousand monks and nuns. The occasion of its being built was, that Simon, one of the apostles of Jesus, having engaged in devotion, and in maintaining a friendly intercourse with all sorts of wild animals, dug a pit in the ground in order to supply them with water, on which a spring of truly living water burst forth. Simon afterwards built a small oratory there, which, in process of time, was replaced by the convent which Mohammed destroyed, when he built upon its site the old palace (_Eskí Seráï_) begun in the year 858 (A.D. 1454), and finished in the year 862 (A.D. 1458). The wall has neither towers, battlements, nor ditch; but is very strong, being cased with azure-coloured lead. Its circumference was then twelve thousand arshíns (25,000 feet). It is a solid square building, one side of which stretched from the brazier’s (_kazánjílar_) quarter, near the mosque of Sultán Báyazíd, down to the Miskí-sábún (Musk-soap) gate, from whence another extended to the palace of Dellák Mustafá Páshá. Thence a third rested against the wall and cistern of the little bázár. The site of the palaces of the Aghá of the janissaries, and of Siyávush Páshá, now occupies that of the Old Seráï. From thence the fourth side, passing above the quarter of Tahta-l kal’ah, came again to the Brazier’s bázár. Within this palace there were many courts, cabinets, cisterns, and fountains; a kitchen like that of Kei-kávus, a private buttery, chambers for three thousand halbardiers (_teberdár_), servants without ringlets, one apartment (_ódá_) for the white, and one for the black Aghá (of the eunuchs), who were both subordinate to the (_Kizlar Aghá_) Aghá of the Porte (_Dáru-s-sa’ádeh_, _i.e._ the house of felicity). Having placed in this all his favourites (_khássekí_), together with the French Princess, he came twice every week from the new palace to the old, and on those nights did justice there. _Eulogium on the living water of the old palace (Eskí Seráï)._