"This Paradisiat Shamma, is the mother City, and most beautiful place of all Asia, resembling every way (the tectures of her Houses excepted being platforme) that matchlesse patterne and mirrour of beauty, the City of Antwerp. The onely best Shables, or short crooked swords, that be in the world are made here; and so are all other their weapons, as halfe Pikes, Bowes, and Arrowes, and Baluckoes of steele, that Horse-men carry in their hands: their shafts being three foot long, their heads great and round, and sharply guttered; wherewith they use to braine or knocke downe their enemies in the field. The Beglerbeg or Bassa of Damascus, is the greatest of commandement of all other Bassaes in Asia: Having under his authority (as he is under his Emperour) twenty two Sanzacks, and they conducting under all the aforesayd three, forty thousand Timariots or Horse-men, besides two thousand Janizaries, which are the guard of the Bassa, and Garrison of the Citty. His Beglerbership extendeth over the greater halfe of Syria, a part of the two Arabiaes Fœlix and Petrea, Phenicia, Galilee, Samaria, Palestina, Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and al the Northerne parts of Arabia Desartuous, even to the frontiers of Egipt."