volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

44 The Bazar at MSsul.
is very soft, and is easily worked at all times, but when
it comes fresh from the quarry it can be cut easily with
the large blade of a clasp knife. Lintels, doorposts, and
even doors are made of it, the walls of rooms are lined
with it, and the courtyards of houses are paved with it.
Most of the houses have fiat roofs, surrounded by low
parapets, and these form useful promenades during the
winter, and afford excellent sleeping accommodation
during the summer. The courtyards are pleasant to sit
in when the weather is warm, but at every other time
they are chilly and damp. During the heat of summer
the natives occupy the spacious underground chambers
(sarddbs), which are built specially for this purpose, but
foreigners usually find occupation of them followed by
attacks of fever.
The bazar is a comparatively lofty building, and
much business is done there, but there was little in it to
interest the traveller who had seen the bazars of Stambul,
Cairo, and Baghdad. I could find no " antica " shops,
and the merchants who dealt in textiles had little to show
except Manchester goods and modern fabrics from Aleppo.
I asked in vain for specimens of the " muslin " which
derived its name from that of the town of Mosul, and was
famous all over the East for its delicate colouring and
fineness, but all I was shown was made in England, and
was folded round English boards, and wrapped up in
English paper, stamped with the names of well-known
English manufacturers. In one shop I saw a few old
Italian medicine jars bearing Latin names of drugs, and a
heavy brass pestle and mortar, which had belonged to an
old Italian doctor, who came from Jazirat ibn 'Omar,
and was said to have been very clever. The display of
vegetables on market-days was very fine, but prices
seemed to me to be high. No cigarettes were to be
found in the town, and the only tobacco purchasable was
tutun, which was grown in the Kurdish mountains. It
was sold in large leaves, which the purchaser broke up
and rubbed down in his hands, and smoked in a little
bit of coarse paper loosely rolled up. This odd form of
cigarette was pointed at one end, and large at the other,