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 MAHOMET BNTEES THE CITY 373 thus damaging the building. The Turk pleaded that it was only a building of the infidels and that he was a believer. Mahomet had a sufficiently high opinion of the value of St. Sophia to be angry with him. He drew his sword and struck the man, telling him at the same time that, while he had given the prisoners and the plunder of the city to his followers, he had reserved the buildings for himself. Mahomet called for an imaum, who by his orders Hagia ascended the pulpit and made the declaration of Mahometan becomes faith. From that time to the present, the Temple of the Holy Wisdom of the Incarnate "Word has been a Mahometan mosque. On the same day 1 Mahomet entered the Imperial Palace, and it is said that as he passed through the deserted rooms in all the desolation resulting from the plunder of a bar- barous army, he quoted a Persian couplet on the vicissitudes of mortal greatness : ' The spider has become watchman in the imperial palace, and has woven a curtain before the doorway ; the owl makes the royal tombs of Efrasaib re-echo with its mournful song.' 2 The statement rests on the authority of Cantemir, and, whether historically correct or not, such a reflection under the circumstances is not in disaccord with what we know of the character of the young sovereign. The fate of the men of most eminence among the def en- Fate of ders of Constantinople is illustrative of Mahomet's methods. ffte r nders The bailey of the Venetians, with his son and seven of his yj^^n countrymen, was beheaded. Among them was Contarino, bailey and . other the most distinguished among the Venetian nobles, who had leading already been ransomed and who in breach of faith was beheaded? killed because his friends were unable to find the enormous sum of seven thousand gold pieces for his second ransom. The consul of Spain or the Catalans, with five or six of his companions, met with the same fate. 3 Cardinal Isidore in Cardinal Isidore. 1 Ducas makes the entry to Hagia Sophia on the 30th. Phrantzes and Chalcondylas, on the 29th. 2 Cantemir, vol. ii. p. 45 (ed. Paris, 1743). He gives the Persian text. 3 Eeport of podesta ; Philip the Armenian, p. 680 ; also Leonard, 101.