In A.D. 1624, Two Thieves Were Flayed Alive In This Street;
In 1629, A Military Chief Of Yemen, Who
Had been made prisoner by the
reigning Sherif, had both his arms and shoulders perforated in many
places, and lighted
Tapers put into the wounds; one of his feet was
turned up, and fastened to his shoulder by an iron hook, and in this
posture he was suspended two days on a tree in the Mala, till he died.
The destruction
[p.118] of a man's sight, no uncommon punishment in other parts of the
east, seems never to have been inflicted by the Hedjaz governors.
In the Mesaa, and annexed to the mosque, stands a handsome building,
erected in A.H. 882, by Kaid Bey, Sultan of Egypt, in which he
established a large public school, with seventy-two different
apartments; he also furnished it with a valuable library. 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. Behind it is shown a house which was the original
habitation of El Abbas, one of the many uncles of Mohammed. Near the
Merowa are the barbers' shops, in which pilgrims have their heads shaved
after performing the Say.
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