The ensigns (’alems, _i.e._ the crescents) on the top of these four minárehs are each of twenty cubits, and richly gilt; but that on the great dome is fifty cubits long, and the gilding of it required fifty thousand pieces of gold coin. It is visible at the distance of two farasangs by land, and a hundred miles off by sea. Murád III. also brought from the island of Mermereh (Marmora) two princely basons of white marble, each of them resembling the cupola of a bath, and so large that neither Jemshíd nor Dárá ever possessed such an one. Each of them can contain a thousand kílehs. They stand inside of the mosque, one on the right hand and the other on the left, full of living water, for all the congregation to perform their ablutions and quench their thirst. The same Sultán caused the walls of the mosque to be cleaned and smoothed; he encreased the number of the lamps, and built four raised stone platforms (_mahfil_) for the readers of the Korán, and a lofty pulpit on a slender column for the muëzzins. Sultán Murád IV. the conqueror of Baghdád, raised upon four marble columns a throne (_kursì_) of one piece of marble, for the preacher (_vá’iz_), and appointed eight sheïkhs as preachers of the mosque: the Efendís Kází-zadeh, Uskudárlí Mahmúd, Ibráhím sheïkh to Jerráh Páshá, Sivásí, Kudsí, Terjimán Sheïkhí ’Omar, and the great sheïkh, Emír Ishtíbí, who was so learned and skilful in answering questions and solving difficulties respecting the law, God be praised! We had the happiness and advantage of enjoying the exalted society of all these doctors and hearing their instructions. Sultán Ahmed I. built, on the left of the mihráb, a private recess (_maksúrah_) for the exclusive use of the emperor. In short this mosque, which has no equal on earth, can only be compared to the tabernacle of the seventh heaven, and its dome to the cupola of the ninth. All those who see it, remain lost in astonishment on contemplating its beauties; it is the place where heavenly inspiration descends into the minds of the devout, and which gives a foretaste even here below of the garden of Eden (‘Aden). Sultán Murád IV., who took great delight in this incomparable mosque, erected a wooden enclosure in it within the southern door, and when he went to prayers on Fridays, caused cages, containing a great number of singing-birds, and particularly nightingales, to be hung up there, so that their sweet notes, mingled with the tones of the muëzzins’ voices, filled the mosque with a harmony approaching to that of Paradise. Every night (in the month of Ramazàn) the two thousand lamps lighted there, and the lanterns, containing wax-tapers perfumed with camphor, pour forth streams of light upon light; and in the centre of the dome a circle of lamps represents in letters, as finely formed as those of Yákút Musta’simí, that text of the Scripture, “God is the light of the heavens and the earth.” There are also, on the four