Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/50

32 THE MUSLIM CHAMPION AND THE CHRISTIAN DAMSEL.

The Khalif Omar ben el Khettab (whom God accept) once levied an army of Muslims, to encounter the enemy before Damascus, and they laid strait siege to one of the Christians’ strengths. Now there were among the Muslims two men, brothers, whom God had gifted with valour and daring against the foe, so that the commander of the besieged fortress said to his captains and champions, ‘Were but yonder two taken or slain, I would warrant you against the rest of the Muslims.’ Wherefore they set for them all manner of snares and ambushes and ceased not to lie in wait for them, till, at last, they took one of them prisoner and slew the other, who died a martyr. They carried the prisoner to their general, who looked at him and said, ‘To kill this man were pity; but his return to the Muslims would be a calamity. Would he might be brought to embrace the Christian Faith and be to us an aid and a support!’ ‘O Amir,’ answered one of his knights, ‘I will bring him to abjure his faith, and on this wise. We know that the Arabs are passionately fond of women, and I have a daughter of surpassing beauty and grace, whom when he sees, he will be ravished by her.’ Quoth the general, ‘I give him into thy charge: take him.’

So he carried him to his house and set food before him. Moreover, he clad his daughter in raiment, such as added to her beauty and grace, and made her stand before the Muslim, as she were a handmaid obedient to her lord and awaiting his commandment, that she might fulfil it. When the prisoner saw the snare that was set for him, he commended himself to God the Most High for protection and closing his eyes, applied himself to prayer and reciting the Koran. Now he had a mellow voice and a penetrating