Proceedings in Egypt ami Nubia. 47 



tion and worship common in all their temples. He described 

 the mosque as a spacious and even magnificent building, if the 

 power of producing an imposing effect may give a claim to such 

 an epithet. The encircling colonnade surmounted by a conti- 

 nuation of small domes, the vast courts and light minarets, with 

 the riches displayed on ths inside, he found perfectly corre- 

 spondent to the view given in Niebuhr's Travels, from drawings 

 commonly sold at Jedda, and consistent with that writer's de- 

 scription of the building from report ; and though if minutely ex- 

 amined with the criticism of an architect, or even by an eye 

 accustomed to admire the beautiful details of Egyptian, Gre- 

 cian, and Roman architecture, it would be pronounced con- 

 temptible in the extreme, yet as a whole, its effect was grand, 

 more particularly when crowded with admiring devotees. 



The city of Mecca is extensive, when compared with the 

 towns and villages by which it is surrounded, but its greatest 

 length scarcely exceeds a geographic mile. Its shape is irregu- 

 lar, the buildings being divided into three principal groups, 

 which run off like tongues into the surrounding plains. Of its 

 stationary inhabitants it is extremely difficult to ascertain the 

 number, without a residence there either before or after the 

 Hadj ; but of the pilgrims, Ibrahim assured us that there were 

 considerably more than a hundred thousand, principally Asiatics, 

 from Hindoostan, the Malay Islands, and the most remote parts 

 of India ; from Persia, Syria, and Turkey in Asia Minor. The 

 Egyptians were the only African people there, as the great 

 western caravan of the Mugrebins from Tombuctoo, the whole 

 coast of Barbary from Ceuta to Barca, the kingdoms of Fezzan 

 and Boumou, the banks of the Niger, and the northern edges 

 of the Soudan countries, had not arrived this year. Indeed, so 

 great was the influx of Asiatic pilgrims that the non-arrivals of 

 the Africans was considered a matter of congratulation, as the 

 city would have been incapable of containing them all, and the 

 desert and unproductive country by which it is surrounded could 

 not have furnished them with supplies, particularly of water, an 

 article of the first importance. 



It is as a mart of commerce, however, that Mecca derives its 



