He had also lent a certain amount of money to Uthman Pasha, and cursed the Turks, who, by keeping the Pasha in Sulaimania, prevented his collecting his personal revenues to pay his debts. In Halabja itself he had but little business, except in spring and winter, when the Kurds brought from the mountains the valuable skins he purchased and sent to Sina, whence his co-religionists take them to Nijni-Novgorod for the fair every summer. It was his habit to go home to Sina every year and stay there the summer; but this year, owing to the amount of debts with Lady Adela and the Pasha, he had been ordered by his employer to remain till some wheat had been harvested, or some tobacco sold, when he could press for payment. [Sidenote: HALABJA BAZAAR] After partaking of tea, he proposed that we should take a stroll in the bazaar and see the drawees of my two bills; so we set out, quitting the courtyard by a low, insignificant door which gave on to a _cul-de-sac_ leading to a narrow and dirty street. This in turn became a kind of open square, one side of which was occupied by a row of booths, where the occupants were busy roasting “kebabs,” cutting up sheep, and purchasing fruit from peasants newly in from the gardens. This was the food bazaar of Halabja, and Mansur told me that but seven years before, there was but waste ground here, where now almost the centre of the little town lay. The bazaar was entered by a great door, and its wall formed a third side of the little square, a good, solid wall built of the best brick. The entrance gave on to one side of a long, vaulted passage, each side of which was occupied by shops, and which turned at right angles at short distances from the main doorway. The plan of the bazaar, designed by Lady Adela, is more that of what we understand by a market. In shape it is exactly square, with an entrance at the middle of each side. An avenue of shops runs round inside the walls, and another passage connects two of the doors, cutting the parallelogram into two equal halves. The shops are raised upon a brick platform, or rather are at a height of two feet from the ground, and have a brick platform of that height before them, upon which the proprietor squats or puts his wares. The shop itself is but a great cupboard, the front of which takes out, being made of panels of wood, or shutters. Within are shelves upon which the goods are stacked, and if the proprietor be a Jew, an iron strong-box in front of the equipment. There are in the Halabja bazaar fifty-two such shops, and probably twenty of these are occupied by linen-drapers and cloth merchants, chiefly Jews, who are the principal part of the commercial population.