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The historian Kotobeddyn, who, one hundred years afterwards, was librarian here, complains that only three hundred volumes remained in his time, the rest having been stolen by his unprincipled predecessors. On the northern extremity of the Mesaa is the place called Merowa, the termination of the Say, as already described; this, as it now stands, was built in A.H. 801.
Close by it is a reservoir of water, also founded, according to Kotobeddyn, by Kayd Beg; it was now completely dry, as was a similar one where the Syrian Hadj encamped. The want of water at Muna subjected the poorer hadjys to great hardships. Some was brought either from Mezdelife, or from the tank situated beyond Muna, on the road to Mekka, and the skin-full was sold for four piastres.
Over the Bab Aly and Bab Abbas is a long inscription, also in the Solouth character, placed there by Sultan Murad Ibn Soleyman, in A.H. 984, after he had repaired the whole building. Kotobeddyn has given this inscription at length; it occupies several pages in his history, and is a monument of the Sultan's vanity.
These and the casing are the work of El Ghoury, the Egyptian Sultan, in A.H. 917, as we learn from Kotobeddyn. The walk round the Kaaba is performed on the outside of the wall the nearer to it the better. But the Mekkawys at length began to fear that the Kaaba might yield under such an accumulation, and the Khalif El Mohdy Abou Abdallah removed the coverings in A.H. 160.
Kotobeddyn reckons five hundred and fifty-five, of which, according to him, three hundred and eleven are of marble, and the rest of stone taken from the neighbouring mountains; but neither of these authors lived to see Between every three or four columns stands an octagonal one, about four feet in thickness.
This open square is enclosed on the eastern side by a colonnade: the pillars stand in a quadruple row: they are three deep on the other sides, and united by pointed arches, every four of which support a small dome, plastered and whitened on the outside. These domes, according to Kotobeddyn, are one hundred and fifty-two in number.
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