The only reason for calling this Assembly after the city of Ṣûr (Tyre) seems to be that the Râwi, who perhaps in this case may be identified with Ḥarîri himself, wished to pay her a tribute of grate­ful remembrance for a period of exceptional prosperity, which he had passed there. The real scene of action is Cairo, whither he had journeyed from the former place under the impulse of a sudden fancy, and where he was indulging in a somewhat dissipated and indolent life of pleasure. While riding one day about the town, he encountered a gaily arrayed troop of horsemen, who, as he ascer­tained by inquiry, were on their road to witness a wedding-feast. Hoping to meet with an enjoyable pastime, he follows them to a distant mansion, which, although grand of appearance, is adorned in an odd manner with ragged clothes, and baskets such as beggars use for carrying the produce of their rounds. He asks an aged porter for the name of the owner of the building, and is in­formed that it has no particular master, but is the gathering-place of strolling people of every description, and on entering, he finds, that however poor and squalid the assembled may be indi­vidually, as a congregation or guild they know how to fare luxuri­ously when the occasion demands it. Presently the bridegroom appears in all his pomp, and a herald proclaims that the old and revered chief of the begging fraternity himself is about to solemnize the forthcoming marriage ceremony. The announced exalted personage steps forward and is respectfully greeted, and delivers a discourse, in which his earnest and impressive remarks on the duties of the rich towards the poor, and on the divine purpose in founding the institution of matrimony, form an amusing contrast to his description, at once high-flown and humorous, of the couple to be united in wedlock. After the ceremony is finished, the company repair, under his lead, to a richly dressed table, and Ḥârith is on the point of departing, when the old man calls to him reprovingly and bids him to stay. He swears that he would not do so, unless the other told him who he was, and is answered in some touching verses, in which the speaker exalts in glowing colours the beauties of his native town Serûj, and bitterly bewails his expulsion from it by ruthless enemies. Ḥârith now easily recognises Abû Zayd in spite of his disguise, and the change which old age has wrought in him, and passes the remainder of the day, as well as his evenings during his sojourn in Cairo, in his instructive and delightful company.

Al Ḥâreth son of Hammâm related: I fared from the city of Manṣûr [Bagdad] to the town Ṣûr [Tyre], and when I had become there the possessor of high rank and of affluence, and powerful to raise and to abase, I longed for Miṣr [Egypt and Cairo] with the longing of the sick for the physicians, and the generous for the bestowing of bounties. So I left behind me the attachments of stay, and shook off the impediments of travel, and, bestriding [a steed like] Ibnu’n-Na‘âmeh, I hastened towards her with the swiftness of the ostrich. Now when I had entered her, after sustaining hardships and being on the point of destruction, I was delighted thereat with the delight of one intoxicated by drinking morning draughts, and one dazzled by the break of morning brightness. And when I was one day loitering about, beneath me a steed of stately pace, I beheld on short-haired nags, a troop of men like the lamps of night. So I inquired for the sake of procuring me a pleasure-trip, about the troop and their destination, when I was told that the people were witnesses and their goal a wedding to be witnessed. Then the sprightliness of youth urged me to fare along with the foragers, so as to obtain a share in the sweets of the bridal scatterings and get some of the delicacies of the festive board. Presently we came, after enduring fatigue, to a mansion high of structure, wide of area, which testified to the builder’s wealth and exalted station. When we alighted from horse-back and put forward our steps to enter it, I saw its vestibules adorned with tattered garments, and gar­landed [coronated] with begging-baskets hung round, and there was an aged man sitting on a cloth of piled stuff, upon a handsome bench. Now the title-page of the book, and the sight of this strange furniture, made one doubtful, and the evil augury of these ill-omened objects induced me to accost that man on the seat, and I adjured him by the dispenser of destinies to let me know who was the lord of this mansion. Said he: “It has no distinct owner and no manifest master, it is but the inn of the importune beggars and low artisans, and the den of ballad-singers and rehearsers of the traditions.” Then I said within myself: “For Allah’s sake, out upon a fool’s errand, and the failure of my pasture,” and I intended to return at once, but then I considered my sudden departure and my going back without the others to be churlish. So I entered the house reluctantly, as one drinking choking draughts [lit. drinking draughts that make one choke], or as the sparrow enters the cage. Then, lo! there were in it richly adorned state-chairs, and spread carpets, and cushions laid in rows, and arrayed curtains. Presently stepped forth the bridegroom, swaggering in his burdah [mantle of striped stuff], and strutting like a lion in the midst of his attendants, and when he had sat down as though he were the son of Mâ’u’s-samâ’, there cried out a crier on the side of his relatives: “By the reverence due to Sâsân, grand-master of masters and pattern of sturdy beggars, none ties this knot on this day white of forehead and extremities, but he who has roved and roamed, who has been young and waxed old in adversity.” Then the company [kith] on the bride’s side were well pleased with that which yonder people [the bridegroom’s relations] had proclaimed with regard to the bringing in their presence the one indicated. Forthwith sallied forth an old man whose stature the days and nights had bent, whose Thaghâm* tree the morns and eves had decked with blossoms. Then the congregation rejoiced at his approach and hastened forward to welcome him, and when he had sat down on his carpet, and the turmoil of voices had subsided, he advanced to his cushion, and stroked his beard with his hand, whereupon he spoke: “Praise be to Allah, the foremost in munificence, the ever new in bestowing bounties, to whom we are brought near by supplication, on whom we are made to rely for the accomplishment of hopes, who has ordained the legal alms from every property, and sternly forbidden the refusal of suppli­cants, who has impressed on man to relieve the dis­tressed, and commanded to feed him that begs and him that refuses to beg; who has described His servants in His book, the manifest, when He spoke, and He is the most truthful of speakers: ‘Those who know well that the supplicant and the destitute have a claim on their riches.’—I praise Him for that which He has dispensed of wholesome food, and I take refuge with Him from hearing a prayer void of intention. And I testify there is no God but God, the One, without a partner to Him for a god, who requites the alms-giving men and women, who withdraws His blessing from usury, and rewards alms with lavish interest. Furthermore I attest, that Mohammed is His sincere servant, and His honoured Apostle. He sent him that he might efface the darkness by the light, and secure to the poor a share from the rich, and he compassioned, may God bless and hallow him, with the destitute, and lowered his wing to the lowly; he made obligatory the claims on the possessions of the wealthy, and made clear what is the due to those who have little on the part of those who have much.—May Allah bless him with a blessing that obtains for him proximity [to God’s throne], as well as the elected of the stone-bench [certain Com­panions of the Prophet].—But now, Allah, be He exalted, has made matrimony a law so that you may be chaste, and instituted propagation so that you may multiply, for He said so that you may know: ‘O ye men, we have created you from a male and female, and made you clans and tribes, so that you may recognise each other.’—Now this is Abû’d-darrâj Wallâj [in-goer], son of Kharrâj [out-goer], lord of the impudent face, and manifest mendacity, of yelping and shouting, of importunity and persistency in begging;—who woos the shrew of her people, fit mate of her husband, Qanbas [spit-fire], daughter of Abû ‘Anbas [frowning lion], for the sake of that which reached him of her being clad with pertinacity, and her excessiveness in stooping to beggary, and her quickness in grasping a livelihood, and her rising after a fall, along with her combativeness. And he has lavished upon her for a dowry a wallet and a ferruled stick, together with a kerchief and a pitcher. So marry him as one like him is to be married, and join your rope with his rope, and if you fear poverty or want [through increase of family], Allah will give you a sufficiency out of His bounty. Thus I say my say, craving forgiveness from Allah, the Mighty, for me and you, and praying that He may multiply your offspring in the beggar-dens, and guard all of you from dangers.”—Then, when the Shaykh had ended his discourse, and pressed upon the bride’s relatives her contract, there fell of scatterings a shower, that exceeded the limits of abundance, and would have made the miser to excel in liberality. Thereupon the Shaykh rose, trailing his skirts and preceding his rabble.—Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Then I followed him, so that I might see the array of the people, and complete the enjoyment of the day. Forth­with he turned with them to a table that its dressers had adorned, and whose every side equalled the other in beauty. And when each one had seated himself in his proper place and begun to cull freely in his garden, I slipped out of the row, and fled from the throng. But then it happened that a turn of the Shaykh’s face fell in my direction, and that a glance from his eye caught me unawares, when he said: “Whither, O thou curmudgeon? Dost thou not affect the company of him who is generous?”—Said I: “By Him, who created the heavens one above another, and permeated them with light, I will not taste a morsel, nor turn in my mouth a bit, unless thou tell me where is the sprawling-place of thy youth, and whence thy breeze is blowing.” Then he fetched a deep sigh, and shed tears in torrents, until he had exhausted their flow, and bid the company to be silent, when he said to me: “Lend me thy hearing:

“My birth-place was Serûj, and there I heaved lustily my billows,

A city where all is found, and gotten readily and in abundance.

Her waters spring from Salsabîl, her fields are pleasure-meads,

Her sons and her palaces, stars they are and sidereal mansions.

Hail her breeze of fragrancy, her aspect lovely to behold!

And the flowers of her hills, when the snows have melted away.

Who sees her says the haven of earthly Eden is Serûj.

To him who leaves her sighs are meted and smothered weeping,

Such as I have met, since the Barbarians drove me thence,

Tears that pour and bitter anguish, that, scarcely calmed, will rage afresh,

Day-long grief whose engrossing cares distract the mind.

How many struggles for hopefulness, short of step, frustrated!

Would that my fatal day had come, when I was fated to depart from her.”

When he had indicated his native town, and I had understood that which he had recited, I knew for a certainty that he was our most learned Abû Zayd, although old age had now shackled him. So I sallied forth to put my hand in his, and I reckoned it a booty to eat with him from his platters. And I continued the time of my stay in Cairo to resort nightly to his guest-fire, and to fill both my shells with the pearls of his utterances, until the raven of separation croaked between us, and I parted with him as the lid would part with the eye.