But it was in the time of the Abbasside Caliphs that the Arabian sensitiveness to beauty obtained its supremest gratifications and that the luxury of loveliness reached such an extreme as the Greek world never knew. The demand for beautiful slaves brought to light human marvels who would certainly have been well worthy to serve as models to Praxiteles or Lysippus,--creatures so beautiful that there seems to be good reason to believe the historians who declare that many who saw them died of love. Islam had a surplus of slaves, yet the pearls of its harems were paid for with the price of a province. The age when a Caliph could expend upon his marriage festivities the enormous sum of 50,000,000 dinars--about $140,000,000--was naturally the era of splendid slavery and of the insolence of beauty. Abou ibn Atik, one of the handsomest men of his era, and possessed of a most beautiful wife whom he dearly loved, says (writing in the far earlier days of Abd-el-Melik) that he saw slaves so beautiful that on seeing them he felt 'as one in hell who should behold hopelessly the delights of Paradise.' But those girls were certainly not to be compared with the beauties of the court of Haroun or El Mamoun, for whom the whole eastern world had been searched. The proudest of Greek sculptors would scarcely have ventured to chisel upon the pedestal of his masterpiece: 'THIS IS THE SUPREME BEAUTY.' But the possessors of splendid girls did not hesitate to place upon their human statues inscriptions to the effect: 'THIS IS THE MASTERPIECE OR GOD.' Nothing can give a better idea of the extravagant luxury of the age than the translation of inscriptions graven upon fillets worn by these girls, or upon their girdles, or upon their fans. 'Behind Haroun El Rashid,' says the poet, Abou'l Hassam, 'I saw girl slaves standing so beautiful that they seemed like magnificent statues. Fillets inlaid with rubies and with pearls clasped their smooth brows; and to these were attached thin plates of gold bearing Arab verses inscribed. One of these bore the words:-- Cruel one, thou hast disdained my love!--oh, God will judge between us! On another:-- What doth it avail me to cast at thee the shafts of my gaze--they do not reach thee. Thou hast shot thine at me, and they have smitten me,--cruel that thou art. A third bore the inscription:-- To submit one's cheek to the touch of love is to make oneself greater. But these three pale into commonplaceness before the magnificent insolence of the fourth:-- I am a deserter from the houris of Paradise; I have been created to make trouble in the hearts of those who gaze upon me. Worthy to compare with the above is the following which El-Asmai saw graven upon the fillets of beautiful slaves in Haroun's palace:-- We are young and bewitching beauties from the fields of Paradise. God hath lavished his gifts upon us; in us there is naught to reproach.