and yellow enamel, on which texts from the Koran gleam brightly in gold lettering. The interior is a square of fifty feet, adorned with arabesques. In the centre once stood a colossal _rahla_, or lectern of white marble, which once held a Koran, spreading over fifty-four square feet when open. A tradition has it that Bībī Khānūm, who founded this noble mosque, was wont to read it from a window set high in the wall.[730] The _rahla_ is supported by nine pillars just high enough to admit of a man crawling under it--a painful process often undergone as a cure for lumbago and sciatica. It has now been removed to the courtyard, to avert the destruction which would result from a collapse of the entire structure. For the blue sky is seen through a rent extending over a third of the surface of the mighty dome; and a side view reveals an outer and an inner skin, like those of St. Paul’s, with the staircase leading to the summit. The portal is in worse plight; but so solid was the old builders’ handiwork that the arch is still intact though the brickwork is a mere shell. The Russians must be held responsible for the forlorn state of the Bībī Khānūm. When they entered on their glorious inheritance the power of disintegration might have been arrested. But they were content to see the stately mosque degraded to the base uses of a cotton-market and a stable,[731] and the vast revenues bequeathed by the piety of another age diverted from their proper uses by a horde of greedy and callous priests. They may, however, plead in mitigation of the world’s censure, that lack of funds has impeded their efforts to preserve these relics of a mighty past.[732] If Generals Kauffman or Abramoff had been asked to vouchsafe a grant for archæological purposes they would doubtless have replied, as William Pitt did to Benjamin Haydon’s suggestion that a national gallery of paintings should be established: “We want all the money we can scrape together to buy powder and shot with.” [Illustration: THE BĪBĪ KHĀNŪM, SAMARKAND]