furniture such as carpets and costly vessels and all manner other
precious things, whose like is not found with Kings. Moreover,
he purchased houses and gardens and estates and so forth and
abode with his wife and his children and his mother, eating and
drinking and pleasuring: nor did they cease from all joy of life
and its solace till there came to them the Destroyer of delights
and the Severer of societies. And Glory be to Him who hath
dominion over the Seen and the Unseen,[FN#185] who is the Living,
the Eternal, Who dieth not at all! And men also recount the
adventures of




Khalifah the Fisherman of Baghdad



There was once in tides of yore and in ages and times long gone
before, in the city of Baghdad, a fisherman, Khalifah hight, a
pauper wight, who had never once been married in all his days.
[FN#186] It chanced one morning, that he took his net and went
with it to the river, as was his wont, with the view of fishing
before the others came. When he reached the bank, he girt
himself and tucked up his skirts; then stepping into the water,
he spread his net and cast it a first cast and a second but it
brought up naught. He ceased not to throw it, till he had made
ten casts, and still naught came up therein; wherefore his breast
was straitened and his mind perplexed concerning his case and he
said, "I crave pardon of God the Great, there is no god but He,