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Updated: May 25, 2025
So Ashimullah described his wives one by one to the Sultan, using most exalted eloquence, and employing every simile, metaphor, image, figure, and trope that language contains, in the vain attempt to express adequately the surpassing beauty of those ladies; yet he was most careful to set no one above any other and to distribute the said similes, metaphors, images, figures, and tropes, with absolute impartiality and equality among them.
"Behold, she is in herself a multitude!" Early the next morning Ashimullah was summoned to the palace, and at once ushered into the presence of the Sultan. "O Ashimullah, I have reflected," said the Sultan, "and I desire that you will send me that wife of yours who has ruddy hair. For although the choice is difficult, yet I think that she must be the fairest of them all."
Therefore he prostrated himself, crying that he submitted to the imperial will, and would straightway take another wife. "I do not love a grudging obedience," said the Sultan. "I will take two!" cried Ashimullah. "Take three," said the Sultan; and with this he dismissed Ashimullah, giving him the space of a week in which to fulfill the command laid upon him.
In the evening came a litter from the palace, and with it a letter from the Sultan, commanding that Lallakalla should come, and bidding Ashimullah to expect his four wives the next day.
That graceless wife has fled from me in company with a fishmonger," groaned Ashimullah. "You are well quit of her, and so also am I," remarked the Sultan. "Yet I am not to be turned from my benevolent purpose, and rather than fail in doing you honor, I will accept the wife with the golden hair." "Alas! and alas! High and Potent Majesty, Heaven has set its wrath upon me.
For the more windows, the wider the view; and the wider the view, the more pretty damsels do you see; and the more pretty damsels you see, the more jocund a thing is life and that is what the men of the Duchy love and not least, Duke Deodonato, whom, with his bride Dulcissima, may Heaven long preserve! There was once the date is of no moment a Sultan, and he had a Vizier named Ashimullah.
O Light of the World, a pestilence has fallen on my house, and my wife with the ruddy hair lies dead." "We must resign ourselves to the will of Heaven," said the Sultan. "Yet I will not recall the favor I had destined for you. Send me the wife that has coal-black hair, Ashimullah." "Alas! Most Mighty One, misfortunes crowd upon me.
To obey was to sin, to refuse was likely to cost him his life; for if his master suspected the sincerity of his conversion, his shrift would be short. In this quandary Ashimullah sought about for excuses. "O Commander of the Faithful, I am a poor man, and wives are sources of expense," said Ashimullah. "My treasury is open to the most faithful of my servants," said the Sultan.
Therefore when the Sultan, hearing that Ashimullah had but one wife, and considering the thing very suspicious and unnatural, sent for him, and required him to order his establishment on a scale more befitting his present exalted position, Ashimullah was in sad perplexity.
And they dwelt happily together, there being no differences in their household, save in the color of Lallakalla's hair from day to day. But the Sultan raised a pillar of many-colored marble, black and gold, brown and red, and inscribed it, "To the Virtues of the Wives of Ashimullah the Vizier." And henceforward none troubled Ashimullah concerning his wives.
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