The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 03 (of 10)
General
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 03 (of 10)
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the Prince
Kamar al-Zaman had prayed (conjoining them in one) the prayers of
sundown and nightfall, he sat down on the well and began reciting the
Koran, and he repeated "The Cow," the "House of Imrán," and "Y. S.;"
"The Compassionate," "Blessed be the King," "Unity" and "The two
Talismans''[FN#237]; and he ended with blessing and supplication and
with saying, "I seek refuge with Allah from Satan the stoned."[FN#238]
Then he lay down upon his couch which was covered with a mattress of
satin from al- Ma'adin town, the same on both sides and stuffed with
the raw silk of Irak; and under his head was a pillow filled with
ostrich-down And when ready for sleep, he doffed his outer clothes and
drew off his bag-trousers and lay down in a shirt of delicate stuff
smooth as wax; and he donned a head-kerchief of azure Marázi[FN#239]
cloth; and at such time and on this guise Kamar al-Zaman was like the
full-orbed moon, when it riseth on its fourteenth night. Then, drawing
over his head a coverlet of silk, he fell asleep with the lanthorn
burning at his feet and the wax-candle over his head, and he ceased not
sleeping through the first third of the night, not knowing what lurked
for him in the womb of the Future, and what the Omniscient had decreed
for him. Now, as Fate and Fortune would have it, both tower and saloon
were old and had been many years deserted; and there was therein a
Roman well inhabited by a Jinniyah of the seed of Iblis[FN#240] the
Accursed, by name Maymúnah, daughter of Al- Dimiryát, a renowned King
of the Jánn.—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying
her permitted say.
When it was the One Hundred and Seventy-seventh Night,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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