vault of the upper story must have cut across the vaults of the passage, from which it was separated by transverse arches. A big window in the outer wall opens down to the floor of the chamber and the learned authors of _Ocheïdir_ place here, no doubt correctly, a hourd projecting from the wall over the doorway below. There are small rectangular domed chambers in the towers on either side of the gate, the domes being set over the angles of the square on horizontal brackets. The gate-house was probably carried up, like the angle towers, a story higher, and the stairs must have communicated with the upper story, to judge by the evidence afforded by the south gate-house. On the north façade, and there only, the summit of the wall was given a decoration consisting of a row of arched niches carried by small engaged columns (Plate 8, Fig. 3). The authors of _Ocheïdir_ describe these arches as horse-shoed; they seemed to me to be merely slightly stilted and adorned with a double fillet. Below the niches runs a band of lozenges. Between each niche is set a larger engaged column, and these columns appear to have been carried up higher than the arches and in all probability bore an architrave, thus forming a rectangular frame to each niche, but the exact nature of the decoration here is uncertain, since the wall has broken away. The chemin de ronde was covered by a pointed stone vault, most of which has fallen in (Plate 10, Fig. 1). Like all the vaults of Ukhaiḍir it oversails the face of the wall. The lower part is built of horizontal courses, while in the upper part the stone slabs are laid in vertical rings so as to dispense with centering, and this is the construction in all the vaults of the palace. At the springing of the vault a wooden beam crossed the passage from wall to wall. The holes for these beams are visible, and in some places a splintered fragment of wood projects from the masonry. At the angles of the passage the vaults from either side come together in a simple diagonal section, i.e. there was no intersection of the vaults.