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On Friday, in the dress of a caliph, in the colors of the sect, Saffah proceeded with religious and military pomp to the mosch: ascending the pulpit, he prayed and preached as the lawful successor of Mahomet; and after his departure, his kinsmen bound a willing people by an oath of fidelity.
The officer bowed, and said at once, "A man in the uniform of an officer of the guard gave me this ring and bade me bring it in and say, 'The bearer of the ring is here, and demands an audience of the owner of it." The Caliph asked for the ring; then putting it on his finger, he said, "The ring is mine, admit the man who brought it."
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the donkey-boy rose and cried out, "I invoke Allah's law between me and her; for it sufficed her not to take my ass, but she must needs egg on the barber to tear out my eye-teeth and fire me on both temples;" thereupon the Caliph bade give him an hundred dinars and ordered the dyer the like, saying, "Go; set up thy dyery again."
In God's name, I say once more, go your way, and trouble me no more." "Ah! brother Abou Hassan," replied the caliph, embracing him, "I do not intend to part with you thus, since I have had the good fortune to meet with you a second time; you must exercise the same hospitality towards me again that you shewed me a month ago, when I had the honour to drink with you."
Safie was not idle, but swept the room, put every thing again in its place, snuffed the candies, and put fresh aloes and ambergris to them, and then prayed the three calenders to sit down upon the sofa on one side, and the caliph, with his companions, on the other.
The next morning he placed himself on the road along which the Caliph must pass after mid-day prayer, and stretched out his petition to the officer who walked before the Caliph, whose duty it was to collect such things, and on entering the palace to hand them to his master. There Haroun-al-Raschid studied them carefully.
The caliph, amazed at the inhumanity of the rider, stopped to ask the people if they knew why he used the mare so ill; but could learn nothing, except that for some time past he had every day, at the same hour, treated her in the same manner.
"Now," the old man asked, "now, O Frank, wouldst thou see the cut jewels of the Caliph el Walid?" "Even so!" "Come, then!" And Bara Miyan gestured toward another door that led, at the left, out of the Chamber of the Pyramid. Again the strange procession formed itself, as before, with the gorilla-like Maghrabi stranglers a rear guard.
So the Wazir Ja'afar came forward and kissing the ground before him, said, "Allah avert all evil from the Commander of the Faithful!" Answered the Caliph, "O Wazir, the evil is passing great!"
He was of so daring and fearless a temper, however, that it made no further difference than this, that ever afterwards when he wandered about in disguise Mesrúr accompanied him as well as the Grand Vizier. The Caliph and the Blind Fisherman. One evening Haroun Alraschid sat in a splendid apartment of his palace in Bagdad.
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