MECCA. 



207 



first erected, according to the Arabian historians, 

 by Zobeide, the wife of Haroun al Raschid, and fre- 

 quently repaired at great expense by the Turkish 

 sultans. In some quarters of the town there are hand- 

 some shops, for the sale of all sorts of provisions. The 

 baths, three in number, are of an inferior order, and 

 chiefly frequented by foreigners. 



The only public edifice worthy of note is the 

 Great Mosque or Temple, which the Moslem call 

 Beituttah (the House of God), or El Haram (the 

 Temple of Excellence). This celebrated structure 

 has been so often ruined and repaired, that no traces 

 of remote antiquity are to be found about it. From 

 the days of Omar, who laid its first foundations, 

 to the present century, various caliphs, emperors, 

 sultans, and imams, have signalized their piety by 

 renewing, altering, or adding to its buildings. Al- 

 mansor enlarged the north and south side to twice 

 its former extent ; Mahadi, Motassem, Motaded, 

 and others of the Abbassides, expended immense 

 sums in the erection of columns, new gates, and 

 marble pavements. After its restoration from the 

 disasters it experienced at the hands of the here- 

 tical Karmathians, no changes or additions were 

 made for several centuries. The Sultan Solyman 

 caused all the domes to be raised which cover the 

 roof of the colonnades, and laid the pavement that 

 is now round the Kaaba. From the year 1627, 

 when it was rebuilt, after being partly destroyed 

 by a torrent from the hills, no other material altera- 

 tions or improvements took place till the eighteenth 

 century ; so that the building, as it now appears, 

 may be almost wholly ascribed to the munificence 

 of the last sultans of Egypt and the Turkish em- 



