CONSTANTINOPLE. 65 
It is somewhat singular, that, amons^st all chap. 
the literary travellers who have described the 
curiosities of Constantinople, no one has hitherto 
noticed the market for Manuscripts ; yet it would 
be difficult to select an object more worthy of 
examination. The lazar of the booksellers does 
not contain all the works enumerated by DHer- 
kelot ; but there is hardly any Oriental author, 
whose writings, if demanded, may not be 
procured ; although every volume offered for 
sale be manuscript. The number of shops 
employed in this way, in that market and else- 
where, amounts to a hundred : each of these 
contain, upon an average, five hundred volumes ; 
so that no less a number than fifty thousand 
manuscripts, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, are 
daily exposed for sale. One of our first endea- 
vours was to procure a general catalogue of the 
writings most in request throughout the empire; 
that is to say, of those works which are con- 
stantly upon sale in the cities of Constantinople, 
Aleppo, and Cairo; and also of their prices. 
This we procured through the medium of a 
Dervish. The whole of this Catalosfue is griven 
in the Appendix ; and it may be considered as 
offering a tolerable view of the general state of 
Oriental literature ; such, for example, as might 
be obtained of the literature of Britain, by the 
catalogues of any of the principal booksellers of 
11. 
Greek Ma- 
nuscriiils. 
