EGYPT, AND SYRIA. 385- 
the adjacent villages are deferted. The houfes are clean, aliy, 
fubftantial, and commodious. The people in general are dif- 
tinguifhed by an air of affeded polifh, hardly to be obferved in 
the other towns of Syria. Their diale£t too has its charac- 
teriftic marks. The Arabic prevails, though many fpeak the 
Turkifh language. 
A new Pafha had been lately appointed at the time I arrived, 
but was prevented from entering the city, by the feuds which 
had prevailed between the Sherifs and the Janizaries, and in- 
duced the latter to fufpedl that the Fafha had a defign of punifh- 
ing them. This officer was a young man, the fon of the Pafha 
of Adene ; his title El Sherif Mohammed Pafha ; of an unble- 
mifhed charader, but unequal, in point of talents and perfonal 
weight, to compofe the violence of thefe fadions, which, after 
he had refided a fhort time in the city, obliged him to retire. 
The Sherifs, or defcendants of Mohammed, here form a confi- 
derable faction ; a circumftance alfo obfervable at Bagdad, but 
not in fo remarkable a degree. In Aleppo they form a body of 
near fixty thoufand. The Janizaries do not exceed one-fourth 
of that number. The Sherifs confift of all ranks, from the 
higheft Imam to the loweft peafant, and are far from excelling 
in courage : the Janizaries are of fuperior valour, though little 
acquainted with the ufe of arms or afpedl of battle. Hence the 
force of the fadions is merely balanced, and continual difputes 
arife for offices of profit or power, which generally terminate 
in bloodffied. In the courfe of this fummer, 1797, feveral of 
thefe took place ; in one of them it is fuppofed near three hun- 
3 D dred 
