the brokers, with a slave-girl, whose like seers never saw, for
she was of passing beauty and loveliness, symmetry and perfect
grace, and among her gifts was that she knew all arts and
sciences and could make verses and play upon all manner musical
instruments. So Ibn al-Kirnas bought her for five thousand
golden dinars and clothed her with other thousand; after which he
carried her to the Prince of True Believers, with whom she lay
the night and who made trial of her in every kind of knowledge
and accomplishment and found her versed in all sorts of arts and
sciences, having no equal in her time. Her name was Kut al-Kulub
[FN#216] and she was even as saith the poet,

"I fix my glance on her, whene'er she wends; * And non-acceptance
of my glance breeds pain:
She favours graceful-necked gazelle at gaze; * And 'Graceful as
gazelle' to say we're fain."

And where is this [FN#217] beside the saying of another?

"Give me brunettes; the Syrian spears, so limber and so straight,
Tell of the slender dusky maids, so lithe and proud of gait.
Languid of eyelids, with a down like silk upon her cheek, Within
her wasting lover's heart she queens it still in state."

On the morrow the Caliph sent for Ibn al-Kirnas the Jeweller, and
bade him receive ten thousand dinars as to her price. And his
heart was taken up with the slave-girl Kut al-Kulub and he
forsook the Lady Zubaydah bint al-Kasim, for all she was the
daughter of his father's brother [FN#218] and he abandoned all
his favorite concubines and abode a whole month without stirring