"While Obaid Allah ibn el-Mahdi was ruling in Egypt," he relates, "he sent a beautiful young Koptic slave to his brother, the caliph, as a gift. The Egyptian odalisk so charmed the caliph that he fell violently in love with her. Suddenly, however, the favourite was laid prostrate by a malady which the court physicians could neither cure nor even diagnose. The girl insisted that, being Egyptian, only an Egyptian physician could cure her. The caliph instantly ordered his brother to send post haste the most skilful doctor in Egypt. This proved to be the Melchite patriarch, for in those days Koptic priests practised medicine and cultivated other sciences. The patriarch set out for Baghdad, restored the favourite to health, and in reward received from the caliph an imperial diploma, which restored to the orthodox Christians or Melchites all those privileges of which they had been deprived by the Jacobite heretics since their union with the conqueror Amr ibn el-Asi." If this story be true, one cannot but perceive the plot skilfully laid and carried out by the powerful clergy, to whom any means, even the sending of a concubine to the caliph, seemed legitimate to procure the restoration of their supremacy and the humiliation of their adversaries. [Illustration: 349.jpg A VEILED BEAUTY] The year 204 of the Hegira was memorable for the death of the Iman Muhammed ibn Idris, surnamed esh-Shafi. This celebrated doctor was the founder of one of the four orthodox sects which recognised the Moslem religion, and whose followers take the name "Shafites" from their chief. The Iman esh-Shafi died at Fostat when but forty-three years old. His dogmas are more especially followed in Egypt, where his sect is still represented and presided over by one of the four Imans at the head of the famous Mosque Jam el-Azar, or mosque of flowers. The distance of Egypt from Baghdad, the caliph's capital, was the cause of the neglect of many of his commands, and upon more than one occasion was his authority slighted. Thus it happened that for more than five years the government of Egypt was in the hands of Abd Allah ibn es-Sari, whom the soldiers elected, but whose appointment was never confirmed by the caliph. Abd Allah ibn Tahir, the son of the successful general, had, in the year a.h. 210, settled at Belbeys in Egypt. With a large number of partisans, he assumed almost regal privileges. In 211 a.h. he proceeded to Fostat and there dismissed Abd Allah ibn es-Sari and replaced him by Ayad ibn Ibrahim, whom he also dismissed the following year, giving the governorship to Isa ibn Yazid, surnamed el-Jalud. In the year 213, the Caliph el-Mamun ordered Abd Allah ibn Tahir to retire, and confided the government of Egypt and also that of Syria to his own brother el-Mutasim, third son of the Caliph Ilarun er-Rashid.