It will have been seen by the foregoing description, that the mosque of Mekka differs little in its construction from many other buildings of the same nature in Asia. The mosque of Zakaria at Aleppo, the great mosque called El Amouy at Damascus, and the greater number of the larger mosques at Cairo, are constructed exactly [p.156] upon the same plan, with an arched colonnade round an open square. None is more like it than the mosque of Touloun, at Cairo, built in A.H. 263; and that of Ammer, situated between Cairo and Old Cairo, upon the spot where Fostat once stood: it was built by Ammer Ibn el Aas, in the first years of the conquest of Egypt; it has an arched fountain in the midst, where at Mekka stands the Kaaba; but is only one-third as large as the mosque of Mekka. The history of Beitullah (or God’s house) has exercised the industry of many learned Arabians: it is only in latter times that the mosque has been enlarged; many trees once stood in the square, and it is to be regretted that others have not succeeded them. The service of the mosque occupies a vast number of people. The Khatybs, Imams, Muftis, those attached to Zemzem, the Mueddins who call to prayers, numbers of olemas, who deliver lectures, lamp-lighters, and a crowd of menial servants, are all employed about the Beitullah. They receive regular pay from the mosque, besides what they share of the presents made to it by hadjys, for the purpose of distribution; those not made for such purpose, are reserved for the repairs of the building. The revenue of the mosque is considerable, although it has been deprived of the best branches of its income. There are few towns or districts of the Turkish empire in which it does not possess property in land or houses; but the annual amount of this property is often withheld by provincial governors, or at least it is reduced, by the hands through which it passes, to a small proportion of its real value. El Is-haaky, in his History of Egypt, states, that in the time of Sultan Achmed, the son of Sultan Mohammed, (who died in A.H. 1027,) Egypt sent yearly to Mekka two hundred and ninety-five purses, destined principally for the mosque, and forty-eight thousand and eighty erdebs of corn. Bayazyd Ibn Sultan Mohammed Khan (in 912) fixed the income of Mekka and Medina, to be sent from Constantinople, at fourteen thousand ducats per annum, in addition to what his predecessors had already ordered; and Sultan Solyman Ibn Selym I. increased the annual income of Mekka, sent from Constantinople, which his father Selym had fixed at seven thousand erdebs of corn, to ten thousand erdebs, and five thousand for the inhabitants of