Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 9.djvu/394

360 chronicler) showed like two pearls, looked upon them pitifully and with tears in his eyes and commanded them to be cast alive into the pit, which he then caused to be closed up, weeping crocodile-tears the while. Thus a MS. history, whose writer is unknown, but other authorities state that he had the children burnt alive. Ibn el Jauzi relates that Yehya’s wife Zubeideh, Haroun’s foster-mother, after with great difficulty forcing her way into his presence, showed him his milk teeth and the curls of hair that she had kept from his childhood and conjured him by these tokens of her claim upon him for fosterage (one of those most sacred to a Muslim) to spare her husband and son. The mean-minded Khalif was not to be moved, but offered to buy the relics of her; whereupon she, in her indignation, threw them down at his feet, saying, “I make thee a present of them.” It is related by Mohammed ibn er Rehman, a contemporary aalim or man of learning and a member of the Khalif’s family (the Hashimis), that he once saw at his mother’s a woman of reverend mien, but poorly clad, who was introduced to him as the mother of Jaafer the Barmecide and said to him, “There was a time when four hundred female slaves stood awaiting my orders and yet I thought that my son did not provide for me in a manner adequate to my rank; but now my only wish is to have two sheepskins, one for a bed and the other for a covering.” Mohammed gave her five hundred dirhems, and she well-nigh died for excess of joy.

Among the various pretexts put forward by Er Reshid