Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 5.djvu/117

 perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

When it was the Three Hundred and Ninety-second Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the man, taking with him the money, departed by stealth. But when they told Yahya of this, he said, By Allah, though he had tarried with me to the end of his days, yet had I not stinted him of my largesse nor cut off from him the bounties of my hospitality!  For, indeed, the excellences of the Barmecides were past count nor can their virtues be committed to description, especially those of Yahya bin Khalid, for he was an ocean [FN#132] of noble qualities, even as saith the poet of him,

I asked of Bounty, Art thou free?  Quoth she, * No, I am slave to Yahyá Khálid-son! Boughten? asked I.  Allah forfend, quoth she, * By heirship, sire to sires transmission!

And the following is related of MOHAMMED AL-AMIN AND THE SLAVE-GIRL

Jaafar bin Musá al-Hádi [FN#133] once had a slave-girl, a lutist, called Al-Badr al-Kabír, than whom there was not in her time a fairer of face nor shapelier of shape nor a more elegant of manners nor a more accomplished in the art of singing and striking the strings; she was indeed perfect in beauty and extreme in every charm. Now Mohammed al-Amín, [FN#134] son of Zubaydah, heard of her and was urgent with Jaafar to sell her