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sufficiency of meat and drink, and when they had finished, they fell to talking and making merry together. Presently the Imam asked the prince and said to him, “O my lord Zein ul Asnam, doth your highness purpose to sojourn long here in Baghdad?” “Yea, verily, O our Lord the Imam,” answered Zein ul Asnam; “my intent is to sojourn here awhile, till such time as my requirement be accomplished.” “And what,” asked Aboubekr, “is the requirement of my lord the Amir? Belike, an I know it, I may avail to further him to his wish, though I sacrifice my life for him.”[1] And the prince said to him, “I seek a damsel fifteen years of age and fair exceedingly, that I may marry her; but she must be pure and chaste and a clean maid, whom no man hath anywise defiled nor in all her life hath she thought upon a man;[2] and she must be unique in grace and goodliness.”
“O my lord,” rejoined the Imam, “this is a thing exceeding hard to find; but I know a damsel unique in her loveliness and her age is fifteen years. Her father was a Vizier, who resigned office of his own
