The Fourth Caliph is fabled to have travelled far, redressing the injured, punishing the injurer, preaching to the infidel, and especially protecting women—the chief end and aim of knighthood. The Caliph Al-Mu’tasim heard in the assembly of his courtiers that a woman of Sayyid family had been taken prisoner by a “Greek barbarian” of Ammoria. The man on one occasion struck her: when she cried “Help me, O Mu’tasim!” and the clown said derisively, “Wait till he cometh upon his pied steed!” The chivalrous prince arose, sealed up the wine-cup which he held in his hand, took oath to do his knightly devoir, and on the morrow started for Ammoria with seventy thousand men, each mounted on a piebald charger. Having taken the place, he entered it, exclaiming, “Labbayki, Labbayki!”—“Here am I at thy call!” He struck off the caitiff’s head, released the lady with his own hands, ordered the cupbearer to bring the sealed bowl, and drank from it, exclaiming, “Now, indeed, wine is good!” To conclude this part of the subject with another far-famed instance. When Al-Mutanabbi, the poet, prophet, and warrior of Hams (A.H. 354) started together with his [p.97] son on their last journey, the father proposed to seek a place of safety for the night. “Art thou the Mutanabbi,” exclaimed his slave, “who wrote these lines,— “‘I am known to the night, the wild, and the steed, To the guest, and the sword, to the paper and reed[FN#29]’?” The poet, in reply, lay down to sleep on Tigris’ bank, in a place haunted by thieves, and, disdaining flight, lost his life during the hours of darkness. It is the existence of this chivalry among the “Children of Antar” which makes the society of Badawin (“damned saints,” perchance, and “honourable villains,”) so delightful to the traveller who[,] like the late Haji Wali (Dr. Wallin), understands and is understood by them. Nothing more naïve than his lamentations at finding himself in the “loathsome company of Persians,” or among Arab townspeople, whose “filthy and cowardly minds” he contrasts with the “high and chivalrous spirit of the true Sons of the Desert.” Your guide will protect you with blade and spear, even against his kindred, and he expects you to do the same for him. You may give a man the lie, but you must lose no time in baring your sword. If involved in dispute with overwhelming numbers, you address some elder, Dakhil-ak ya Shaykh!—(I am) thy protected, O Sir,—and he will espouse your quarrel with greater heat and energy, indeed, than if it were his own.[FN#30] But why multiply instances? The language of love and war and all excitement is poetry, and here, again, the Badawi excels. Travellers complain that the wild men have ceased to sing. This is true if “poet” be limited to a few authors whose existence