Oh THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

239

the Turkish cannon was soon repaired; and be-fore the month of August, great quantities oflime had been burnt for the restoration of thewalls of the capital. As the entire propertyof the soil and buildings, whether public or pri-vate, or profane or sacred, was now transferredto the conqueror, he first separated a space ofeight furlongs from the point of the triangle forthe establishment of his seraglio or palace. Itis here, in the bosom of luxury, that the grandsignor (as he has been emphatically named bythe Italians) appears to reign over Europe andAsia ; but his person on the shores of the Bos-phorus may not always be secure from the in-sults of an hostile navy. In the new characterof a mosch, the cathedral of St. Sophia was en-dowed with an ample revenue, crowned withlofty minarets, and surrounded with groves andfountains, for the devotion and refreshment ofthe Moslems . The same model was imitatedin the jami or ro^al moschs; and the first ofthese was built by Mahomet himself, on theruins of the church of the holy apostles and thetombs of the Greek emperors. On the third dayafter the conquest, the grave of Abu Ayub, orJob, who had fallen in the first siege of the Arabs ,was revealed in a vision; and it is before the se-pulchre of the martyr that the new sultans aregirded with the sword of empire. 1 " Constantin-ople no longer appertains to the Roman histo-

“ The Turbe, or sepulchral monument of Abu Ayub, is describedand engraved in the Tableau General de l’Empire Ottoman (Paris ,1787, in large folio), a work of less use, perhaps, than magnificence(tom. i, p. 305, 300).

CHAP.

LXVIII