_ 140 _ They wear half-hose and shoes and trousers or long linen breeches, and many wear buskins which are made of fine leather in colours like men’s shoes. They have few slaves, and these are black Africans and Abyssinians. One of the city gateways on the north side is called Karalug Kapi, “dark gateway”, because from this one to a second there is a low covered vault which makes it like night at midday. There is a chapel here with a tomb, much venerated by Christians and Moors alike, which they say is the tomb of St George. Others say that it is the tomb of a Moor called Nassim, a Persian who was converted to the Christian faith by a miracle of the Holy Sacrament. This was through one of his female prisoners, whose husband was an Armenian priest. He went to take the Sacrament to her secretly when she was guarding cattle in the fields, and she took him food, for both were living at the Persian’s house. After he had been converted, he went and preached in many places; and he did the same in Aleppo, where he was martyred. The city of Aleppo is at thirty-six-and-a-half degrees, with cool breezes, and the plague is already finished here. It was very severe everywhere, and I was told that in Cairo sixty thousand people died in one day. When I did not believe this, they told me that this was not much, because there are sixty thousand streets in the city, and it
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