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After awhile, his master the merchant set out on a pilgrimage to Meccah, taking Judar with him, and when they reached the city, the Cairene repaired to the Haram temple, to circumambulate the Ka'abah. When it was the Six Hundred and Eighteenth Night,
When the Caliph Harun al-Rashid heard her, he stood up and said, "Thou hast spoken well, by the Lord of the Ka'abah, O Tawaddud!" Then quoth Ibrahim the rhetorician, "What meaneth the poet when he saith, 'Slim-wasted one, whose taste is sweetest-sweet, * Likest a lance whereon no head we scan: And all the lieges find it work them weal, * Eaten of afternoon in Ramazan."
I cried, ''Tis he, by the Lord of the Ka'abah! and turning to the dealer, said to him, 'Sell me yonder slave. Replied he, 'O Abu Yahya, this is a pestilent unprofitable fellow, who hath no concern by night but weeping and by day but repentance. I rejoined, 'It is for that I want him. So the dealer called him, and he came out, showing drowsiness.
Tell me, therefore, how is man made; how many veins, bones and vertebrae are there in his body; which is the first and chief vein and why Adam was named Adam?" His breast was made of the earth of the Ka'abah, his head of earth from the East and his legs of earth from the West.
And next year I made pilgrimage to Meccah and as I was circumambulating the Holy House I saw Abd al-Masih the monk also compassing the Ka'abah, and with him five of his fellows, the shavelings. A company of Moslem devotees came to the village wherein is our convent, and sent a youth to buy them food.
"This were of the bounty of the Commander of the Faithful," answered the youth and repeated these two couplets. "Ne'er cease thy gate be Ka'abah to mankind; * Long may its threshold dust man's brow beseem! Thereupon the Caliph turned to his Minister and said to him, "O Ja'afar, bring me thy sister, the Lady Dunya, daughter of the Wazir Yahya bin Khalid!"
Quoth the Emir, "What is to do, O Shaykh?"; and he answered, saying, "By the Lord of the Ka'abah, we have wandered from our road!" "How cometh that?" asked Musa, and Abd al-Samad replied, "The stars were overclouded and I could not guide myself by them." "Where on God's earth are we now?" asked the Emir, and the Shaykh answered, "I know not; for I never set eyes on this land till this moment."
So she forgave them one and all, and they worshipped Allah in that place and rendered her due service, till Death parted them. "I was circuiting the Ka'abah one dark night, when I heard a plaintive voice, speaking from a contrite heart and saying, 'O Bountiful One, Thy past boon!
Replied Sabbah, "By the Lord of the Ka'abah, from this time forth I will call thee naught but 'my lord'!" Then he ran on before the horse, with his sword hanging from his neck and his budget between his shoulder blades, and Kanmakan rode a little behind him; and they plunged into the desert, for a space of four days, eating of the gazelles and drinking water of the springs.
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