The Beys are understood to be veiled with the sovereign power of the country; yet sometimes a Kaya commands absolutely, and, though of an inferior rank, he makes his servants, Beys or Sovereigns. At a time of peace, when Beys are contented to be on an equality, and no ambitious one attempts to govern the whole, there is a number of inferior officers depending upon each of the Beys, such as Kayas, Schourbatchies, and the like, who are but subjects in respect to the Beys, yet exercise unlimited jurisdiction over the people in the city, and appoint others to do the same over villages in the country. There are perhaps four hundred inhabitants in Cairo, who have absolute power, and administer what they call justice, in their own way, and according to their own views. Fortunately in my time this many-headed monster was no more, there was but one Ali Bey, and there was neither inferior nor superior jurisdiction exercised, but by his officers only. This happy state did not last long. In order to be a Bey, the person must have been a slave, and bought for money, at a market. Every Bey has a great number of servants, slaves to him, as he was to others before; these are his guards, and these he promotes to places in his household, according as they are qualified. The first of these domestic charges is that of hasnadar, or treasurer, who governs his whole household; and whenever his master the Bey dies, whatever number of children he may have, they never succeed him; but this man marries his wife, and inherits his dignity and fortune. The Bey is old, the wife is young, so is the hasnadar, upon whom she depends for every thing, and whom she must look upon as the presumptive husband; and those people who conceal, or confine their women, and are jealous, upon the most remote occasion, never feel any jealousy for the probable consequences of this passion, from the existence of such connection. It is very extraordinary, to find a race of men in power, all agree to leave their succession to strangers, in preference to their own children, for a number of ages; and that no one should ever have attempted to make his son succeed him, either in dignity or estate, in preference to a slave, whom he has bought for money like a beast. The Beys themselves have seldom children, and those they have, seldom live. I have heard it as a common observation, that Cairo is very unwholesome for young children in general; the prostitution of the Beys from early youth probably give their progeny a worse chance than those of others. The instant that I arrived at Cairo was perhaps the only one in which I ever could have been allowed, single and unprotected as I was, to have made my intended journey. Ali Bey, lately known in Europe by various narratives of the last transactions of his life, after having undergone many changes of fortune, and been banished by his rivals from his capital, at last had enjoyed the satisfaction of a return, and of making himself absolute in Cairo.