The mint is fixed in the castle, built by the celebrated _Yussuf abu Moddafar ibn Aiûb_, whose title of honour was Salah-eddîn, in the sixth century of Mohammedism. The people of the country, who are in the habit of confounding all history and chronology, attribute it to Joseph the son of Isaac, whose palace they say it was; but it is unnecessary to confute an opinion wholly unsupported by facts. Including the quarters of the Janizaries and Assabs (the latter of whom no longer exist), the building occupies a large space. But it is irregular, and the Pasha’s apartments are mean and incommodious. The well is of great depth, and has been hewn with much labour through the solid rock, but as that rock is of a soft nature, the magnitude of the work is not comparable to that of some excavations which have been executed in several other places. The broken remains of the palace of Salah-eddîn, are indeed worthy of remark. An apartment of great length overlooks the city, the river, and the adjacent country; and several beautiful columns raise their heads out of the general wreck. In a chamber of this building is fabricated the embroidered cloth, which the munificence of the Porte annually devotes to the use of the _Kaba_. Misr-el-Attiké, to the South of the present city, is pleasantly situated, and well inhabited. It can now only be esteemed a faux-bourg of the former. A mosque there, said, probably without reason, to have been built by order of the Chalîfé Omar, was lately rescued from the oblivion to which it was hastening, by the mandate of Murad Bey. This mosque is a building of great extent; there may be thirty or thirty-five columns remaining in their original position. The rest have been reversed, and again set up without any regard to order. The most perfect remain is a small octagon building in the middle of the mosque, supported by eight Corinthian columns, the shaft, about ten feet high, of blue-and-white marble. In this small edifice is a chamber, which is said never to have been opened. Multitudes of columns appear around, to the number of more than a hundred, some in black marble, one has a small cavity, fabled an impression made by the hand of the Prophet. The cement is so hard as to evince that the Saracens were no strangers to the antient mode of preparing it. Many arches of an elliptical form remain, and some inscriptions, on the West, probably the place of the antient gate, as it is of the modern. Antient Arabic books, some of them in the Kuphic character, have been recently discovered here, in a cellar, under lock and key, and inclosed in a sycamore chest. Some of them are on vellum, and very beautiful. Such a number was found as filled a very large chest. Murad Bey, being informed that treasures were hid under the antient mosque, had recourse to the finesse of pretending to rebuild it; he did rebuild part of a wall; and the cellar and books were discovered in clearing the foundations.