The common punishment for slight offences is beating the soles of the feet with small sticks; and sometimes, when they would punish more severely, they beat also the back and buttocks; which last is the way in which they chastise the _Janizaries_ and women. For capital crimes, if the offender is a _Janizary_, he is strangled; not in the way generally imagined, but by putting a cord twice round their neck, and with a piece of stick twisting it in the nature of a tournequet. Other criminals are hanged, beheaded, or impaled, according to the caprice of the _bashaw_. After all their executions, the body remains exposed for at least three suns. It is a mistaken notion, that such as have been at _Mecca_ may commit crimes with impunity, since, according to their law, they cannot be put to death. Their being _hadgys_ doth not intitle them to any privilege of that nature; and, even on the road to and from _Mecca_, such of the pilgrims as commit crimes are punished as in other places; there being not only a _bashaw_, but a _kady_, in the caravan on purpose to try them; and numbers are executed every year on their journey, as well returning as on the road thither. The _Emeers_, or relations of _Mohammed_, distinguished by a green sash round their heads, instead of the white wore by the other _Moslems_, have indeed a privilege of being tried and punished by the _Nakeeb_, an _Effendy_ appointed on purpose to preside over them. However, the _bashaws_, when they please, break through this custom. They have a much greater benefit, by their being exempted from paying any part of the expences of the city; which, since the great decrease of trade from the disturbances in _Persia_, and the ruin of many of the villages by their own bad government, falls very heavy upon the people; for they are daily less able to pay, and the demands of the governors rather encrease. The Christians, by the contentions between such as have become _Roman Catholics_, and others that remain of the old churches, furnish the governors with numerous pretences of extorting large sums of money from them; so that it is not extraordinary that their ruin should be the farthest advanced. The Christians, except in their Lent or fast-days, eat much in the same manner as the _Turks_; only we must observe, that they do not introduce either the shorba or pilaw so frequently at their tables. They eat more _burgle_[476], and less rice, and frequently use oil where the _Turks_ use butter. The _Turkish_ _hushaf_ is supplied by wine or spirits; of which many of them drink pretty liberally. On their fast-days, the number of which is very considerable[477], their chief subsistence is a few pot-herbs, roots, and pulse, dressed with oil, which is seldom good. Fish is not always to be had, nor allowed by the greatest part of them in their great Lent before _Easter_. Pickled green olives, or black (ripe) ones salted, make a considerable part of their food at such times.