The caliph told him: ‘If you fail to make me laugh, I will give you three blows with this sack.’ Ibn al-Qaribi, thinking that the sack was empty, said to himself: ‘What are three blows with a sack in comparison with a whipping? It can’t harm me.’ He then started to tell jokes that would make an angry man laugh and he produced buffoonery of all sorts, but the caliph neither laughed nor smiled. Ibn al-Qaribi, who was taken aback by this, was both worried and apprehensive as the caliph said: ‘You have now earned your beating.’ He took the sack and struck Ibn al-Qaribi a single blow. The sack contained four stones, each weighing two ratls, and when the blow fell on Ibn al-Qaribi’s neck he let out a great cry. Then he remembered the agreement that he had made with Masrur and he called out: ‘Excuse me, Commander of the Faithful, and let me say a couple of words.’ ‘Say what you want,’ the caliph told him, and Ibn al-Qaribi explained: ‘I have agreed to an arrangement with Masrur by which I should keep one-third of anything that the caliph gives me while two-thirds go to him, and it was only after hard bargaining that he agreed to this. Now the only thing that you have given me is a beating. This first blow is my share and the two that are still to come are his, as I have had mine. Here he is standing in front of you, Commander of the Faithful, so give him his share.’ When Harun heard this he fell over laughing, and then, calling Masrur forward, he struck him once. Masrur cried out and said: ‘One-third is enough for me; let him have two-thirds.’
Morning now dawned and Shahrazad broke off from what she had been allowed to say. Then, when it was the four hundred and first night, SHE CONTINUED:
I have heard, O fortunate king, that Masrur cried out and said: ‘One-third is enough for me; let him have two-thirds.’ Harun laughed at them both and ordered each of them to be given a thousand dinars, after which they left, cheered by his generosity.
A story is told that the Commander of the Faithful Harun al-Rashid had a sixteen-year-old son who shunned worldly things and followed the path of asceticism and worship. He used to go out to cemeteries and say: ‘You used to rule the world, but that did not save you. You have gone to your graves, and I wish I knew what you said and what was said to you.’ He would then shed the tears of a fearful and grieving man and recite:
Funeral processions fill me with fear always,
And the tears of mourners sadden me.
It happened that one day he was passed by his father in his state procession, surrounded by his viziers, state dignitaries and officers. They saw the son of the Commander of the Faithful wearing a woollen jubba together with a headband of wool, and they said to one another: ‘This boy is putting the Commander of the Faithful to shame among the kings, and were his father to reprove him, he might give up this behaviour.’ The caliph heard what they said and he told the prince: ‘My little son, you have put me to shame by your way of life.’ The prince looked at him without saying a word, and then he looked up to a bird that was perched on one of the palace battlements. He said to it: ‘Bird, I conjure you by your Creator, fly down to my hand.’ The bird swooped down and the prince then told it: ‘Go back where you came from,’ and it flew off again. Next he told it to settle on the caliph’s hand, but it refused, and he said to his father: ‘It is you who have put me to shame among the saints of God through your love for this world. I have made up my mind to leave you, and it is only in the next world that I shall come back to you.’
He then went down to Basra, where he worked as a plasterer, and he would only accept as a day’s wage one dirham and one daniq, using the daniq to buy his food and giving away the dirham as alms. ABU ‘AMIR THE BASRAN SAID:
A wall had collapsed in my house, so I went to the place where the labourers collect in order to find someone to work on it. My eye fell on a handsome young man with a comely face and, going up to him, I greeted him and asked: ‘My friend, are you looking for work?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Then come with me to rebuild a wall,’ I said. He agreed to do this if I accepted his conditions, and when I asked what these were he said: ‘My wage is to be one dirham and one daniq, and when the muezzin calls to prayer, you are to allow me to pray in the congregational mosque.’ I agreed to this and took him back to my house, where he did better work than anyone I had ever seen. I offered him a morning meal but he refused it and I realized that he must be fasting. When the muezzin called to prayer, he reminded me of the condition to which I had agreed, and then undid his belt and prepared to perform the ritual ablution, which he carried out in a way that I had never seen bettered. Then he went off and prayed with the congregation in the mosque, after which he returned to his work. At the call to the afternoon prayer he again performed the ablution, went off to pray and came back to work. ‘Friend,’ I told him, ‘this is the end of the working day, for this is as long as labourers have to work.’ ‘God be praised,’ he exclaimed, ‘you employed me until nightfall!’ and he went on working until then. I gave him two dirhams, but he said: ‘What is this?’, and when I said: ‘By God, this is only part of what you deserve because of how hard you have worked,’ he threw them back at me and said: ‘I want no more than what we agreed on.’ I pressed him but failed to get him to agree and so I handed him one dirham and one daniq and off he went.
Early the next morning I went to where the labourers stood but failed to find him. So I asked about him and was told that he only came there on a Saturday. On the following Saturday I went to the place, and when I found him there I asked him to be good enough to come and work for me. ‘On the conditions that you know,’ he replied, and I agreed. I took him off to my house and stood watching him from where he could not see me. He would take a handful of clay and slap it on the wall, after which the stones would fit in with one another, leading me to exclaim: ‘These are the actions of God’s saints!’ He worked all day, doing even more than before, and at nightfall I paid him his wage, which he took and then left.
On the third Saturday I went to the usual place and, as I did not find him there, I asked about him and was told that he was lying ill in the hut of So-and-So, an old woman well known for her piety, who had a reed hut in the graveyard. I went there, and when I entered I found him stretched out on the bare ground with his head on a brick and his face shining with radiance. We exchanged greetings and I sat at his head, shedding tears for his youth, his absence from his home, and his perfect obedience to God’s commands. Then I asked if he needed anything and he said yes. ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Come before noon tomorrow,’ he said, ‘and you will find me dead. Wash my corpse and dig my grave without telling anyone. Use this jubba I am wearing for my shroud after you have ripped it open and looked in the pocket. You are to take out what you find in it and keep it with you. When you have prayed over me and covered me with earth, go to Baghdad. Wait there for the caliph Harun al-Rashid to come out of his palace and then give him what you discovered in my pocket together with my greetings.’ He then recited the confession of faith, praised God in the most eloquent of terms and recited these lines:
Take this from a dead man to al-Rashid,
And it will earn you a reward.
Tell him: ‘A stranger who has yearned for you,
Long parted from you, in his love answers your call.
It was not hate or boredom that drove him away;
To kiss your right hand brought him near to God.
He was parted from you, his father,
By a soul which kept from sharing in your worldly wealth.’
When he had finished his recitation, the dying man busied himself with imploring God’s pardon…
Morning now dawned and Shahrazad broke off from what she had been allowed to say. Then, when it was the four hundred and second night, SHE CONTINUED:
I have heard, O fortunate king, that the dying man busied himself with imploring God’s pardon, in calling down blessings and peace on the Prince of the righteous, and in repeating lines from the Quran. He then recited these lines:
Father, do not be duped by your prosperity;
Life ends and this pr
osperity will not endure.
When you learn that your people are distressed,
Know that responsibility for this is yours.
When you help carry a bier to the grave,
Know you yourself will soon be carried there.
ABU ‘AMIR SAID:
When the young man had finished giving me his instructions and reciting his verses, I left him and returned home. The next morning I went back and found that he had died, may God have mercy on him. I washed the corpse, tore open his jubba and found in its pocket a ruby that was worth thousands of dinars, at which I exclaimed in wonder at how abstemious the young man had been. When I had buried him, I set off for Baghdad, where I went to the palace and waited for Harun to come out. When he did, I went up to him in the street and handed over the ruby. He recognized it and fell down in a faint, at which his attendants seized me. When he recovered, he told them to let me go and to bring me to the palace with all courtesy. They did that and when Harun himself got back, he sent for me and brought me to his room, where he asked me what had happened to the owner of the jewel. I told him that the man was dead and described the circumstances of his death. Harun began to weep and say: ‘The son has profited, but the father’s hopes are dashed.’ He then called out the name of a certain woman, and she came out. When she saw me, she wanted to go back, but he told her to come forward and not to worry about me. So she entered and greeted him. He then passed her the jewel, and when she caught sight of it, she gave a great cry and fell down fainting. When she had recovered she said: ‘Commander of the Faithful, what has God done with my son?’ He was overcome by tears and told me to tell her what had happened, which I did. She began to weep, saying in a faint voice: ‘How I long to meet you, light of my eyes; would that I could have poured drink for you when you had no one else to do this, and would that I might have cheered you when you were without a friend.’
She then recited these lines through her tears:
I weep for a stranger who met a lonely end,
Having no friend with whom to share his suffering.
After his glory and the throngs surrounding him,
He turned outcast and solitary, seeing none.
It is clear to all what our days have in store;
None of us is left untouched by death.
Absent one, it was God Who decreed your absence;
You were far removed from me, although you had been near.
My son, death has removed all hopes that we might meet,
But Judgement Day will join us once again.
I asked: ‘Was this your son, Commander of the Faithful?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘and before I became caliph he used to visit men of learning and sit with the pious, but after that he began to avoid me and distance himself from me. I told his mother that, as he was devoted to the service of Almighty God, he might fall into difficulties and meet with hardship, and so I asked her to give this jewel to him to use in case of need. She passed it to him and insisted that he should take it, which he obediently did. He then left us to our worldly pursuits and stayed away until he met his God, Great and Glorious, as a pure and pious soul.’
Harun then told me to show him his son’s grave. We left Baghdad together and I travelled with him until I could show him the grave, where he began to weep and wail until he fell down fainting. When he had recovered, he asked for God’s pardon and repeated the formula: ‘We belong to God and to Him do we return,’ calling down blessings on the dead. He then asked me to become one of his companions, but I said: ‘Commander of the Faithful, your son has taught me the most solemn of lessons,’ and I recited these lines:
I am a stranger, taking shelter with no man;
I am a stranger even in my own land.
I am a stranger without kith or kin;
There is none here who seeks another’s shelter.
My own shelter is in the mosques and there I pass my days;
Never throughout all time will my heart abandon them.
Praise be to God, Lord of creation, for His bounty,
For He preserves the soul within the body.
A story is told that AN EMINENT MAN SAID:
I happened to pass by a schoolmaster while he was teaching the children in his school, and as I could see that he was of fine appearance and well dressed, I went up to him. He rose to greet me and made me sit with him, after which I had a discussion with him about the readings of the Quran, grammar, poetry and philology. I found him perfectly equipped to deal with any question put to him; I called down a blessing on him and I told him this to his face.
After that I spent some time in his company, and every day would reveal some new excellence of his. I said to myself that this was something remarkable in a teacher, as men of intelligence agree that schoolteachers are stupid. I then left him, but every few days I would come back to visit him to see how he was. One day, when I came to pay my usual visit, I found the school closed and when I asked his neighbours, they told me that he had suffered a bereavement. I thought that I should pay my condolences to him and so I went and knocked on his door. A slave girl came out and asked what I wanted, and I told her that I wanted a word with her master. She said that her master was sitting alone and mourning, so I replied: ‘Tell him that his friend So-and-So wants to pay his condolences to him.’ She went off and when he had been told, he said: ‘Let him come in.’ She allowed me in and when I entered I found him sitting alone with a mourning band around his head. ‘May God increase your reward,’ I said, adding: ‘This is a path we all have to tread, so you must show patience.’ I then asked him which of his acquaintances had died, and he answered: ‘The dearest and most beloved of all to me.’ ‘Do you mean your father?’ I asked, and when he replied no I said: ‘Perhaps it was your mother?’ He said no to this, and no again when I asked whether it was his brother or one of his relatives, so I asked what his relationship was to the dead. ‘This was my beloved,’ he replied, and I said to myself that this was the first sign of a lack of intelligence on his part. ‘You may find another, and one even more beautiful,’ I suggested, to which he replied: ‘I never saw her, so I could not judge whether another would be more beautiful or not.’ ‘This is the second sign,’ I told myself, and then I asked: ‘How did you fall in love with someone whom you had never seen?’ He said: ‘I was sitting at the window one day when a man passed by on the road singing this line:
Umm ‘Amr, God reward your noble qualities,
Return my heart, wherever it may be.’
Morning now dawned and Shahrazad broke off from what she had been allowed to say. Then, when it was the four hundred and third night, SHE CONTINUED:
I have heard, O fortunate king, that the man sang these lines on the road. The schoolmaster explained: ‘When I heard this I said to myself that, were Umm ‘Amr not without an equal in the world, poets would not write love songs about her, and so I fell in love with her. Two days later, however, the same man passed singing this line:
The donkey left with Umm ‘Amr;
She never came back, and neither did the donkey.
I realized then that she had died. I grieved for her and have spent three days in mourning.’
The narrator continued: ‘I left him and went away, having established that he was a fool.’
A story told about the stupidity of schoolmasters is that one of them was visited in his school by a witty man who, in the course of a discussion with him, discovered him to have a knowledge of jurisprudence, grammar, philology and poetry, and to be cultured, sensible and refined. This surprised him as he held that teachers in schools were never wholly intelligent. When he was on the point of leaving, the teacher invited him to spend the night at his house. He accepted the invitation and they went together to the house, where his host treated him with courtesy and provided a meal for him. They ate and drank and then sat talking until the first third of the night had passed, after which the host provided a bed for his guest and went off himself to his harem.
The guest was on the point
of going to sleep when suddenly there was a loud outcry in the harem. He asked what the matter was and was told that the teacher had suffered a dreadful accident and was at death’s door. ‘Let me see him,’ the guest said and, when he was brought in, he found the man unconscious, with blood streaming from him. He poured water over the teacher’s face and, when he had recovered, his guest asked what had happened, saying: ‘When you left me you were in excellent form and perfectly healthy, so what went wrong?’ ‘My brother,’ the man answered, ‘after I left you I sat thinking about the works of Almighty God, and I said to myself: “Everything that God has created for man serves a useful purpose. He has made hands to apply force, feet for walking, eyes for seeing, ears for hearing, the penis for copulation and so forth and so on. These two testicles, however, serve no useful purpose for me.” So I took a razor that I had by me and cut them off, and this is what happened to me.’
The guest left, saying: ‘Those who say that no schoolmaster is fully intelligent are right, even if the latter know all that there is to know.’
The story is told that one of the hangers-on at a mosque could neither read nor write but used to make his living by trickery. One day, it occurred to him to open a school and teach children to read. He collected and hung up slates and sheets of paper with writing on them, put on a huge turban and sat at the school door. The passers-by, looking at the turban and at the slates and papers, thought that he must be a good teacher and so they brought him their children. He would tell one of them to read and another to write, and the children would teach one another.
One day, while he was sitting at the door of the school, he saw in the distance a woman approaching with a letter in her hand and he thought to himself that she must be coming to ask him to read it. He wondered how to deal with her, seeing that he was unable to read, and he thought of leaving to escape from her, but she caught up with him before he could get away and asked him where he was going. He told her that he was going to perform the midday prayer before coming back. ‘It’s a long time till midday,’ she said, ‘so read me this letter.’ He took it from her and turned it upside down. As he stared at it, at times his turban would shake and at others his eyebrows would quiver and he appeared to be angry. The woman’s husband was away from home and it was from him that the letter had come. When she saw how it had affected the teacher, she said to herself: ‘My husband must be dead and this teacher is too embarrassed to tell me,’ so she said: ‘Sir, if he is dead, tell me.’ He shook his head and said nothing, so she asked him: ‘Should I tear my clothes?’ ‘Tear them,’ he replied and when she said: ‘Should I slap my face?’ he told her to do that.
The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights: Volume 2 Page 28