Yet many in after days looked back to those years as a kind of golden age. It was a period in which the later growth of Arabic literature was in full tide, that later literature which contrasted with the ancient Arabic poetry of the more strictly classical period, when both prose and poetry were manipulated mainly by men who were not Arabs by race, but obtained a greater technical skill than the earlier writers had achieved. To that later literature the negro ruler of Egypt showed himself a generous patron and his court was filled with poets, wits, and men of letters who were attracted to Egypt by the liberality of the black Maecenas. Like most of his race he was passionately fond of music; and the beautiful gardens which he laid out on the north of Fustat, gardens which the Fatimids incorporated in their royal city of Cairo, transmitted his name to succeeding generations. He was lavish in his expenditure,—the negro is always ostentatious,—and especially so on the daily provisions of his kitchen, but this was counted in his favour, for the Arabic tradition was that princes should dispense an open handed hospitality, and the Egyptians of ancient and modern times have had a strong inclination to appreciate feasting and the indulgence of the appetite. But most welcome of all to his table were poets and epigrammists, who rarely went away without some substantial rewards for their literary efforts. One poet was able to leave behind him a hundred suits of robes of honour, twice that number of vests, and five hundred turbans. Such literary courtiers naturally turned their genius to complimentary verses about their patron. One, playing upon his name Kafur or “camphro,” composed verses on the fragrant scented gardens which he had laid out, and which long stood for the ideal gardens in the Egyptian mind: another explained in verse how the shocks of earthquake had been caused by the Egyptians dancing for delight as they contemplated Kafur’s merits, an effusion which caused the delighted Ustad to throw him a purse containing a thousand dinars. Amongst his pensioners was the poet al-Mutanabbi, who had left the court of the Hamdanid Sayf ad-Dawla in anger at the smallness of his presents, and thought little of a prince who did not come up to his very high standard of generosity. At first Kafur used to smile graciously at him, but the poet wanted presents and not mere compliments. “When I went into Kafur’s presence,” he said, “with the intention of reciting verses to him, he always laughed at seeing me and smiled in my face, but when I repeated to him these lines:— ‘Since friendship has become a mere deception, I am repaid for my smiles with smiles; but when I choose a friend my mind misgives me, for I know he is but a man’: