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east side. There is a room forming an irregular square 
of about eighteen feet surface, and eight feet high in the 
middle. The roof is a natural irregular vault. In de- 
scending the staircase, there is upon the right at the 
bottom a little tablet of marble, bearing the name of El 
Makam Souliman, or The Place of Solomon. A simi- 
lar one upon the left is named El Ma/cam Davoud, or 
The Place of David. A cavity or niche on the south- 
west side of the rock is called El Makam Ibrahim^ or 
The Place of Abraham. A similar circular concave 
step at the north-west angle is named El Makam Dju 
brila, or The Place of Gabriel; and a sort of table of 
stone at the north-east angle is called El Makam el 
Ifoder, or the place of Elias. 
In the roof of the room, exactly in the middle, there is 
an aperture almost cylindrical through the whole thick- 
ness of the rock, about three feet in diameter. It is 
called The Place of the Prophet. 
The rock is surrounded by a wooden fence, about a 
leaning height; and above, at an elevation of five or six 
feet, is a canopy of red and green silk, in alternate 
stripes, suspended over the whole breadth of the rock 
by pillars and columns. 
From what I could discover, particularly in the inside 
of the cave, the rock seemed to be composed of a red- 
dish white marble. 
Near this place, on the north side, may be discovered 
in the pavement a piece of very fine waved green mar- 
ble about fifteen inches square, fastened down by four 
or five gilt nails. This, they say, is the door of paradise. 
Several holes in the marble indicate it to have been 
fastened formerly by a greater number of nails, which 
are supposed to have been pulled out by the devil, when 
