_ 58 _ what soldiers there were in Basra, and he told me that in the fortress, which is the residence of Muhammed Pasha, Captain of Basra, there are five hundred Turkish musketeers, and that an alcaide-môr has been posted at the gate of the fortress and that neither the alcaide-môr nor these five hundred Turkish musketeers ever went out of the fortress for any purpose whatever. In the city there are one thousand Turkish cavalry and seven hundred musketeers, which in all come two thousand two hundred Turks. At the month of the Basra estuary, where there stood mosque, they have built a simple wall around it, where there are ten small cannon, and every night some fifty musketeers keep watch. When the Turks captured the fortress of Basra they had found two hundred and ninety piece of artillery, including sixty brass bercos, and the rest of iron, and inside the fortress were twenty candis of gunpowder. When Ayyaz Pasha went away after he had taken the fortress he had left one hundred cannon and three basilisks he had brought with him, and the rest he took back with him to Baghdad. I also asked him about the fleet at Suez, and he told me that there were forty-four galleys there including those with which Suleiman Pasha had gone to Diu, and that they were well equipped. I asked him what were the ships that
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