"The woman answered: 'Nothing but water. I put it in the kettle so that the children should imagine that I was cooking rice--perhaps, then, they would go to sleep and stop crying so loudly.' "As soon as Omar had heard these words he returned promptly to the city of Medina. Arriving at a shop where they sold flour, he bought some and put it into a sack. In another shop he bought some meat. Then lifting the sack to his shoulders he carried it out of the city. I said to him: "'O prince of the believers, give me this sack, that I may carry it for you.' "'If you bear the weight of this sack,' said his glorious Majesty to me, 'who will bear the weight of my fault, and who will clear me from the prayer of this woman in the affliction of her heart when she complained to the Lord of my negligence?' "Omar, having said these words, continued to walk in tears until he had come near the woman and her children. Then he gave her the flour and the meat, and they ate till their hunger was appeased. The woman with a satisfied heart cried: "'May God the most high hear my prayer and render you benefits, since you are so full of compassion for the servants of God and are so much better than Omar.' "The Caliph said to her, 'O woman, blame not Omar, for he knew not how you fared.'" There was once a king in the country of Syria named Malik-es-Saleh, very pious and just, and continually preoccupied with the state of his subjects. They say that every night he went to the mosque, cemeteries, and other solitary places, in search of strangers, fakirs, and poor people who had neither home nor family. One night, arriving near a mosque, he heard the voice of a man inside the edifice. He entered and saw a fakir there. He could not see him distinctly, because he was covered with a mat. But he heard him, and this is what he said: "O Lord, if on the judgment-day thou shalt give a place in heaven to kings who are forgetful of the fakirs and the poor, then, O Lord, grant that I may not enter there." Malik-es-Saleh, hearing these words, shed tears. He placed a piece of stuff before the fakir with 100 tahil of silver, and said to him: "O fakir, I have learned from the glorious prophet (may peace be with him!) that fakirs become kings in heaven, after a life of self- sacrifice on earth. Since I am King in this perishable world, I come to you with the weakness of my nature and baseness of my being. I ask you to be at peace with me, and to show yourself compassionate to me when the moment of your glory in heaven shall have arrived." When the Sultan Zayad sat upon the royal throne of Ikak, the country was infested with malefactors, brigands, robbers, assassins, and the like. The compounds were destroyed, the houses pillaged, and the people killed. The inhabitants could not sleep a single night in quiet, nor pass a single day in safety at home. A crowd of people came with their complaints to the Sultan Zayad, saying: