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Paradise and the soft breathings of the zephyr. Mind and eye were confounded with its beauty, even as says the poet:
Look on the verdant smiling mead, with flowers and herbs beseen, As ’twere the Spring thereon had spread a mantle all of green.
If thou behold it with the eye of sense alone, thou’lt see Nought but as ’twere a lake wherein the water waves, I ween:
But with thy mind’s eye look; thou’lt see a glory in the trees And lo’ amidst the boughs above, the waving banners’ sheen!
Or as another says:
The river’s a cheek that the sun has rosy made; For ringlets it borrows the cassia’s creeping shade.
The water makes anklets of silver about the legs Of the boughs, and the flowers for crowns o’er all are laid.
When Zoulmekan saw this champaign, with its thick-leaved trees and its blooming flowers and warbling birds, he turned to his brother Sherkan and said to him, “O my brother, verily Damascus hath not in it the like of this place. We will abide here three days, that we may rest ourselves and that the troops may regain strength and their souls be fortified to encounter the accursed infidels.” So they halted and pitched their camp there. Presently, they heard a noise of voices afar, and Zoulmekan enquiring the cause thereof, was told that a caravan of Syrian merchants had halted there to rest and that the Muslim troops had come on them and had haply seized some of their goods, that they had brought from the country of the infidels. After awhile, up came the merchants, crying out and appealing to the King for redress. So Zoulmekan bade bring them before him, and they said to him, “O King, we have been in the country of the infidels and they spoiled us of nothing: why then do our brothers the Muslims despoil us of our goods, and that in their own country? When we saw your troops, we went up to them, thinking
