“After some time the king laid his head upon the pillow of death and felt that his life had touched its end, and he said, ‘Do now before my eyes that which ye should do when I am dead, that I may see it.’ Then they laid the king upon his throne in the palace. And they scattered sifted dust below the castle and cut up strips of damask and strewed them with dust. And all the slave girls put on black and dishevelled their hair and scattered dust upon their heads and began to weep together, crying, ‘Alas! woe! alas!’ so that hearts were rent. Then came the vezirs, who likewise fell to weeping together and exclaiming, ‘Shall a king so just as this be found?’ After that they ordered that they brought a coffin with great reverence; then the three princes, when they saw the coffin, wept blood in place of tears and cried, ‘This is the horse our father rideth now!’ And they adorned it with jewels and placed upon it a jewel-set crown and held over it the royal parasol. “Then four great lords came and took hold of the frame of the coffin and bare it away. And before the coffin went the sheykhs singing chants and hymns. And the devotees held copies of the sacred volume before them; and great nobles and nobles’ sons marched in front. Before them were a hundred sweet-voiced dirge singers who wept and cried, ‘Ah! woe! alas!’ And from one side they scattered gold and silver and jewels on the coffin; and there were some 10,000 horsemen with golden saddles and broken stirrups and snapped bows. And behind these was an array of slave girls, all clad in black, whose wails and cries rose to the heavens. “When the king saw those things he sighed and ordered that they took him down from the throne; and he turned and said, ‘While yet alive I have seen my death.’ And he took a handful of earth and threw it on his head and said, ‘Earth, though this long sovereignty has been mine, I have done no righteous deed which will endure.’ And again, ‘O vezirs, I would that ye endow for me.’ Thereupon the vezirs wrote what amounted to 10,000 aspres a day; and they founded free kitchens and colleges, and they settled the revenues of certain towns and villages on the free kitchens. When the business of the endowments was finished, they brought the sections of the Koran, and to each section reader they gave five sequins; and to each of the devotees and dervishes they gave 500 sequins.[12] Then they brought the food, and all the plates were of gold or silver; and to all before whom they placed a dish they said, ‘Thine be food and plate.’ When the banquet too was finished they freed all the male and female slaves; and three days later the king departed for the Abiding Home.