In the middle of the sixteenth century, Haji Baba, the most celebrated slave-dealer of Stambul, having been secretly informed beforehand, by acquaintances in the Seraglio, that a great host would assemble that summer beneath Pesth, hastily filled his ship with wares before his business colleagues had got an inkling of what was going to happen; and, steering his bark with its precious load through the Black Sea and up the Danube, reached Pesth some time before the army had concentrated there.
Casting anchor in the Danube, he adorned his vessel with oriental carpets and flowers, and placing a band of black eunuchs in the prow of the vessel with all sorts of tinkling musical instruments, he set about beating drums till the sound re-echoed from the hills of Buda.
The Turks immediately assembled on the bastions of the castle of Buda right opposite, and perceiving the bedizened ship with its flags streaming from the mast and sweeping the waves, thereby giving everyone who wanted to know what sort of wares were for sale there, got into all sorts of little skiffs and let themselves be rowed out thither.
The loveliest damsels in the round world were there exhibited for sale.
As soon as the first of the Turks had well intoxicated himself with the sight of the sumptuous wares, he hastened back to get his money and come again, telling the dozen or so of his acquaintances whom he met on the way what sort of a spectacle he had seen with no little enthusiasm, and in a very short time hundreds more were hastening to this ship which offered Paradise itself for sale.
Hassan Pasha, the then Governor of Buda, perceiving the throng from the windows of his palace, and ascertaining the cause, sent his favourite Yffim Beg to forbid the market to the mob till he, the general, had chosen for himself what girls he wanted; and if there was any one of the slave-girls worthy of consideration, he was to buy her for his harem.
Yffim Beg hastened to announce the prohibition, and when the skiffs had departed one by one from the ship, he got into the general's curtained gondola and had himself rowed over to the ship of Haji Baba.
The man-seller, perceiving the state gondola on its way to him, went to the ship's side, and waited with a woe-begone face till it had come alongside, and stretched forth his long neck to Yffim Beg that he might clamber up it on to the deck.
The Beg, with great condescension, informed the merchant that he had come on behalf of the Vizier of Buda, who was over all the Pashas of Hungary, to choose from among the wares he had for sale.
Haji Baba, on hearing this, immediately cast himself to the ground and blessed the day which had risen on these hills, and the water and the oars which had brought the Beg thither, and even the mother who had made the slippers in which Yffim Beg had mounted his ship.