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Updated: June 20, 2025
The significance of the event was vividly felt throughout Islam, and Abdallah, its hero, received at Mahomet's hands the title of "Amir-al- Momirim," Commander of the Faithful a title which recalls inseparably the cruelty and magnificence, the glamour and rapacity, of Arabian Bagdad under Haroun-al-Raschid.
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.
Among the palms and costly rugs that backgrounded a marvelous regal dais occupying one long end of the great room, sat the glittering figure of the portly Haroun-al-Raschid, Sultan of Bagdad and husband of many lovely wives, whose multi-colored costumes made a glowing garden on the rugs at the foot of the dais, while on the embroidered cushions at the side of the monarch a lovely Scheherazade in shimmering white satin with strings of glistening gems in her hair, on her breast, on her arms and ankles, made an alluring picture of the new-made bride.
The Caliph then took a sheet of paper, and wrote the following letter, at the top of which he put in very small characters this formula to show that he must be implicitly obeyed: "In the name of the Most Merciful God. "Letter of the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid to the King of Balsora. "Haroun-al-Raschid, son of Mahdi, sends this letter to Mohammed Zinebi, his cousin.
In the times of the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid there lived in Bagdad a poor porter named Hindbad, who on a very hot day was sent to carry a heavy load from one end of the city to the other.
I'm betting on him all the time; but no one seems to be working to make his dreams come true, except himself. I don't count; I'm no good, no real good. I'm only fit to run the commissariat, and see that he gets enough to eat, and has a safe camel, and so on. Why doesn't some one else help him? He's working for humanity. Give him half a chance, and Haroun-al-Raschid won't be in it.
It is interesting to give the remark of Humboldt on this subject, as reported by M. Charton; he said, "that he regretted the more this uncertainty about the early life of Columbus when he remembered all that the chroniclers have so minutely preserved for us upon the life of the dog Becerillo, or the elephant Aboulababat, which Haroun-al-Raschid sent to Charlemagne!"
Now a Caliph, according to our notion, is a Haroun-al-Raschid kind of person; one who governs a large empire of hearts with a genial and whimsical sway; circulating secretly among his fellow-men, doing kindnesses often not even suspected by their beneficiaries.
"Not much then," rejoined McNabbs. "But go on, Scheherazade, and tell us the story." "There was once," said Paganel, "a son of the great Haroun-al-Raschid, who was unhappy, and went to consult an old Dervish. The old sage told him that happiness was a difficult thing to find in this world.
"If it's business to give Cousin Henry what would be nearly a hundred thousand pounds in English money, with no prospect that any one can see of his ever getting it back that is, not unless old Madame de Melcourt " "Oh, I say! Then he's one of your beastly millionaires, by Jove! grind the noses off the poor, and that sort of thing, to play Haroun-al-Raschid with the cash." "Not in the least.
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