HASSAN
What do you mean, Ishak?
ISHAK Have you not seen the designer of carpets, O Hassan of Bagdad, put here the blue and here the gold, here the orange here the green? So have I seen the Caliph take the life of some helpless man— who was contented in his little house and garden, enjoying the blue of happy days—and colour his life with the purple of power, and streak it with the crimson of lust: then whelm it all with the gloom-greys of abasement, touched with the glaring reds of pain, and edge the whole with the black border of annihilation.
HASSAN
He has been so generous. Do not say he is a tyrant!
Do not say he delights in the agony of men!
ISHAK Agony is a fine colour, and he delights therein as a painter in vermilion new brought from Kurdistan. But shall so great an artist not love contrast? To clasp a silver belt round the loins of a filthy beggar while a slave darkens the soles of his late vizier, is for him but a jest touched with a sense of the appropriate: and I have seen it enacted in this very room.
HASSAN
But you are his friend.
ISHAK As you are. It is elegant for a monarch to condescend: it is refreshing for a monarch to talk as man to man. It is artistic for a monarch to enjoy the pleasures of contrast and escape the formalities of Court…. But here comes the preceder of the Caliph, the penultimate splendour of the divan, a man noble without passion, sagacious without inspiration, and weak as a miser's coffee.
HERALD The Tulip of the Parterre of Government, the Shadow of the Cypress Tree, the Sun's Moon, Jafar the Barmecide.
SOLDIERS
Long live the great Vizier!
HERALD Let all mouths close but mine. (Lifting his staff.) The Holy, the Just, the High-born, the Omnipotent; the Gardener of the Vale of Islam, the Lion of the Imperial Forests, the Rider on the Spotless Horse, the Cyprus on the Golden Hill, the Master of Spears, the Redresser of Wrong, the Drinker of Blood, the Peacock of the World, the Shadow of God on Earth, the Commander of the Faithful, Haroun ar Raschid ben Mohammed, Ibn Abdullah Ibn Mohammed Ibn Ali ben Abdullah, Ibn 'Abbas, the Caliph.
SOLDIERS
The Holy, the High-born, the Just One, the Caliph!
The Cypress, the Peacock, the Lion, the Caliph!
From Rum to Bokhara one monarch, the Caliph!