had been attached, and other strong portions of the defences.[489] All the cannon were taken away from Galata and the arms and ammunition belonging to the burgesses who had fled. Mahomet promised that these should be returned to those who came back. Accordingly, the podestà sent word to Chios to the merchants and other refugees that if they returned they would receive their property.[490] Mahomet, as a pledge of his sincerity and as the best means of convincing the Genoese of his desire to be at peace with them, granted ‘capitulations’ by which they were to retain most of the customs and privileges which they had previously obtained from the empire. They were to retain the fortress of Galata and their own laws and government; to elect their own podestà; to have freedom of trade throughout the empire, and keep their own churches and accustomed worship--but subject to the prohibition of bells--and their private property and churches were to be respected.[491] [Sidenote: Mahomet’s entry into Constantinople.] The massacre had been limited to the first day. The permission to pillage had been granted for three days. On the afternoon of the day of the capture, or possibly on the following day, Mahomet made his triumphal entry into the city. He was surrounded by his viziers and pashas and by a detachment of Janissaries. He came into the city through the gate now called Top Capou, rode on horseback to the Great Church, descended and entered. As he passed up the church he observed a Turk who was forcing out a morsel of marble from the pavement, and asked why he was thus damaging the building. The Turk pleaded that it was only a building of the infidels and that he was a believer. Mahomet had a sufficiently high opinion of the value of St. Sophia to be angry with him. He drew his sword and struck the man, telling him at the same time that, while he had given the prisoners and the plunder of the city to his followers, he had reserved the buildings for himself. [Sidenote: Hagia Sophia becomes a mosque.] Mahomet called for an imaum, who by his orders ascended the pulpit and made the declaration of Mahometan faith. From that time to the present, the Temple of the Holy Wisdom of the Incarnate Word has been a Mahometan mosque. On the same day[492] Mahomet entered the Imperial Palace, and it is said that as he passed through the deserted rooms in all the desolation resulting from the plunder of a barbarous army, he quoted a Persian couplet on the vicissitudes of mortal greatness: ‘The spider has become watchman in the imperial palace, and has woven a curtain before the doorway; the owl makes the royal tombs of Efrasaib re-echo with its mournful song.’[493] The statement rests on the authority of Cantemir, and, whether historically correct or not, such a reflection under the circumstances is not in disaccord with what we know of the character of the young sovereign.