222 Clarice's 
even a detail of ids numerous adventures here. At an Gaf-ly . 
period of his life, he soid hirnself to a slave merchant in Col?- i 
etantinople; and being purchased by All Bey, in Egypt, he 
rose from the humble situation of a Mamluke slave, to the post 
©f governor of Cairo. In this situation, he distinguished him- i 
self by the most rigorous execution of justice, and realized the 
stories related of oriental caliphs, by mingling, in disguise, with 
the inhabitants of the city, and thus making himself master of all ! 
that was said concerning himself, or transacted by his officers.* 
The interior of his mysterious palace, inhabited by his women,, 
or, to use the oriental mode of expression, the charem of Ills se¬ 
raglio, is accessible only by himself. Early in every evening 
be regularly retired to this place, through three massive doors, 
every one of which he closed and barred with his own hands. 
To have knocked at the outer door after he had retired, or 
even to enter the seraglio, was an offence that would have been 
punished with death. No person in Acre knew the number of 
bis women, but from, the circumstance of a certain number of 
covers being daily placed in a kind of wheel or turning cylin¬ 
der, so contrived as to convey dishes to the interior, without any 
possibility of observing the person who received them.f He 
bad from time to time received presents of female slaves; these 
had been sent into his charem, but, afterward, whether they 
were alive or dead, no one knew except himself. They entered 
never to go out again ;. and, thus immured, were cut off from 
all know ledge of the world, except what he thought proper to 
communicate. If any of them were ill, he brought a physician 
to a hole in the wall of the charem, through which the sick 
person was allowed to thrust her arm; the pacha himself hold¬ 
ing the hand of the physician during the time tier pulse was 
examined* If any of them died, the event was kept as secret 
as when he massacred them with his own hands; and this, it 
was said, he had done in more than one instance. Such stories 
are easily propagated, and as readily believed ; and it is proba- 
^ % The author received this information from Biezzar himself; together with the 
fact of his having been once governor of Cairo. He has generally been known only 
from his situation as pacha of Se'ide and Acre. Volney described his. pachalic, in 
1784, as the emporium of Damascus and all the interior parts of Syria. (See Trav. in 
Egypt and Syria, vol. ii. p. 181. Lond. 1787.) The gates of his frontier towns had 
regular guards. (Ibid. p. 183.) His cavalry amounted to nine hundred Bosnian and 
Arnaut horsemen. By sea, he had a frigate, two galiots, and a xebeck. His revenue 
amounted to four hundred thousand pounds. (Ibid. p. 182.) His expenses were prin¬ 
cipally confined to his gardens, his baths, and his women. In his old age he grew 
t?.ery avaricious. 
f He possessed eighteen white women in 1784; and the luxury allowed them, ac.= 
fording to Volney, was most enormous. (Ibid. p. 269.) This may be doubted; extra¬ 
vagance of any kind, except in cruelty, being inconsistent with Pjezzar’s character 
