36 A If Laylah wa Laylah. When he went from me, every matter went wrong o Till my heart was nigh- broken, my nature unmanned : He bought me a handmaid, a sweeting who shamed o A wand of the willow by Zephyr befanned : I lavisht upon her mine heritage, o And spent like a nobleman puissant and grand : Then to sell her compelled, my sorrow increased ; o The parting was sore but I mote not gainstand : Now as soon as the crier had called her, there bid o A wicked old fellow, a fiery brand : So I raged with a rage that I could not restrain, o And snatched her from out of his hireling's hand ; When the angry curmudgeon made ready for blows, o And the fire of a fight kindled he and his band, I smote him in fury with right and with left, o And his hide, till well satisfied, curried and tanned : Then in fear I fled forth and lay hid in my house, o To escape from the snares which my foeman had spanned : So the King of the country proclaimed my arrest ; o When access to me a good Chamberlain fand : And warned me to flee from the city afar, o Disappear, disappoint what my enemies planned : Then we fled from our home 'neath the wing of the night, o And sought us a refuge by Baghdad strand : Of my riches I've nothing on thee to bestow, o O Fisher, except the fair gift thou hast scanned : The loved of my soul, and when I from her part, o Know for sure that I gnre thee the blood of my heart 1 When he had ended his verse, the Caliph said to him, " O my lord Nur al-Din, explain to me thy case more fully." So he told him the whole story from beginning to end, and the Caliph said to him, "Whither dost thou now intend?" "Allah's world is wide," re- plied he. Quoth the Caliph, " I will write thee a letter to carry to the Sultan Mohammed bin Sulayman al-Zayni, which when he readeth, he will not hurt nor harm thee in aught" And Shahrazad rperceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.
Such an act of generosity would appear to Europeans well-nigh insanity, but it is
quite in Arab manners. Witness the oft-quoted tale of Hatim and his hone. As a rule the Arab is the reverse of generous, contrasting badly, in this point, with his cousin the Jew : hence his ideal of generosity is of the very highest. " The generous (i.e. liberal) is Allah's friend, aye, though he be a sinner ; and the miser is Allah's foe, aye, though he be a saint ! " Indian Moslems call a skin-flint Makhi-chus = fly-sucker (Pilgrimage i,
