Syria -- Chau Ju Kua's Works Simplified

34. Damascus

Lumei, also called Meiluku, is 300 stages west by land from Aden (Malopa).

The city wall is crooked, seven-fold, and built of large smooth flat black stones. Each wall (^) is distant (from the adjoining one) a ^ thousand paces». «There are over three hundred foreign towers 15 rets), among which is (^ ^ abreast can be driven up. «It has three hundred and sixty rooms in of made is of coloured woollen stuffs meat and meal 20 families are are byssus (cakes).

They use gold and employed weaving

it. wear turbans which hang down on the neck, and c(The people all clothing mina- one eight hundred feet high», which four horses their |^). Their food consists silver coins». Forty thousand brocades (^^). The products of the country silk |§), gold spangled yue-no cades with alternating stripes of gold and ^ ^ ^ ^), cloth (^ silk, bezoar stones, wu-ming-i, bro- rose-water, gardenia flowers, liquid storax, borax, and a superior quality of engraved opaque glassware. The people are fond of breeding camels, horses 25 and dogs.