The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 06 (of 10)
General
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 06 (of 10)
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
Then he went out from her, after having commanded
to treat her with respect, and slept till morning, when he made the
Wuzu-ablution and prayed a two-bow prayer, after the rite of our father
Abraham the Friend (on whom be peace!), whilst the Ghul and his sons
and Gharib’s company all did the like after him. Then he turned to the
Ghul and said to him, “O Sa’adan, wilt thou not show me the Wady of
Blossoms?”[FN#341] “I will, O my lord,” answered he. So Gharib and his
company and Princess Fakhr Taj and her maidens all rose and went forth,
whilst Sa’adan commanded his slaves and slave-girls to slaughter and
cook and make ready the morning-meal and bring it to them among the
trees. For the Giant had an hundred and fifty handmaids and a thousand
chattels to pasture his camels and oxen and sheep. When they came to
the valley, they found it beautiful exceedingly and passing all degree;
and birds on tree sang joyously and the mocking-nightingale trilled out
her melody, and the cushat filled with her moan the mansions made by
the Deity,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say
her permitted say,
When it was the Six Hundred and Thirtieth Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when Gharib and
his merry men and the Giant and his tribe reached the Wady of Blossoms
they found birds flying free; the cushat filling with her moan the
mansions made by the Deity, the bulbul singing as if ’twere human
harmony and the merle whom to describe tongue faileth utterly; the
turtle, whose plaining maddens men for loveecstasy and the ringdove and
the popinjay answering her with fluency. There also were trees laden
with all manner of fruitery, of each two kinds,[FN#342] the
pomegranate, sweet and sour upon branches growing luxuriantly, the
almond-apricot,[FN#343] the camphor-apricot[FN#344] and the almond
Khorasan highs; the plum, with whose branches the boughs of the
myrobalan were entwined tight; the orange, as it were a cresses flaming
light, the shaddock weighed down with heavy freight; the lemon, that
cures lack of appetite, the citron against jaundice of sovereign might,
and the date, red and yellow-bright, the especial handiwork of Allah
the Most High. Of the like of this place saith the enamoured poet,
“When its birds in the lake make melody, * The lorn lover
yearneth its sight to see:
’Tis as Eden breathing a fragrant breeze, * With its shade and
fruits and rills flowing free.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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