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Noureddin foregathered with his father and mother, they rejoiced in each other with the utmost joy and care and affliction ceased from them, whilst his parents rejoiced no less in the Princess Meryem and entreated her with the utmost honour. Every day, there came to them presents from all the amirs and great merchants, and they were daily in new delight and gladness exceeding the gladness of festival. Then they abode in joy and pleasance and good cheer and abounding prosperity, eating and drinking and making merry, till there came to them the Destroyer of Delights and Sunderer of Companies, he who layeth waste houses and palaces and peopleth the bellies of the tombs. So they were removed from the world and became of the number of the dead; and glory be to the Living One, who dieth not and in whose hand are the keys of the Seen and the Unseen!
THE MAN OF UPPER EGYPT AND HIS FRANK WIFE.
(Quoth the Amir Shijaeddin, Prefect of New Cairo) We lay one night in the house of a man of Upper Egypt, and he entertained us and entreated us with the utmost hospitality. Now he was an old man, exceeding swarthy of favour, and he had little children, who were white, of a white mingled with red. So we said to him, ‘Harkye, such an one, how comes it that these thy children are white, whilst thou thyself art exceeding swarthy?’ Quoth he, ‘Their mother was a Frank woman, whom I took in the days of El Melik en Nasir Selaheddin,[1] after the battle
- ↑ i.e. Saladin. See note, Vol. IV. p. 116.
