BAZAAR. In Turkey, Egypt, Persia, and India, this term distinguishes those parts of towns which are exclusively appropriated to trade. In this exclusive appropriation they resemble our markets ; but in other respects they approximate more nearly to our retail shops.
The regnlar bazaars consist of a connected series of streets and lanes ; and, when of a superior description, they are vaulted with high brick roofs. The domes or cupolas which surmount the vaulting admit of a subdued daylight. In the best specimens of the vaulted bazaar the passages are lined on each side with a uniform series of shops, the floor of which is a platform raised from two to three feet above the level of the ground, and faced with brick. As the vault springs from the front of the line of shops, they seem like a series of recesses, and the partition-walls be tween them appear like piers supporting the arch. These• recesses are entirely open in front, in all their height and breadth ; they are scarcely more than very small closets, seldom exceeding six feet in breadth, rarely so deep as wide, but generally from eight to ten feet in height, and occasionally more. But in the
more respectable parts of large bazaars, there is generally a little door in the back wall which conducts to another small and dark closet, which serves the purpose of a store-room. The front cell is the shop, on the floor of which the master sits with his goods all around The peculiarprinciple of the oriental bazaars is that all the shops of a city are there col lected, instead of being dispersed in different streets as in Europe; and that in this collected form the different trades and occupations are severally associated in different parts of the bazaar, instead of being indiscriminately min gled as in our streets.
An English Bazaar, in which many different kinds of manufacture are assembled under the same roof, is not a good imitation of its eastern original.