Khaled, A Tale of Arabia

by F. Marion Crawford

'Tell me more of the palace at Riad,' said Abdullah. 'For your Kura, and your snow-covered Kasbek, and your Tiflis with its warm springs and gardens, I shall never see. But I have seen the courts of the palace from my youth, and the Sultan's kahwah, and the latticed windows of the harem, from which you say that you saw me and loved me in the last days of summer.'

Almasta had said this to please him, though it was not true. For she knew that men easily believe what flatters them, as women believe that what they desire must come to pass.

'The palace is a wonderful palace,' said Almasta, 'and I will tell you of the treasures which are in it.'

'That is what I wish to hear,' answered Abdullah, putting a piece of frankincense into his mouth and beginning to chew it. 'Tell me of the treasures, for it is said that they are great and of extraordinary value.'

'The value of them cannot be calculated, O Abdullah, for if you had seventy thousand hands and on each hand seventy thousand fingers you could not count upon your fingers in a whole lifetime the gold sherifs and sequins and tomans which are hidden away there in bags. Beneath the court of strangers there is a great chamber built of stone in which the sacks of gold are kept, and they are piled up to the roof of the vault on all sides and in the middle, leaving only narrow passages between.'

'If it is all gold, what is the use of the passages?' asked Abdullah.

'I do not know, but they are there, and there is another room filled with silver in the same manner. There are also secret places underground in which jewels are kept in chests, rubies and pearls and Indian diamonds and emeralds, in such quantities that they would suffice to make necklaces of a thousand rows each for each of the mountains in my country. And we have many mountains, great ones, not such as the little hills you have seen, but several days' journey in height. For we say that when the Lord made the earth it was at first unsteady, and He set our mountains upon it, in the middle, to make it firm, and it has never moved since.'

'I do not believe this,' said Abdullah. 'Tell me more about the jewels in Riad.'

'There is no end of them. They are like the grains of sand in the desert, and no one of them is worth less than a thousand gold sherifs. I do not even know the names of the different kinds, but there are turquoises without number, of the Maidan, and all good, so that you may write upon them with a piece of gold as with a pen; and there are red stones as large as a dove's egg, red and fiery as the wine of Kachetia, and others, blue as the sky in winter, and yellow ones, and some with leaves of gold in them, like morsels of treng floating in the juice. But besides the gold and silver and precious stones there are thousands of rich garments which are kept in chests of fragrant wood, in upper chambers, abas woven of gold and silk and linen, and vests embroidered with pearls, and shoes of which even the soles appear to be of gold. And there are great pieces of stuff, Indian silk, and Persian velvet, and even satin from Stamboul, woven by unbelievers with the help of devils. Then too, in the palace of Riad, there are stored great quantities of precious weapons, most of them made in Syria, with many swords of Shām, which you say are the best, though I do not understand the matter, each having an inscription in letters of gold upon the blade, and the hilt most cunningly chiselled in the same metal, or carved out of ivory.'

'I saw the treasure of Haïl when we took it away after the war, and most of it was distributed among us, but there was nothing like this,' said Abdullah.