judgment and address, and the people loved her; so she appeased
the folk and promised them good. Then she called her son Zein ul
Asnam to her and said to him, "See, O my son; said I not to thee
that thou wouldest lose thy kingship and eke thy life, an thou
persistedst in this thine ignorance and folly, in that thou
givest the ordinance of the sultanate into the hands of raw
youths and eschewest the old and wastest thy substance and that
of the realm, squandering it all upon lewdness and the lust of
thy soul?"

Zein ul Asnam hearkened to his mother's rede and going out
forthright to the Divan, committed the manage of the realm into
the hands of certain old men of understanding and experience;
save that he did this only after Bassora had been ruined,
inasmuch as he turned not from his folly till he had spent and
squandered all the treasures of the sultanate and was become
exceeding poor. Then he betook himself to repentance and to
sorrowing over that which he had done, [FN#37] so that he lost the
solace of sleep and eschewed meat and drink, till one night of
the nights,--and indeed he had spent it in mourning and
lamentation and melancholy thought until the last of the night,--
his eyes closed for a little and there appeared to him in his
sleep a venerable old man, who said to him, "O Zein ul Asnam,
grieve not, for that nought followeth after grief save relief
from stress, and an thou desire to be delivered from this thine
affliction, arise and betake thee to Cairo, where thou wilt find
treasuries of wealth which shall stand thee in stead of that thou
hast squandered, ay, and twofold the sum thereof." When he awoke
from his sleep, he acquainted his mother with all that he had
seen in his dream, and she fell to laughing at him; but he said