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Then she enquired of a slave who told her that the merchant's horse had waited for him at the gate a long time, that he had just come galloping out, and by this time must have reached the bridge of boats which connected Memphis with the island of Rodah and, beyond the island, with the fort of Babylon and the new town of Fostat. Paula went up-stairs again, distressed and vexed with herself.
The rocks by the wayside still threw long shadows on the sandy desert-road, when a party of Arab horsemen came from Fostat to meet the travellers, shouting the latest news to the prisoner's escort. It was evidently important; but Orion did not understand a word of what they said.
The troops he intended to employ later were waiting under arms at Fostat, and when the fire broke out, first in the treasury and afterwards in three other places in the palace, they were immediately marched across and very judiciously employed.
The moon had scarcely risen when the boat was stranded at a short distance below Fostat, and the men had to go overboard to push it off to an accompaniment of loud singing which, as it were, welded their individual wills and efforts into one.
He had been riding towards it for about half an hour when the caravan halted at the last station but one, on the high road between Kolzum and Babylon. A considerable troop of horse soldiers dismounted at the same time, but Orion had not summoned these to protect him; on the contrary, he was in their charge and they were taking him, a prisoner, to Fostat.
He thought himself safe from his enraged father there, but the latter quickly returned to Fostât, and the news of the ample preparations which he was hastening for the subjection of his rebel son caused El-Abbas to place himself still farther out of his reach. The neighbouring Berbers gave Ibrahim their assistance, and Abbas was defeated and retreated to Barca in 880.
You sue for the hand of an unbeliever, the daughter of an unbelieving heretic; you go over to Fostat nay, hear me out and place your brain and your strong arm at the service of the infidels it is but yesterday; but I, I, the shepherd of my flock, will not suffer that he who is the highest in rank, the richest in possessions, the most powerful by the mere dignity of his name, shall pervert thousands of the Jacobite brethren.
In Memphis all was still silent, and all he saw in the old town struck him as strangely worn-out, torpid, and decayed; it seemed only fit to be left to ruin, while on the other side of the river, in the new town of Fostat, on all hands busy, eager, new-born vitality met his eyes.
This document required them, in conformity with Obada's determination, to make known to the populace, by public proclamation and declaration, that any citizen whose house had been destroyed by the fire of the past night would be granted ground and building materials without payment, at Fostat across the Nile, where he might found a new home provided he would settle there and embrace Islam.
He would eventually have made up for this defeat, but an illness overcame him while encamped before Tarsus. He obeyed his doctor's orders as little as the caliph's, and his malady, aggravated by improper diet, caused his death in his fifty-first year at Fostât in 884, whither he had withdrawn. He left seventeen sons, enough to assure a dynasty of a hundred years.
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