COMMENCING WITH PART OF THE THIRTY-SECOND NIGHT, AND ENDING WITH PART OF THIS THIRTY-SIXTH.
THE STORY OF NOOR-ED-DEEN AND ENEES-EL-JELEES.[1]
There was, in El-Baṣrah, a certain King who loved the poor and indigent, and regarded his subjects with benevolence; he bestowed of his wealth upon him who believed in Moḥammad (God bless and save him!) and was such as one of the poets who have written of him hath thus described:—
He used his lances as pens; and the hearts of his enemies, as paper; their blood being his ink: And hence, I imagine, our forefathers applied to the lance the term Khaṭṭeeyeh,[2]
The name of this King was Moḥammad the son of Suleymán Ez-Zeynee; and he had two Wezeers; one of whom was named El-Mo'een[3] the son of Sáwee; and the other, El-Faḍl[4] the son of Kháḳán. El-Faḍl the son of Kháḳán was the most generous of the people of his age, upright in conduct, so that all hearts agreed in loving him, and the wise complied with his counsel, and all the people supplicated for him length of life; for he was a person of auspicious aspect,[5] a preventer of evil and mischief: but the Wezeer El-Mo'een the son of Sáwee hated others, and loved not good; he was a man of inauspicious aspect; and in the same degree that the people loved Faḍl-ed-Deen the son of Kháḳán, so did they abhor El-Mo'een the son of Sáwee, in accordance with the decree of the Almighty.
Now the King Moḥammad the son of Suleymán Ez-Zeynee was sitting one day upon his throne, surrounded by the officers of his court, and he called to his Wezeer El-Faḍl the son of Kháḳán, and said to him, I desire a female slave unsurpassed in beauty by any in her age, of perfect loveliness, and exquisite symmetry, and endowed with all praiseworthy qualities.—Such as this, replied his courtiers, is not to be found for less than ten thousand pieces of gold. And the Sulṭán thereupon called out to the treasurer, saying, Carry ten thousand pieces of gold to the house of El-Faḍl the son of Kháḳán. So the treasurer did as he commanded, and the Wezeer departed, after the Sulṭán had ordered him to repair every day to the market, and to commission the brokers to procure what he had described, and had commanded also that no female slave of a greater price than one thousand pieces of gold should be sold without having been shewn to the Wezeer.
The brokers, therefore, sold no female slave without shewing her to him, and he complied with the King's command, and thus he continued to do for a considerable time, no slave pleasing him: but on a certain day, one of the brokers came to the mansion of the Wezeer El-Faḍl, and found that he had mounted to repair to the palace of the King; and he laid hold upon his stirrup, and repeated these two verses:—
O thou who hast reanimated what was rotten in the state! Thou art the Wezeer ever aided by Heaven. Thou hast revived the noble qualities that were extinct among men. May thy conduct never cease to be approved by God!
He then said, O my master, the female slave for the procuring of whom the noble mandate was issued hath arrived. The Wezeer replied, Bring her hither to me. So the man returned, and, after a short absence, came again, accompanied by a damsel of elegant stature, high-bosomed, with black eyelashes, and smooth cheek, and slender waist, and large hips, clad in the handsomest apparel; the moisture of her lips was sweeter than sirup; her figure put to shame the branches of the Oriental willow; and her speech was more soft than the zephyr passing over the flowers of the garden; as one of her describers hath thus expressed:—
Her skin is like silk, and her speech is soft, neither redundant nor deficient: Her eyes, God said to them, Be,—and they were, affecting men's hearts with the potency of wine. May my love for her grow more warm each night, and cease not until the day of judgment! The locks on her brow are dark as night, while her forehead shines like the gleam of morning.