When his father saw the strength of his determination to travel,
he fell in with his wishes and equipped him with five thousand
dinars in cash and the like in merchandise and sent with him two
serving-men. So the youth set out, trusting in the blessing of
God the Most High, and his father went out with him, to take
leave of him, and returned [to Damascus]. As for Noureddin Ali,
he gave not over travelling days and nights till he entered the
city of Baghdad and laying up his loads in the caravanserai, made
for the bath, where he did away that which was upon him of the
dirt of the road and putting off his travelling clothes, donned a
costly suit of Yemen stuff, worth an hundred dinars. Then he put
in his sleeve[FN#6] a thousand mithcals[FN#7] of gold and sallied
forth a-walking and swaying gracefully as he went. His gait
confounded all those who beheld him, as he shamed the branches
with his shape and belittled the rose with the redness of his
cheeks and his black eyes of Babylonian witchcraft; indeed, thou
wouldst deem that whoso looked on him would surely be preserved
from calamity; [for he was] even as saith of him one of his
describers in the following verses:

Thy haters say and those who malice to thee bear A true word,
profiting its hearers everywhere;
"The glory's not in those whom raiment rich makes fair, But those
who still adorn the raiment that they wear."

So he went walking in the thoroughfares of the city and viewing
its ordinance and its markets and thoroughfares and gazing on its
folk. Presently, Abou Nuwas met him. (Now he was of those of whom
it is said, "They love the fair,"[FN#8] and indeed there is said