About the time of my stay at Mekka, the Mesaa resembled a Constantinopolitan bazar. Many shops were kept by Turks from Europe or Asia Minor, who sold various articles of Turkish dress, which had belonged to deceased hadjys, or to those who, being deficient in cash, had sold their wardrobe. Fine swords, good English watches, and beautiful copies of the Koran, the three most valuable articles in a Turkish pilgrim’s baggage, were continually offered for sale. Constantinopolitan pastry-cooks sold here pies and sweetmeats in the morning; roasted mutton, or kebabs, in the afternoon; and in the evening, a kind of jelly called mehalabye. Here, too, are nume­rous coffee-houses, crowded from three o’clock in the morning until eleven o’clock at night. The reader will be surprised to learn, that in two shops intoxicating liquors are publicly sold during the night, though not in the day-time: one liquor is prepared from fermented raisins, and although usually mixed with a good deal of water, is still so strong, that a few glasses of it produce intoxication. The other is a sort of bouza, mixed with spices, and called soubye. This beverage is known (although not made so strong) at Cairo. The Mesaa is the place of punishment: there capital offenders are put to death. During my stay, a man was beheaded, by sentence of the Kadhy, for having robbed a Turkish pilgrim of about two hun­dred pounds sterling; this was the only instance of the kind which came to my knowledge, though thieves are said to abound in Mekka, while the Hadj continues. The history of Mekka, however, affords many instances of the most cruel punishments: in A.D. 1624, two thieves were flayed alive in this street; in 1629, a military chief of Yemen, who had been made prisoner by the reigning Sherif, had both his arms and shoulders perforated in many places, and lighted tapers put into the wounds; one of his feet was turned up, and fastened to his shoulder by an iron hook, and in this posture he was suspended two days on a tree in the Mala, till he died. The destruction [p.118] of a man’s sight, no uncommon punishment in other parts of the east, seems never to have been inflicted by the Hedjaz governors. In the Mesaa, and annexed to the mosque, stands a handsome building, erected in A.H. 882, by Kaid Bey, Sultan of Egypt, in which he established a large public school, with seventy-two different apartments; he also furnished it with a valuable library. The historian Kotobeddyn, who, one hundred years afterwards, was librarian here, complains that only three hundred volumes remained in his time, the rest having been stolen by his unprincipled predecessors.