38 A If Laylah wa Laylah. dinars for them ; and thinkest thou to take the damsel to boot ? " When the Caliph heard this, he cried out at him, and signed to Masrur who discovered himself and rushed in upon him. Now Ja'afar had sent one of the gardener-lads to the doorkeeper of the palace to fetch a suit of royal raiment for the Prince of the Faithful ; so the man went and, returning with the suit, kissed the ground before the Caliph and gave it him. Then he threw off the clothes he had on 1 and donned kingly apparel. Shaykh Ibrahim was still sitting upon his chair and the Caliph tarried to behold what would come next. But seeing the Fisherman become the Caliph, Shaykh Ibrahim was utterly confounded and he could do nothing but bite his finger-ends 2 and say, " Would I knew whether am I asleep or am I awake!" At last the Caliph looked at him and cried, "O Shaykh Ibrahim, what state is this in which I see thee?" There- upon he recovered from his drunkenness and, throwing himself upon the ground, repeated these verses : Pardon the sinful ways I did pursue ; o Ruth from his lord to every slave is due : Confession pays the fine that sin demands ; o Where, then, is that which grace and mercy sue? 3 The Caliph forgave him and bade carry the damsel to the city- palace, where he set apart for her an apartment and appointed slaves to serve her, saying to her, " Know that we have sent thy lord to be Sultan in Bassorah and, Almighty Allah willing, we will dispatch him the dress of investiture and thee with it." Meanwhile, Nur al-Din AH ceased not travelling till he reached Bassorah, where he repaired to the Sultan's palace and he shouted a loud shout. 4 The Sultan heard him and sent for him ; and when he came into his presence, he kissed the ground between his hands and, producing the letter, presented it to him. Seeing the super- scription in the writing of the Commander of the Faithful, the Sultan rose to his feet and kissed it three times ; and after reading
The too literal Torrens and Lane make the Caliph give the gardener-lad the
clothes in which he was then clad, forgetting, like the author or copier, that he wore the fishermen's lousy suit.
In sign of confusion, disappointment and so forth : not "biting his nails, 1 * which is
European and utterly un- Asiatic.
See lines like these in Night xiii. (i. 136); the sentiment is trite.
- The Arab will still stand under his ruler's palace and shout aloud to attract his
attention. Sayyid Sa'id known as the "Iman of Muskat" used to encourage the patriarchal practice. Mohammed repeatedly protested against such unceremonious conduct (Koran xciv. n, etc.). The "three times of privacy" (Koran cv. 57) are before the dawn prayer, during the Siesta (noon) and after the even-prayer.
