" When the Kurd heard my words, he wept and wailed
and said, "O my lord the Cadi, my bag is known and what is in it
is renowned; therein are castles and citadels and cranes and
beasts of prey and men playing chess and draughts. Moreover, in
this my bag is a brood-mare and two colts and a stallion and two
blood-horses and two long lances and a lion and two hares and a
city and two villages and a courtezan and two sharking pimps and
a catamite and two gallows-birds and a blind man and two dogs and
a cripple and two lameters and a priest and two deacons and a
patriarch and two monks and a Cadi and two assessors, who will
testify that the bag is my bag." Quoth the Cadi to me, "And what
sayst thou, O Ali?" So, O Commander of the Faithful, being filled
with rage, I came forward and said, "God keep our lord the Cadi!
I had in this my wallet a coat of mail and a broadsword and
armouries and a thousand fighting rams and a sheep-fold and a
thousand barking dogs and gardens and vines and flowers and sweet
herbs and figs and apples and pictures and statues and flagons
and goblets and fair-faced slave-girls and singing-women and
marriage-feasts and tumult and clamour and great tracts of land
and brothers of success[FN#153] and a company of daybreak-riders,
with swords and spears and bows and arrows, and true friends and
dear ones and intimates and comrades and men imprisoned for
punishment and cup-companions and a drum and flutes and flags and
banners and boys and girls and brides, in all their wedding
bravery, and singing-girls and five Abyssinian women and three
Hindi and four women of Medina and a score of Greek girls and
half a hundred Turkish and threescore and ten Persian girls and
fourscore Kurd and fourscore and ten Georgian women and Tigris
and Euphrates and a fowling net and a flint and steel and Many-
Columned Irem[FN#154] and a thousand rogues and pimps and horse-
courses and stables and mosques and baths and a builder and a
carpenter and a plank and a nail and a black slave, with a pair
of recorders, and a captain and a caravan-leader and towns and
cities and a hundred thousand dinars and Cufa and Ambar[FN#155]
and twenty chests full of stuffs and twenty store-houses for
victual and Gaza and Askalon and from Damietta to Essouan and the
palace of Kisra Anoushirwan[FN#156] and the kingdom of Solomon
and from Wadi Numan[FN#157] to the land of Khorassan and Balkh
and Ispahan and from India to the Soudan.
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