of the Koran: "O true believers, bestow alms of the good things which ye have gained to those threatened with poverty."
Ye are indeed Moslim; I take refuge in the cooling shadow of your generosity, and now I shall tell you the story which delighted the heart of Aziz-Ullah, of his noble father, his ninety brothers and the thirty vezirs; the story of the wisest of kadees and the most deceitful of women, which is the story of Khassoum and Khizr, the mighty spirit.
Know then, ye sons of Arab fathers, that once there existed a land which the unbelievers had not yet overrun with their merchants and their soldiers, their railways and their black-coated priests. In this land there was a town which the Prophet himself had honored with his presence; it was a town holier than Kairwan before the French—Allah's curse on them and their children—had desecrated its sacred buildings, and greater and richer than Stamboul itself, the home of the Caliph, the commander of the faithful.
This town was the asylum of knowledge and instruction, the abode of greatness, the home of justice and piety; the wondering gaze of the stranger beheld there three thousand public baths, built of
