d exempt from
confiscation either by the sovereign or courts of law. The first class
comprises the lands or funds absolutely bequeathed to the mosques
either by founders or subsequent benefactors, the revenues of which
are employed in the payment of the imams, khatibs, and other ministers
of religion attached to their service, and to the gratuitous
maintenance of the colleges and hospitals dependent on them; and which
are in all cases amply sufficient for these purposes. "No demands in
the shape of tithes, collections, or entrance-money, are ever made:
the doors of all temples are open to the public without distinction:"
and although the imam usually receives a fee for marriages,
name-givings, circumcisions, and funerals, no demand can be legally
made. The author proceeds to enumerate the endowments in 1842, as
nearly as they could be ascertained, of the seventeen mosques in the
capital entitled to rank as imperial foundations--the richest being
that of Aya-Sofia, amounting to 1,500,000 piastres annually, while the
others vary from 710,000 to 100,000 piastres. The ecclesiastical staff
of an imperial mosque comprehends in general from thirty to forty
persons--the sheikh, who preaches after mid-day prayer on Friday, and
who is a member of the superior ecclesiastical synod, with rank and
privileges nearly similar to those of our bishops:--two or more
khatibs, who recite the khotbah, or prayer for the Prophet and
sultan:--four imams, who alternately read prayers:--twelve to twenty
muezzins, who call to prayers from the minarets:--with fifteen to
twenty subordinate functionaries. The finances of each of the mosques
are regulated by a _nazir_ (inspector) and _mutawelly_, (accountant,)
who are bound by law to render half-yearly statements; and these
offices, lucrative from the opportunities they afford for
malversation, are usually held for life by the holders for the time
being of high official stations, or sometimes by the heirs of the
founders, who thus secure their lands from forfeiture or confiscation;
or by persons to whom they have been bequeathed, with power to
nominate their successors. The annual revenues of the imperial mosques
being triple their expenditure, the wakoof fund has been often
encroached upon by the Sultan, nominally as a loan under the warrant
of the minister of finance, who checks the accounts of the imperial
nazir; and by these not unfrequent inroads, as well as by the
peculations of the superintende