Allah, were ye not the Emirs of the Moslems, I would not relate to you aught of this at any time; for I complain not but to Allah alone. However, to you I will relate the circumstances of my captivity. Know, then, that I was in the saintly City of Jerusalem with certain ecstatics and inspired men, and did not magnify myself among them, for that Allah (be He exalted and extolled!) had endowed me with humility and abnegation, till I chanced to go down to the sea one night and walked upon the water. Then entered into me pride; whence I know not, and I said to myself, 'Who like me can walk the water?' And my heart from that time hardened and Allah afflicted me with the love of travel. So I journeyed to Roum land and visited every part for a whole year, and left no place but therein I worshiped Allah. When I came to this spot,[FN#427] I clomb the mountain and saw there an hermitage, inhabited by a monk called Matrubina, who, when he sighted me, came out and kissed my hands and feet and said, 'Verily, I have seen thee since thou enteredst the land of the Greeks, and thou hast filled me with longing for the land of Al-Islam.' Then he took my hand and carried me into that hermitage, and brought me to a dark room; and, when I entered it unawares, he locked the door on me and left me there forty days, without meat or drink; for it was his intent to kill me by delay. It chanced one day, that a Knight called Dakianús[FN#428] came to the hermitage, accompanied by ten squires and his daughter Tamásil, a girl whose beauty was incom parable. When they entered that hermitage, the monk Matruhina told them of me, and the Knight said, 'Bring him out, for surely there is not on him a bird's meal of meat.' So they opened the door of the dark room and found me standing in the niche, praying and reciting the Koran and glorifying Allah and humbling myself before the Almighty. When they saw me in this state Matrohina exclaimed, 'This man is indeed a sorcerer of the sorcerers!'; and hearing his words, they all came in on me, Dakianus and his company withal, and they beat me with a grievous beating, till I desired death and reproached myself, saying, 'This is his reward who exalteth himself and who prideth himself on that which Allah hath vouchsafed to him, beyond his own competence! And thou, O my soul, verily self esteem and arrogance have crept into thee. Dost thou not know that pride angereth the Lord and hardeneth the heart and bringeth men to the Fire?' Then they laid me in fetters and returned me to my place which was the dungeon under ground. Every three days, they threw me down a scone of barley bread and a draught of water; and every month or two the Knight came to the hermitage. Now his daughter Tamasil had grown up, for she was nine years old when I first saw her, and fifteen years passed over me in captivity, so that she had reached her four and twentieth year. There is not in our land nor in the land of the