Arabian Nights: 211th Night: Anis al Jalis, The Slave Girl - 11

The following night Shahrazad said:

I heard, O happy King, that Nur al-Din Ali slapped Anis al Jalis and said, "Damn you, see how I have brought you down to the market as I had sworn.  Go back home and see to it that you don't repeat your bad habits.

Woe to you, do I need the money by selling you? The furniture of my house would fetch many times of your value."

The vizier witnessed this scene, and he responded, "Damn you, have you anything left for a single dinar or dirham?" He advanced to hit Nur al-Din Ali. The latter turned to the merchants, brokers, shopkeepers and bystanders all of whom loved him, and said to them, "Were it not for you, I would have killed him."  They all responded with the same signal, meaning, "Do with him what you want.  None of us will step in between you.  Nur al-Din was a stout young man.  He seized the vizier, and pulling him off his saddle, threw him to the ground.  He fell into a mudhole, and his rival fell upon him, slapping him and boxing him, with blows, one of which landed on his teeth and filled his mouth with blood.

The vizier had with him ten Mamluks, who seeing their master ill-treated, grabbed the hills of their swords, and were about to draw them, and attack Nur al-Din Ali. But the merchants and bystanders interposed, and said to them, "One is a vizier and the other a vizier's son, and if they make peace tomorrow, you will stand to draw the hatred of both. It is wise, you do not interfere."

Nur al-Din Ali took Anis al Jalis, and went home.  The vizier got up in three colours: the white of his clothes, the black of mud, and the red of his blood.  He put a halter around his neck, held tufts of grass in each hand, and ran, and stopped below the wall of the palace of King Muhammad ibn-Sulaiman al-Zainabi, and cried out, "O King of the age, I am a man aggrieved,"  The King heard the cry.  He said, "Bring he the fellow who is shouting."  When they brought the man the King found that it was his vizier.  He asked him, O vizier, who has done this to you?"  The vizier wept before the king and recited the following verses:

Why badluck oppress me while you live?

Shall volves eat me while you stand.

Then he said, "My lord, all who care for your welfare and serve you fare

this way."  The king said, "Hurry, and tell me how this happened? Who mistreated you in this way? Your sanctity is my sanctity."

My lord, I went to the slave market today to buy a cook, and happened to see a slave girl, whose beauty is unsurpassed.  From the broker I came to understand that she belonged to Nur al-Din Ali ibn-Khaqan.  Some time ago, my lord, the king had given his father, the vizier ten thousand dinars to buy a girl for my lord, but when the father bought her, she pleased him, and he begrudged my lord, the king and gave it to her son.  When he died, his son sold everything until he had left nothing, and when he found himself penniless, he took her down to the market and gave her to a broker to sell.  The broker started auction, and the merchants bid against each other until the bidding reached four thousand dinars.  At that point I said to Nur al-Din Ali, "O my son, take the four thousand dinars from me and let me buy this slave girl for our lord the king, for he deserves her more than anyone else, since especially it was his money that had paid for her in the first instance.  When he heard this he looked at me and said......

But morning overtook and Shahrazad lapsed into silence.

Notes:-

1. Mamluk:- An enslaved non Arab, ethnically diverse highly trained soldiers