All the money they collect is for the private advantage of the revenue-farmers, and no difference is made between Christians and Mussulmans in going to the prostitutes. Besides these taxes, they have the tariff, of which the Christians pay ten per cent. on every kind of merchandise from whatever quarter it may come. The Mussulmans only pay five per cent. on everything; and if they do not sell in Tauris, and the goods are in transit, they do not pay per cent., but weigh the whole quantity and pay a certain proportion on it. In a load worth forty or forty-five ducats, or one of fine or heavy goods, the payment is limited. Of everything one buys in this city, what one has to pay is also fixed according to the class of merchandise, and all is collected by the revenue-farmer. At the time I was in Tauris, a certain man named Capirali held this office and received an income of sixty thousand ducats from these taxes. There is much traffic in this city, and there are silks of every quality, raw and manufactured. There are rhubarb, musk, ultramarine blue, pearls of Orimes[613] of every water, coin of all sorts, lake dye of great beauty, fine indigo, woollen and other cloths from Aleppo, Bursa, and Constantinople, since crimson silks are exported from Tauris to Aleppo and Turkey, and are paid for in cloth and silver. CHAP. VIII. Description of the royal palace built by Assambei outside the city of Tauris. Having given full enough particulars of the different matters of this city, I do not think I ought to omit to mention a beautiful palace which the great Sultan Assambei had built; and though there are many large and beautiful palaces in the city built by the kings, his predecessors, yet this, without comparison, far excels them all; so great was the magnificence of Assambei that, up to the present time, he has never had an equal in Persia. The palace is built in the centre of a large and beautiful garden, close to the city, with only a stream dividing them to the north, and in the same circumference a fine mosque is built with a rich and useful hospital attached. The palace in the Persian language is called Astibisti,[614] which, in our tongue, signifies “eight parts”, as it has eight divisions. It is thirty paces high, and is about seventy or eighty yards round, divided into eight parts, which are subdivided into four rooms and four anterooms, each room having the anteroom towards the entrance, and the rest of the palace is a fine circular dome. This palace is under one roof, or, as one should say, with one storey, and has only one flight of steps to ascend to the dome, the rooms and anterooms, since the staircase leads to the dome, and from the dome one enters the rooms and anterooms. This building, on the ground floor, has four entrances, with many more apartments, all enamelled and gilt in various ways, and so beautiful that I can hardly find words to express it. This palace, as I