Mohammed, a benevolent sultan, ruled over the city of El-Basrah. Harun ar-Rashid, the Caliph of Baghdad, had entrusted him with the government of this city.
In this government, Mohammed enjoyed the assistance of two wezirs: El-Fadl and El-M
Mohammed, a benevolent sultan, ruled over the city of El-Basrah. Harun ar-Rashid, the Caliph of Baghdad, had entrusted him with the government of this city.
In this government, Mohammed enjoyed the assistance of two wezirs: El-Fadl and El-Mo’in. El-Fadl was an honorable man and well-liked by the people, but El-Mo’in was evil.
Nur-ed-Din was the son of El-Fadl. Unfortunately, he did not walk in his father’s footsteps. He was a handsome man, but he misused his good looks to seduce any maiden who had the misfortune to enter his father’s house.
One day the sultan asked El-Fadl to purchase a female slave for him. He wanted a young lady who was more beautiful than any other girl her age. He gave El-Fadl ten thousand pieces of gold to pay for the slave.
El-Fadl ordered the brokers not to sell any beautiful female slave before he had a chance to inspect her. For a long time, none of the prospects satisfied him. However, he finally purchased a maiden of surpassing beauty. Her name was Enis-el-Jelis.
When slaves were sold, the negative experience usually marred their physical appearance somewhat. El-Fadl decided to keep her in a special room in his house for ten days so that she could recover. He then planned to present her to the sultan. In the meantime, he took special care to prevent his lecherous son from even seeing her.
Unfortunately, Enis-el-Jelis had a curious disposition. She had heard how handsome Nur-ed-Din was, so she wanted to see him with her own eyes.
One day, when she heard him walking outside her room, she stealthily opened her door so that she could take a little peek. When she saw him, she was so stunned by his handsome physique that she did not withdraw her head as quickly as she had intended. As a result, Nur-ed-Din got a good look at her before she closed the door.
Nur-ed-Din was enthralled by her beauty. He walked to the door, rudely shoved aside the two slaves that were guarding her door, and entered her room. The two embraced each other, and shared a kiss. After this, Nur-ed-Din ran away. The slaves who had been guarding the door were making a tremendous racket, and the young rake feared the imminent approach of his father.
By western standards, not much harm was done. However, this brief expression of affection rendered her unfit to present to the sultan. As a result, El-Fadl was utterly dismayed. He figured that the wicked El-Mo’in would find out about it. If so, El-Mo’in would accuse El-Fadl of using the sultan’s money to buy a maiden for his son. El-Fadl would undoubtedly lose his life and property as a result.
A long time had passed since the sultan had commanded El-Fadl to buy a slave girl, so he had forgotten about the matter. Since Enis-el-Jelis and Nur-ed-Din loved each other, El-Fadl gave her to his son under three conditions. He was not to take any other wife. He was to do her no injury. And he was not supposed to sell her. Nur-ed-Din swore an oath that he would observe these conditions.
A year later, El-Fadl died. For a long time, Nur-ed-Din mourned for his father. However, he was an easygoing man with a streak of generosity in his nature. Eventually he invited ten companions into his house and treated them daily to lavish entertainments. After a year, his steward informed him that he was bankrupt.
When his ten companions learned that their host no longer had any money that he could lavish on them, they left his house one by one. None of them was willing to help their benefactor in his hour of need.
At the suggestion of Enis-el-Jelis, Nur-ed-Din sold all the movable items in the house one by one till the house was bare. Then Enis-el-Jelis suggested that he take her to the market to sell her. Strangely, Nur-ed-Din adopted her suggestion. He took her to the market and entrusted her to a broker. Nur-ed-Din still loved each other, and he did not want to part with her, but the easygoing profligate did not have the courage to suffer privation for the sake of love.
A merchant offered four thousand five hundred pieces of gold for her. However, El-Mo’in happened to notice the proceedings. He correctly concluded that Nur-ed-Din was bankrupt, and he decided to take advantage of the situation. He liked the girl, so he told the broker that he wanted to buy her. Of course, no one else dared to bid against the formidable wezir, so El-Mo’in was able to buy the girl for four thousand five hundred pieces of gold.
It was well known that El-Mo’in never paid his debts, and no one could force the powerful wezir to pay. So before the sale was finalized, the broker conferred with Nur-ed-Din. He suggested that Nur-ed-Din pretend that he did not really want to sell the girl. He had only brought her to the market to scare her so that she would be more obedient in the future.
The ploy resulted in a one-sided fight between El-Mo’in and Nur-ed-Din. El-Mo’in returned to the palace bloody, muddy, and beaten.
El-Mo’in had learned that El-Fadl had bought the girl with the sultan’s money and had given her to his son. Until now, he did not dare inform the sultan because of the popularity of El-Fadl. However, he now told the sultan what El-Fadl had done. He also told the sultan what had happened at the market that day, only he altered the facts. He claimed that he wanted to buy the girl for the sultan and that Nur-ed-Din had beaten him when he expressed this intention.
The sultan commanded forty swordsmen to go to the house of Nur-ed-Din, confiscate his possessions, and bring him and the girl bound to his palace, dragging them on their faces along the way.
A chamberlain heard the sultan’s command. He quickly rode to the house of Nur-ed-Din, gave him some gold, and urged them to flee. Nur-ed-Din and Enis-el-Jelis escaped to the city of Baghdad.
In Baghdad, the tired fugitives happened to rest in the Garden of Delight adjoining the Palace of Diversion, which belonged to Caliph Harun ar-Rashid. Sheyk Ibrahim saw them, and his first impulse was to kill them, since the caliph had told him that he could do whatever he wished with people loitering in the area. However, he figured that they must be strangers and that destiny had cast them there. So he awakened Nur-ed-Din instead.
To put them at ease, Ibrahim pretended that the garden belonged to him and invited them into the Palace of Diversion. He served his guests some food. When he offered them water, they asked for wine. They started carousing, and invited Ibrahim to join them. Ibrahim objected that he never drank wine because the prophet Mohammed had forbidden it. However, the merry couple eventually persuaded him to drink with them. To make the occasion more festive, Enis-el-Jelis lighted twenty candles, and Nur-ed-Din lighted twenty lamps.
When Harun ar-Rashid noticed that all the lights in the Palace of Diversion, he became alarmed and summoned Ja’far El-Barmeki. He thought that someone must have deposed him from the caliphate, since the Palace of Diversion was illuminated without his knowledge.
Ja’far first tried to calm the caliph by claiming that Ibrahim was celebrating the circumcision of his sons in the palace. He apologized for forgetting to tell the caliph about it.
The caliph insisted that he wanted to join the festivities, and Ja’far had to accompany him. Ja’far was afraid because the caliph would certainly find out that Ibrahim was not celebrating a circumcision.
The caliph wanted to observe the celebration before entering, so he climbed a tree and looked into the window. To his surprise, Ibrahim was drinking wine with two guests. At first, he was not going to enter the palace. He and Ja’far simply sat in the tree and watched the three carousers. However, when Enis-el-Jelis took a lute and sang a lovely song, the caliph wanted her to sing a song for him.
He decided to enter the house in disguise. He found a fisherman named Kerim illegally fishing in a river near the palace. He told Kerim to catch some fish for him. Then the caliph and Kerim changed clothes.
The disguised caliph then took the fish and knocked at the door of the Palace of Diversion while Ja’far waited outside. Since the two guests were fond of fish, the supposed fisherman was warmly welcomed into the palace. At their request, the caliph fried the fish for them.
The disguised caliph then asked Enis-el-Jelis to sing for him. At the sound of her voice, the caliph was overwhelmed with ecstasy. When Nur-ed-Din saw how the song affected the disguised caliph, he gave her to him as a present and told him to take her away. I imagine that the wine was responsible for his misplaced generosity.
Enis-el-Jelis asked Nur-ed-Din if he was going to part from her without saying goodbye. In the ensuing conversation, the caliph realized that the two loved each other dearly, and he had scruples about separating them. So he asked Nur-ed-Din various questions. Nur-ed-Din told him all that had happened and why he had to flee from El-Basrah.
The supposed fisherman told Nur-ed-Din that he had once been the sultan’s monitor. He said that he still had influence with the sultan, and he was going to write a letter that would reconcile Nur-ed-Din to the sultan.
Of course, he wrote the letter in his real name, signing it Harun ar-Rashid. He commanded the sultan to step down and invest Nur-ed-Din as sultan of El-Basrah. He gave the letter to Nur-ed-Din, who immediately left for Baghdad.
Ja’far obtained some suitable clothes so that the caliph could doff the rags of the fisherman. When the astonished Ibrahim saw the transformation, he asked and received forgiveness from the caliph.
When Nur-ed-Din showed the letter to the sultan, the latter was about to obey the caliph’s command. However, El-Mo’in tore up the letter, chewed it, and threw it down. Then he told the sultan that Nur-ed-Din had composed the letter himself, imitating the caliph’s handwriting. El-Mo’in wanted to send the young man to Baghdad with the chamberlain to find out whether he had spoken the truth.
The sultan entrusted Nur-ed-Din to the wezir. However, instead of sending him to Baghdad, El-Mo’in had him beaten, chained, and put into prison. He ordered Kuteyt, the jailer, to torture him every day. Kuteyt pretended to torture the prisoner, but instead he took off the chain and treated Nur-ed-Din with kindness.
After forty days, El-Mo’in persuaded the sultan to have Nur-ed-Din beheaded. So the wezir and ten memluks came to the prison to fetch the condemned man. Kuteyt had given Nur-ed-Din some clean clothes, so Nur-ed-Din had to change to dirty clothes quickly so that El-Mo’in would not get angry at the jailer.
Meanwhile, the caliph had forgotten about Nur-ed-Din and Enis-el-Jelis until he happened to see Enis-el-Jelis in tears. After reminding the sultan who she was, Enis-el-Jelis expressed concern about Nur-ed-Din. Many days had passed, and she had no word from him. She also reminded the caliph that he had promised to send her to Nur-ed-Din with the honorary gift.
The caliph sent Ja’far to El-Basrah to see what was wrong. He arrived just in time to save Nur-ed-Din from decapitation. Ja’far arrested the sultan and El-Mo’in and enthroned Nur-ed-Din as sultan.
The event was celebrated for three days. Then Nur-ed-Din went to Baghdad to visit the caliph. Ja’far and a contrite El-Mo’in accompanied them.
In Baghdad, the caliph gave Nur-ed-Din a sword and told him to decapitate his enemy. El-Mo’in said: “I did according to my nature, and do thou according to thine.” Hearing these words, Nur-ed-Din knew that he could not kill the wezir, so he threw down the sword. At the caliph’s command, another man decapitated El-Mo’in.
The caliph then said to the young man: “Request of me what thou wilt.” Nur-ed-Din said he did not want the sovereignty of El-Basrah. He only wanted the honor of serving the caliph.
The caliph summoned Enis-el-Jelis. He gave the pair one of his palaces in Baghdad and gave them regular allowances. Nur-ed-Din became a table companion of the caliph for the rest of his life.
Reference:
“Tales from the Arabian Nights”; Maple Press
o’in. El-Fadl was an honorable man and well-liked by the people, but El-Mo’in was evil.
Nur-ed-Din was the son of El-Fadl. Unfortunately, he did not walk in his father’s footsteps. He was a handsome man, but he misused his good looks to seduce any maiden who had the misfortune to enter his father’s house.
One day the sultan asked El-Fadl to purchase a female slave for him. He wanted a young lady who was more beautiful than any other girl her age. He gave El-Fadl ten thousand pieces of gold to pay for the slave.
El-Fadl ordered the brokers not to sell any beautiful female slave before he had a chance to inspect her. For a long time, none of the prospects satisfied him. However, he finally purchased a maiden of surpassing beauty. Her name was Enis-el-Jelis.
When slaves were sold, the negative experience usually marred their physical appearance somewhat. El-Fadl decided to keep her in a special room in his house for ten days so that she could recover. He then planned to present her to the sultan. In the meantime, he took special care to prevent his lecherous son from even seeing her.
Unfortunately, Enis-el-Jelis had a curious disposition. She had heard how handsome Nur-ed-Din was, so she wanted to see him with her own eyes.
One day, when she heard him walking outside her room, she stealthily opened her door so that she could take a little peek. When she saw him, she was so stunned by his handsome physique that she did not withdraw her head as quickly as she had intended. As a result, Nur-ed-Din got a good look at her before she closed the door.
Nur-ed-Din was enthralled by her beauty. He walked to the door, rudely shoved aside the two slaves that were guarding her door, and entered her room. The two embraced each other, and shared a kiss. After this, Nur-ed Din ran away. The slaves who had been guarding the door were making a tremendous racket, and the young rake feared the imminent approach of his father.
By western standards, not much harm was done. However, this brief expression of affection rendered her unfit to present to the sultan. As a result, El-Fadl was utterly dismayed. He figured that the wicked El-Mo’in would find out about it. If so, El-Mo’in would accuse El-Fadl of using the sultan’s money to buy a maiden for his son. El-Fadl would undoubtedly lose his life and property as a result.
A long time had passed since the sultan had commanded El-Fadl to buy a slave girl, so he had forgotten about the matter. Since Enis-el-Jelis and Nur-ed-Din loved each other, El-Fadl gave her to his son under three conditions. He was not to take any other wife. He was to do her no injury. And he was not supposed to sell her. Nur-ed-Din swore an oath that he would observe these conditions.
A year later, El-Fadl died. For a long time, Nur-ed-Din mourned for his father. However, he was an easygoing man with a streak of generosity in his nature. Eventually he invited ten companions into his house and treated them daily to lavish entertainments. After a year, his steward informed him that he was bankrupt.
When his ten companions learned that their host no longer had any money that he could lavish on them, they left his house one by one. None of them was willing to help their benefactor in his hour of need.
At the suggestion of Enis-el-Jelis, Nur-ed-Din sold all the movable items in the house one by one till the house was bare. Then Enis-el-Jelis suggested that he take her to the market to sell her. Strangely, Nur-ed-Din adopted her suggestion. He took her to the market and entrusted her to a broker. Nur-ed-Din still loved each other, and he did not want to part with her, but the easygoing profligate did not have the courage to suffer privation for the sake of love.
A merchant offered four thousand five hundred pieces of gold for her. However, El-Mo’in happened to notice the proceedings. He correctly concluded that Nur-ed-Din was bankrupt, and he decided to take advantage of the situation. He liked the girl, so he told the broker that he wanted to buy her. Of course, no one else dared to bid against the formidable wezir, so El-Mo’in was able to buy the girl for four thousand five hundred pieces of gold.
It was well known that El-Mo’in never paid his debts, and no one could force the powerful wezir to pay. So before the sale was finalized, the broker conferred with Nur-ed-Din. He suggested that Nur-ed-Din pretend that he did not really want to sell the girl. He had only brought her to the market to scare her so that she would be more obedient in the future.
The ploy resulted in a one-sided fight between El-Mo’in and Nur-ed-Din. El-Mo’in returned to the palace bloody, muddy, and beaten.
El-Mo’in had learned that El-Fadl had bought the girl with the sultan’s money and had given her to his son. Until now, he did not dare inform the sultan because of the popularity of El-Fadl. However, he now told the sultan what El-Fadl had done. He also told the sultan what had happened at the market that day, only he altered the facts. He claimed that he wanted to buy the girl for the sultan and that Nur-ed-Dom had beaten him when he expressed this intention.
The sultan commanded forty swordsmen to go to the house of Nur-ed-Din, confiscate his possessions, and bring him and the girl bound to his palace, dragging them on their faces along the way.
A chamberlain heard the sultan’s command. He quickly rode to the house of Nur-ed-Din, gave him some gold, and urged them to flee. Nur-ed-Din and Enis-el-Jelis escaped to the city of Baghdad.
In Baghdad, the tired fugitives happened to rest in the Garden of Delight adjoining the Palace of Diversion, which belonged to Caliph Harun ar-Rashid. Sheyk Ibrahim saw them, and his first impulse was to kill them, since the caliph had told him that he could do whatever he wished with people loitering in the area. However, he figured that they must be strangers and that destiny had cast them there. So he awakened Nur-ed-Din instead.
To put them at ease, Ibrahim pretended that the garden belonged to him and invited them into the Palace of Diversion. He served his guests some food. When he offered them water, they asked for wine. They started carousing, and invited Ibrahim to join them. Ibrahim objected that he never drank wine because the prophet Mohammed had forbidden it. However, the merry couple eventually persuaded him to drink with them. To make the occasion more festive, Enis-el-Jelis lighted twenty candles, and Nur-ed-Din lighted twenty lamps.
When Harun er-Rashid noticed that all the lights in the Palace of Diversion, he became alarmed and summoned Ja’far El-Barmeki. He thought that someone must have deposed him from the caliphate, since the Palace of Diversion was illuminated without his knowledge.
Ja’far first tried to calm the caliph by claiming that Ibrahim was celebrating the circumcision of his sons in the palace. He apologized for forgetting to tell the caliph about it.
The caliph insisted that he wanted to join the festivities, and Ja’far had to accompany him. Ja’far was afraid because the caliph would certainly find out that Ibrahim was not celebrating a circumcision.
The caliph wanted to observe the celebration before entering, so he climbed a tree and looked into the window. To his surprise, Ibrahim was drinking wine with two guests. At first, he was not going to enter the palace. He and Ja’far simply sat in the tree and watched the three carousers. However, when Enis-el-Jelis took a lute and sang a lovely song, the caliph wanted her to sing a song for him.
He decided to enter the house in disguise. He found a fisherman named Kerim illegally fishing in a river near the palace. He told Kerim to catch some fish for him. Then the caliph and Kerim changed clothes.
The disguised caliph then took the fish and knocked at the door of the Palace of Diversion while Ja’far waited outside. Since the two guests were fond of fish, the supposed fisherman was warmly welcomed into the palace. At their request, the caliph fried the fish for them.
The disguised caliph then asked Enis-el-Jelis to sing for him. At the sound of her voice, the caliph was overwhelmed with ecstasy. When Nur-ed-Din saw how the song affected the disguised caliph, he gave her to him as a present and told him to take her away. I imagine that the wine was responsible for his misplaced generosity.
Enis-el-Jelis asked Nur-ed-Din if he was going to part from her without saying goodbye. In the ensuing conversation, the caliph realized that the two loved each other dearly, and he had scruples about separating them. So he asked Nur-ed-Din various questions. Nur-ed-Din told him all that had happened and why he had to flee from El-Basrah.
The supposed fisherman told Nur-ed-Din that he had once been the sultan’s monitor. He said that he still had influence with the sultan, and he was going to write a letter that would reconcile Nur-ed-Din to the sultan.
Of course, he wrote the letter in his real name, signing it Harun ar-Rashid. He commanded the sultan to step down and invest Nur-ed-Din as sultan of El-Basrah. He gave the letter to Nur-ed-Din, who immediately left for Baghdad.
Ja’far obtained some suitable clothes so that the caliph could doff the rags of the fisherman. When the astonished Ibrahim saw the transformation, he asked and received forgiveness from the caliph.
When Nur-ed-Din showed the letter to the sultan, the latter was about to obey the caliph’s command. However, El-Mo’in tore up the letter, chewed it, and threw it down. Then he told the sultan that Nur-ed-Din had composed the letter himself, imitating the caliph’s handwriting. El-Mo’in wanted to send the young man to Baghdad with the chamberlain to find out whether he had spoken the truth.
The sultan entrusted Nur-ed-Din to the wezir. However, instead of sending him to Baghdad, El-Mo’in had him beaten, chained, and put into prison. He ordered Kuteyt, the jailer, to torture him every day. Kuteyt pretended to torture the prisoner, but instead he took off the chain and treated Nur-ed-Din with kindness.
After forty days, El-Mo’in persuaded the sultan to have Nur-ed-Din beheaded. So the wezir and ten memluks came to the prison to fetch the condemned man. Kuteyt had given Nur-ed-Din some clean clothes, so Nur-ed-Din had to change to dirty clothes quickly so that El-Mo’in would not get angry at the jailer.
Meanwhile, the caliph had forgotten about Nur-ed-Din and Enis-el-Jelis until he happened to see Enis-el-Jelis in tears. After reminding the sultan who she was, Enis-el-Jelis expressed concern about Nur-ed-Din. Many days had passed, and she had no word from him. She also reminded the caliph that he had promised to send her to Nur-ed-Din with the honorary gift.
The caliph sent Ja’far to El-Basrah to see what was wrong. He arrived just in time to save Nur-ed-Din from decapitation. Ja’far arrested the sultan and El-Mo’in and enthroned Nur-ed-Din as sultan.
The event was celebrated for three days. Then Nur-ed-Din went to Baghdad to visit the caliph. Ja’far and a contrite El-Mo’in accompanied them.
In Baghdad, the caliph gave Nur-ed-Din a sword and told him to decapitate his enemy. El-Mo’in said: “I did according to my nature, and do thou according to thine.” Hearing these words, Nur-ed-Din knew that he could not kill the wezir, so he threw down the sword. At the caliph’s command, another man decapitated El-Mo’in.
The caliph then said to the young man: “Request of me what thou wilt.” Nur-ed-Din said he did not want the sovereignty of El-Basrah. He only wanted the honor of serving the caliph.
The caliph summoned Enis-el-Jelis. He gave the pair one of his palaces in Baghdad and gave them regular allowances. Nur-ed-Din became a table companion of the caliph for the rest of his life.
Reference:
“Tales from the Arabian Nights”; Maple Press