In the beginning of the year of the Flight 305 (A.D. 917), two ambassadors from the Greek Emperor (Constantine VII., Porphyrogenitus) arrived in Baghdád on a mission to the Khaleefeh El-Muḳtedir, bringing an abundance of costly presents. They were first received by the Wezeer, who, at the audience which he granted to them in his garden palace, displayed a degree of magnificence that had never before been manifested by any of his rank. Pages, memlooks, and soldiers crowded the avenues and courts of his mansion, the apartments of which were hung with tapestry of the value of thirty thousand deenárs; and the Wezeer himself was surrounded by generals and other officers on his right and left and behind his seat, when the two ambassadors approached him, dazzled by the splendour that surrounded them, to beg for an interview with the Khaleefeh. El-Muḳtedir, having appointed a day on which he would receive them, ordered that the courts and passages and avenues of his palace should be filled with armed men, and that all the apartments should be furnished with the utmost magnificence. A hundred and sixty thousand armed soldiers were arranged in ranks in the approach to the palace; next to these were the pages of the closets and chief eunuchs, clad in silk and with belts set with jewels, in number seven thousand,--four thousand white and three thousand black,--besides seven hundred chamberlains; and beautifully ornamented boats of various kinds were seen floating upon the Tigris hard by.