“O my Lord, well I weet thy puissant hand: * Sulaymán would break thee and see thee bann’d. O my Lord, to crave succour here I stand * Command and I bow to thy high command!” Then I (continued the Ifrit addressing the Shaykh and those about him), of my ignorance and want of wit and recklessness of the commandment of Solomon and lack of knowledge anent his power, entered the belly of the idol and made answer as follows. “As for me, of him I feel naught affright, * For my lore and my wisdom are infinite: If he wish for warfare I’ll show him fight * And out of his body I’ll tear his sprite!” When the King heard my boastful reply, he hardened his heart and resolved to wage war upon the Prophet and to offer him battle; wherefore he beat the messenger with a grievous beating and returned a foul answer to Solomon, threatening him and saying, Of a truth, thy soul hath suggested to thee a vain thing; dost thou menace me with mendacious words? But gird thyself for battle; for, an thou come not to me, I will assuredly come to thee.’ So the messenger returned to Solomon and told him all that had passed and whatso had befallen him, which when the Prophet heard, he raged like Doomsday and addressed himself to the fray and levied armies of men and Jann and birds and reptiles. He commanded his Wazir Al-Dimiryát, King of the Jann, to gather together the Marids of the Jinn from all parts, and he collected for him six hundred thousand thousand of devils.[FN#123] Moreover, by his order, his Wazir Ásaf bin Barkhiyá levied him an army of men, to the number of a thousand thousand or more. These all he furnished with arms and armour and mounting, with his host, upon his carpet, took flight through air, while the beasts fared under him and the birds flew overhead, till he lighted down on the island of the refractory King and encompassed it about, filling earth with his hosts.—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say. When it was the Five Hundred and Seventy-first Night,