my accounts, for he can read and write." And the captain said "This device should serve." Presently they reached the city and slackened sail and cast the anchors; and the ship lay still, when behold, Queen Marjanah came down to them, attended by her guards and, halting before the vessel, called out to the captain, who landed and kissed the ground before her. Quoth she, "What is the lading of this thy ship and whom hast thou with thee?"" Quoth he, "O Queen of the Age, I have with me a merchant who dealeth in slaves." And she said, "Hither with him to me"; whereupon Bahram came ashore to her, with As'ad walking behind him in a slave's habit, and kissed the earth before her. She asked, "What is thy condition?"; and he answered, "I am a dealer in chattels." Then she looked at As'ad and, taking him for a Mameluke, asked him, "What is thy name, O youth?" He answered, "Dost thou ask my present or my former name?" "Hast thou then two names?" enquired she, and he replied (and indeed his voice was choked with tears), "Yes; my name aforetime was Al-As'ad, the most happy, but now it is Al-Mu'tarr--Miserrimus." Her heart inclined to him and she said, "Canst thou write?" "Yes," answered he, and she gave him ink-case and reed-pen and paper and said to him, "Write somewhat that I may see it." So he wrote these two couplets,
"What can the slave do when pursued by Fate, * O justest Judge! whatever be his state? [1] Whom God throws hand bound in the depths and says, * Beware lest water should thy body wet?" [2]
Now when she read these lines, she had ruth upon him and said to Bahram, "
- ↑ The verses contain the tenets of the Murjiy sect which attaches infinite importance to faith and little or none to works. Sale (sect. viii.) derives his "Morgians" from the "Jabrians" (Jabari), who are the direct opponents of the "Kadarians" (Kadari), denying free will and free agency to man and ascribing his actions wholly to Allah. Lane (ii. 243) gives the orthodox answer to the heretical question:--
Water could wet him not if God please guard His own; * Nor need man care though bound of hands in sea he's thrown:
But if His Lord decree that he in sea be drowned; * He'll drown albeit in the wild and wold he wone.
It is the old quarrel between Predestination and Freewill which cannot be solved except by assuming a Law without a Lawgiver. - ↑ Our proverb says: Give a man luck and throw him into the sea.
