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of Hittin,[1] when I was a young man.’ ‘And how gottest thou her?’ asked we, and he said, ‘I had a rare adventure with her.’ Quoth we, ‘Favour us with it;’ and he answered, ‘With all my heart.
Know that I once sowed a crop of flax in these parts and pulled it and scutched it and spent five hundred dinars on it; after which I would have sold it, but could get no more than this [that I had spent] for it, and the folk said to me, “Carry it to Acre: for there thou wilt assuredly make a good profit by it.” Now Acre was then in the hands of the Franks;[2] so I carried my flax thither and sold part of it at six months’ credit. One day, as I was selling, there came up a Frankish woman, (now it is the custom of the women of the Franks to go about the market-place [and the streets] with unveiled faces,) to buy flax of me, and I saw of her beauty what dazzled my wit. So I sold her somewhat of flax and was easy with her concerning the price; and she took it and went away. Some days after, she returned and bought more flax of me and I was yet easier with her about the price; and she repeated her visits to me, seeing that I was in love with her.
Now she was used to go in company of an old woman; so I said to the latter, “I am sore enamoured of thy mistress. Canst thou contrive to bring me to enjoy her?” Quoth she, “I will contrive this for thee; but the secret must not
- ↑ Or Tiberias, 23rd June, 1187, the famous battle which led to the downfall of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and in which the King, Gui de Lusignan and his brother Geoffrey, with Renaud de Châtillon and the Grand Masters of the Templars and Hospitallers, were utterly routed and taken prisoners by Saladin.
- ↑ It was taken from them by Saladin 29th July, 1187. The story-teller states farther on that three years intervened between his visit to Acre and the battle of Hittin, thus fixing the date of the former at (circa) June, 1184.
