the like, who are but subjects in respect to the Beys yet exercise unlimited jurisdiction over the people in the city, and appoint others to do the same over villages in the country.
There are perhaps four hundred inhabitants in Cairo, who have absolute power, and administer what they call justice, in their own way, and according to their own views.
Fortunately in my time this many-headed monster was no more, there was but one Ali Bey, and there was neither inferior nor superior jurisdiction exercised, but by his officers only. This happy state did not last long. In order to be a Bey, the person must have been a slave, and bought for money, at a market. Every Bey has a great number of servants, slaves to him, as he was to others before; these are his guards, and these he promotes to places in his household, according as they are qualified.
The first of these domestic charges is that of hasnadar, or treasurer, who governs his whole household; and whenever his master the Bey dies, whatever number of children he may have, they never succeed him; but this man marries his wife, and inherits his dignity and fortune.
The Bey is old, the wife is young, so is the hasnadar, upon whom she depends for every thing, and whom she must look upon as the presumptive husband; and those people who conceal, or confine their women, and are jealous, upon the most remote occasion, never feel any jealousy for the probable consequences of this passion, from the existence of such connection.
It
