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The palm-trees wave above Marrakesh, turtle-backed mosques and tall towers rise among the gardens and gleam in the sun, but above and beyond every other feature of the far-away fantastic southern capital one watch-tower rises over everything and rears itself into the sky the Kutobea, built, according to tradition, by Fabir for the Sultan El Mansur.
Thus shall the infidels be conquered. Then, drawing his sword, he cried with a loud voice: 'Ed din mansur! The religion is victorious!
The sight gave courage to the Kureisch, and now the main body of them pressed on, seeking to overwhelm the Muslim by sheer weight. The heavy ground impeded their movements, and they came on slowly with what anxious expectation on the part of Mahomet's soldiers, whom their Prophet had commanded to await his signal. When the Kureisch were near enough Mahomet lifted his hand: "Ya Mansur amit!"
'The hearts of lovers have eyes I ken, * Which see the unseen by vulgar men. However, O Ibn Mansur, the night and day shift not upon anything but they bring to it change. And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say. When it was the Three Hundred and Thirty-first Night,
The native, when asked the length of the lake, faced to the north, and, nodding his head, indicated by signs that it was something immeasurable, adding that he thought it probably extended to the end of the world. Poor Mansur had been robbed of his merchandise, by a sultan whose territory was on the shore of the lake, and he had very little chance of obtaining redress.
There, after a consultation with his wife, he resolved to submit the nugget to some man renowned for probity and wisdom. He brought it, therefore, to Elias, who believed it to be gold, but, loth to trust his judgment, advised Mansur to show it to a certain jeweller of high repute, as well for virtue as for craftsmanship; and Mansur did so.
Observe the part played by a Mobed at a criminal trial conducted according to Muhammadan usages. It has been related by Harun son of Isa, son of Mansur as follows: I was present in the house of Muatisim and there were there Ahmad bin Ali Dawud and Ishaq bin Ibrahim son of Masab and Muhammad bin Abdal Maliq al Zayyad.
I have kept my secret in a house with a lock, whose key is lost and whose door is sealed. Thereto I replied, 'O my lady, an thou wouldest know who I am, I am Ali bin Mansur of Damascus, the Wag, cup-companion to the Commander of the Faithful, Harun al-Rashid. Now when she heard my name, she came down from her seat and saluting me, said, 'Welcome, O Ibn Mansur!
But when he returned after two days, that jeweller informed him that it was not gold. Mansur then asked for it to be returned, saying that if it were only brass it would be worth preserving. The merchant replied that he had thrown it away, and told the muleteer to go and hunt for it upon the rubbish-heaps outside the city gate. Mansur then called him thief.
PERSIAN POETS. The first of Persian poets, the Homer of his country, is Abul Kasim Mansur, called Ferdusi or "Paradise," from the exquisite beauty of his compositions. Mahmud commissioned him to write in his faultless verse a history of the monarchs of Persia, promising that for every thousand couplets he should receive a thousand pieces of gold.
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