fear. She replied, No harm shall befall thee. And she took me up into a supping-room, where she spread furniture for me, and brought to me some food, saying to me, Let thy terror subside. And while she was thus comforting me, the door was knocked with violence. So she went forth and opened it; and, lo, my acquaintance whom I had pushed upon the bridge came forward, with his head bound, and his blood running down upon his clothes, and his horse was not with him. She said to him, What is this? What calamity hath befallen thee?—He answered, I caught the man, and he made his escape from me. And he related to her the whole affair. And she took forth a piece of rag, with which she bound his head; after which, she spread a bed for him, and he lay sick. Then coming up to me, she said to me, I imagine that thou art the person in question. I replied, Yes. And she said, No harm shall befall thee. She then renewed her generous conduct to me, and I remained with her three days; at the expiration of which, she said to me, I am in fear for thee from this man, lest he come up to thee, and thou fall into the misfortune that thou dreadest: therefore save thyself by flight. But I requested her to delay my departure until the night; and she said, There will be no harm in that.

So when the night came, I put on the women's apparel, and, going forth from her, repaired to the house of an emancipated female slave who had belonged to us; and when she saw me, she wept, and appeared grieved, and praised God (whose name be exalted !) for my safety, and went forth as though she would go to the market to procure what was requisite for my entertainment. But suddenly I beheld Ibrahim ElMosili, approaching in the midst of his young men and troopers, with a woman before them; and, looking narrowly at her, I found that she was the emancipated slave, the owner of the house where I was. She walked on before them until she delivered me into their hands, and I was carried, in the women's attire, to El-Ma'mun.

He held a general council, and caused me to be brought in before him; and when I entered, I saluted him as Khalifeh ; but he replied, May God not preserve thee nor bless thee! So I said to him, Act according to thy good pleasure, O Prince of the Faithful: thou hast the command; therefore decide upon punishment or pardon; but pardon is the more agreeable with piety. God hath made thy pardon to excel that of every other person, as He hath made my offence to exceed every other offence, O Prince of the Faithful; and if thou take vengeance it will be in thy justice, and if thou pardon it will be in thy generosity. Then I recited these verses :

My offence against thee is great; but thou art greater than it :
So exact thy due, or else, in thy clemency remit it.

If I have not been of the generous in conduct, do thou be so.

El Ma'mun then raised his head, and I quickly recited these other

verses :

I have committed an enormous offence; but thou art disposed to pardon.

If thou pardon, thou wilt be gracious; and if thou punish, thou wilt

be just.

And El-Ma'mun hung down his head, and repeated this couplet

-

When a friend desireth to enrage me, and causeth me to be choked in my anger,

I forgive his offences, and pardon him, fearing lest I should live friendless.

So when I heard these words from him, I perceived from them the odour of mercy. He then addressed the son of his uncle, and his brother Is-hak, and all his chief officers who were present, and said to them, What course do ye see to be suitable to his case? Whereupon every one of them advised him to slay me; but they differed as to the mode of slaughter. El-Ma'mun, however, said to Ahmad the son of Khalid, What sayest thou, O Ahmad ?—Ó Prince of the Faithful, he answered, if thou slay him, we find an instance of such a person as thyself who hath slain such as he is; and if thou pardon him, we find not an instance of any like thee who hath pardoned one like him. And when El-Ma'mun heard the words of Ahmad the son of Khalid, he hung down his head, and repeated the saying of the poet :

My family have slain Umeym, my brother: so if I shoot at them, my arrow will revert to me.

If I pardon, I shall grant an egregious pardon; and if I assault, I shall weaken my own bones.

And he recited also these words of the poet :

Forgive thy brother when he mingleth what is right with what is wrong;

And continue thy kindness to him, whether he be thankful or un-
grateful;

And abstain thou from reproaching him, whether he err or act justly.
Dost thou not see that what thou lovest and what thou hatest are

conjoined ?

And that the delight of long life is disturbed by the mixture of grey hairs?

And that the thorns appear upon the branches together with the fruit

that is gathered?

Who is he that hath never done evil? And who hath done good alone?

If thou triedst the sons of this age, thou wouldst find that most of them had erred.

On hearing these verses from him, I removed the veil from my head, loudly exclaiming, God is most_great !—and said, May God pardon thee, O Prince of the Faithful! He replied, No harm shall befall thee, O uncle.-O Prince of the Faithful, I rejoined, my offence is too great for me to utter any thing in excuse of it, and thy pardon is too great for me to express my thanks. Then, with mirth-exciting modulations, I sang these verses :

Verily the Author of all virtues collected them in the loins of Adam for the Seventh Imam.*

*I.e. El-Ma'mun, the seventh of the 'Abbasi Khalifehs.

Thou hast filled men's hearts with reverence for thee, and with an humble heart thou guardest them all.

I rebelled not against thee, overwhelmed by delusion, from any motive but that of covetousness; *

And thou hast pardoned one whose like never was pardoned before, though none interceded with thee,

And hast pitied little-ones like those of the kata, † and the yearning of a mother with impatient heart.

To this, El-Ma'mun replied, I say, in imitation of the example of our lord Yusuf (upon our Prophet and upon him be blessing and peace !), There shall be no reproach cast on you this day: God forgive you; for He is the most merciful of those who shew mercy. And I restore to thee thy wealth and thy lands, O uncle, and no harm shall befall thee. -So I devoutly supplicated blessings upon him, and recited these

verses

Thou hast restored my wealth, and not been avaricious of it; and before thou didst this, thou sparedst my life.

I would give my blood to obtain thine approval, and my wealth till I drew off the shoe from my foot.

Were I ungrateful for the favours thou hast granted me, I should be more base than thou art generous.

El-Ma'mun then treated me with honour and beneficence, and said to me, O uncle, verily Abu-Ishak and El-'Abbas advised me to slay thee. I replied, Verily Abu-Ishak and El-'Abbas advised thee faithfully, O Prince of the Faithful; but thou hast acted as became thyself, and averted that which thou fearedst by doing what thou desiredst. And he said, I have extinguished my rancour by sparing thy life, and I have pardoned thee without burdening thee by obligations to intercessors. Then he prostrated himself in adoration for a long time; after which he raised his head, and said, O uncle, knowest thou wherefore I prostrated myself? I answered, Perhaps thou didst so to thank God for his having made thee master of thine enemy. He replied, I desired not that; but to thank God that He had inspired me to pardon thee. I then explained to him my case, and told him what had happened to me with the cupper [or barber], and with the trooper and his wife, and the emancipated female slave who betrayed me: whereupon El-Ma'mun gave orders to bring that emancipated female slave. She was in her house, expecting the reward to be sent to her; and when she came before El-Ma'mun, he said to her, What induced thee to act as thou didst to thy master? She answered, Desire for the money. And he said, Hast thou a child or a husband? She answered, No. And upon this he gave orders to inflict upon her a hundred lashes, and commanded that she should be imprisoned for life. He then caused the trooper and his wife and the cupper to be brought; and when they had all come, he asked the trooper the cause of his having acted as he

* Or, as explained by my sheykh, "coveting thy pardon."

The kata is a kind of grouse, that deposits its eggs in the desert, at a great distance from any water.

Kur'an, ch. xii, v. 92.

had done. He answered, Desire for the money. And El-Ma'mun replied, Thou must be a cupper. And accordingly he commissioned a person to place him in the shop of a cupper that he might teach him his art. But the trooper's wife he treated with honour, and he took her into the palace, and said, This is a sensible woman, fit to be employed in affairs of importance. Then he said to the cupper, There hath been such evidence of thy generosity as requireth that extraordinary honour should be paid to thee. And he commanded that the house of the trooper should be given up to him, and bestowed upon him, in addition to that, fifteen thousand pieces of gold.

THE DISCOVERY AND HISTORY OF IREM DHAT EL'IMAD, THE TERRESTRIAL PARADISE OF SHEDDAD THE SON OF 'AD.

It is related that 'Abd-Allah the son of Abu-Kilabeh went forth to seek a camel that had run away, and while he was proceeding over the deserts of El-Yemen and the district of Seba, he chanced to arrive at a vast city encompassed by enormous fortifications, around the circuit of which were pavilions rising high into the sky. So when he approached it, he imagined that there must be inhabitants within it, of whom he might inquire for his camel; and accordingly he advanced to it; but on coming to it, he found that it was desolate, without any one to cheer its solitude.

I alighted, says he, from my she-camel, and tied up her foot; and then, composing my mind, entered the city. On approaching the fortifications, I found that they had two enormous gates, the like of which, for size and height, have never been seen elsewhere in the world, set with a variety of jewels and jacinths, white and red and yellow and green; and when I beheld this, I was struck with the utmost wonder at it, and the sight astonished me. I entered the fortifications in a state of terror, and with a wandering mind, and saw them to be of the same large extent as the city, and to comprise elevated pavilions, every one of these containing lofty chambers, and all of them constructed of gold and silver, and adorned with rubies and chrysolites and pearls and various-coloured jewels. The folding-doors of these pavilions were like those of the fortifications in beauty, and their floors were overlaid with large pearls and with balls_like_hazel-nuts composed of musk and ambergris and saffron. And when I came into the midst of the city, I saw not in it a created being of the sons of Adam; and I almost died of terror. I then looked down from the summits of the lofty chambers and pavilions, and saw rivers running beneath them; and in the great thoroughfare-streets of the city were fruit-bearing trees, and tall palm-trees; and the construction of the city was of alternate bricks of gold and silver : so I said within myself, No doubt this is the Paradise promised in the world to come.

I carried away, of the jewels which were as its gravel, and the VOL. II.

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musk that was as its dust, as much as I could bear, and returned to my district, where I acquainted the people with the occurrence. And the news reached Mo'awiyeh the son of Abu-Sufyan (who was then Khalifeh) in the Hijaz: so he wrote to his lieutenant in San'a of ElYemen, saying, Summon that man, and inquire of him the truth of the matter. His lieutenant therefore caused me to be brought, and demanded of me an account of my adventure, and of what had befallen me; and I informed him of what I had seen. He then sent me to Mo'awiyeh, and I acquainted him also with that which I had seen; but he disbelieved it: so I produced to him some of those pearls and the little balls of ambergris and musk and saffron. The latter retained somewhat of their sweet scent; but the pearls had become yellow and discoloured.

At the sight of these, Mo'awiyeh wondered, and he sent and caused Ka'b-el-Ahbar * to be brought before him, and said to him, O Ka'bel-Ahbar, I have called thee on account of a matter of which I desire to know the truth, and I hope that thou mayest be able to certify me of it. And what is it, O Prince of the Faithful? asked Ka'b-el-Ahbar. Mo'awiyeh said, Hast thou any knowledge of the existence of a city constructed of gold and silver, the pillars whereof are of chrysolite and ruby, and the gravel of which is of pearls, and of balls like hazel-nuts, composed of musk and ambergris and saffron? He answered, Yes, O Prince of the Faithful. It is Irem Dhat el-'Imad,† the like of which hath never been constructed in the regions of the earth; and Sheddad the son of 'Ad the Greater built it.-Relate to us, said Mo'awiyeh, somewhat of its history. And Ka'b-el-Ahbar replied thus :

'Ad the Greater had two sons, Shedid and Sheddad; and when their father perished, they reigned conjointly over the countries after him, and there was no one of the Kings of the earth who was not subject to them. And Shedid the son of 'Ad died: so his brother Sheddad ruled alone over the earth after him. He was fond of reading the ancient books; and when he met with the description of the world to come, and of Paradise with its pavilions and lofty chambers and its trees and fruits, and of the other things in Paradise, his heart enticed him to construct its like on the earth, after this manner which hath been above mentioned. He had under his authority a hundred thousand Kings, under each of whom were a hundred thousand valiant chieftains, and under each of these were a hundred thousand soldiers. And

* A famous traditionist, of the tribe of Himyer, who embraced El-Islam in the reign of 'Omar, and died in the year of the Flight 32.

+ "Irem Dhat el-'Imad" is generally understood to signify "Irem with the Lofty Buildings: " but Von Hammer has remarked (see Trébutien's translation, vol. iii. p. 286), that the story of this city, though related as true by Arab historians and others, is pronounced by Ibn-Khaldun to be an invention of the commentators of the Kur'an; this judicious critic asserting, that "Irem" is the name of an ancient tribe, and that 'imad is to be understood in this case as meaning "a tent-pole; " so that Irem Dhat el-'Imad" signifies "Irem with the [numerous] tent-poles, or tents. In like manner, the expression "ahlu-l-'imad" is used to signify "people dwelling in tents."

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