In this Assembly Abû Zayd is found making gain by his usual questionable arts. At Raḥbah, on the Euphrates, Ḥârith beholds a crowd following an elderly man who is dragging along a hand­some youth. The former accuses the boy of having killed his son, and it is agreed to go before the Governor. The purpose of the elder, who proves in the end to be Abû Zayd, is simply to induce the Governor to buy off so handsome a youth from punishment, with the view of taking him into his own household. When they are in court the old man makes his charge, and as he has no witnesses the boy is allowed to clear himself by an oath. But the old man dictates an oath in which he enumerates all the beauties of the boy, and invokes destruction on them if truth be not spoken. The boy refuses to swear by such an oath; and the Governor, who desires to take him out of the power of the old man, then makes up a purse to satisfy the prosecutor. A hundred denars are promised; but as the whole cannot be collected at once the old man says that he will not give up the boy, but will watch him all night. The Governor consents, and soon the two are left together in the courtyard. Ḥârith then accosts Abû Zayd, and asks who is the boy. Abû Zayd replies, that he is his son, and his assistant in his tricks; and that they intend to make their escape early in the morning, and leave the Governor to his disappointment. This they do, and before setting forth Abû Zayd delivers to Ḥârith a sealed paper to be presented to the out­witted magistrate. Ḥârith, dreading to present it, opens it and finds it to contain a copy of satirical verses on the Governor. He tears the paper to pieces, regardless of his promise to his friend. This Assembly is exceedingly elaborate in its diction, and the terms of the oath dictated by Abû Zayd have much poetical beauty. It has been imitated with great felicity by Rückert, whose version has almost the spirit of the original.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related:—The summon­ing of desire called me to Raḥbah, the city of Mâlik, son of Ṭowḳ,—And I obeyed it, mounted on a fleet camel, and unsheathing an active purpose.—Now when I had cast my anchors there, and fastened my ropes, and had gone forth from the bath after shaving my head,—I saw a boy cast in the mould of comeliness, and clothed by beauty in the garb of perfection;—And an old man was holding on to his sleeve, asserting that he had slain his son;—But the boy denied knowledge of him and was horror-struck at his suspicion;—And the contention between them scattered its sparks, and the crowding upon them was made up of good and bad.—Now after their quarrelling had been excessive, they agreed to refer to the Governor of the town;— So they hastened to his court with the speed of Sulayk in his career;—And when they were there the old man renewed his charge and claimed help.—So the Governor made the boy speak, for the boy had already fascinated him by the graces of his bright brow, and cloven his understanding by the disposition of his forelocks.—And the boy said, “It is the lie of a great liar against one who is no blood-shedder, and the slander of a knave against one who is not an assassin.—Then said the Governor to the old man, “If two just Moslems testify for thee, well; if not, demand of him the oath.”—Said the old man, “Surely he struck him down remote from men, and shed his blood when alone;—And how can I have a witness, when on the spot there was no beholder?—But empower me to dictate an oath that it may appear to thee whether he speaks true or lies.”— He said to him, “Thou hast authority for that; thou with thy vehement grief for thy slain son.”—Then said the old man to the boy: Say, I swear by Him who hath adorned foreheads with forelocks, and eyes with their black and white, and eyebrows with separation, and smiling teeth with regularity, and eyelids with languor, and noses with straightness, and cheeks with flame, and mouths with purity, and fingers with softness, and waists with slenderness, that I have not killed thy son by negligence, nor of wilfulness, nor made his head a sheath to my sword;—If it be otherwise, may God strike my eyelid with soreness, and my cheek with freckles, and my forelocks with dropping, and my palm shoot with greenness, and my rose with the ox-eye, and my musk with a foul steam, and my full moon with waning, and my silver with tarnishing, and my rays with the dark.

Then said the boy, “The scorching of affliction be my lot rather than to take such an oath! let me yield to vengeance rather than swear as no one has ever sworn!”—But the old man would nought but make him swallow the oath which he had framed for him, and the draughts which he had bittered.—And the dispute ceased not to blaze between them, and the road of concord to be rugged.—Now the boy, while thus resisting, captivated the Governor by his motions, and made him covet that he should belong to him; until love subdued his heart and fixed in his breast;—And the passion which enslaved him, and the desire which he had imagined tempted him to liberate the boy and then get possession of him, to free him from the noose of the old man, and then catch him himself.—So he said to the old man, “Hast thou a mind for that which is more seemly in the stronger and nearer to god-fearing?”—He said, “Whither art thou pointing that I should follow and not delay?”—He said, “I think it well that thou cease from altercation and be content with a hundred denars.—On condition that I take on myself part of it, and collect the rest as may be.”—Said the old man, “I refuse not; but let there be no failure to thy promise.”—Then the Governor paid him down twenty and assigned among his attendants the making up of fifty.—But the robe of evening grew dim, and from this cause the rain of collection was cut short. —Then he said, “Take what is ready and leave disput­ing; and on me be it to-morrow to accomplish that the rest be doled to thee and reach thee.”—Said the old man, “I will do this on the condition that I keep close to him to-night, that the pupil of my eye guard him,— Until when on the dawning of the morn he has made up what remains of the sum of reconciliation,—Shell may get clear of chick, and he may go guiltless as the wolf went guiltless of the blood of the son of Jacob.”— Then said to him the Governor, “I think that thou dost not impose what is immoderate or ask what is excessive.”

Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Now when I perceived that the pleadings of the old man were as the pleadings of Ibn Surayj, I knew him to be the Glory of the Serûjis:—And I delayed until the stars of the darkness glittered, and the knots of the crowd dis­persed:—And then I sought the Governor’s court-yard; and lo! the old man guarding the youth.—And I adjured him by God to say whether he was Abû Zayd: he said, “Yes, by Him who hath permitted the chase.”— I said, “Who is this boy, after whom the understanding darts?”—He said, “In kin he is my chick, and in making gain my springe.”—I said, “Wilt thou not be satisfied with the graces of his make, and spare the Governor temptation by his forelock.”—He said, “Were it not that his forehead put forth its ringlets, I should not have snatched the fifty.”—Then he said, “Pass the night near me that we may quench the fire of grief, and give enjoyment its turn after separation.—For I have resolved to slip away at dawn, and to burn the Governor’s heart with the flame of regret.”—Said Al Ḥârith, Then I spent the night with him in conversation more pleasant than a garden of flowers, or a woodland of trees:—Until when the Wolf’s Tail lighted the horizon, and the brightening of the day-break came on in its time, —He mounted the back of the highway, and left the Governor to taste burning torment.—And he committed to me, in the hour of his departure a paper firmly closed,—And said, “Hand it to the Governor when he has been bereft of composure, when he has convinced himself of our flight.”—But I broke the seal as one who would free himself from a letter of Mutelemmis, and behold there was written in it:

Tell the Governor whom I have left, after my departure, repenting, grieving, biting his hands,

That the old man has stolen his money and the young one his heart; and he is scorched in the flame of a double regret.

He was generous with his coin () when love blinded his eye (), and he has ended with losing either .

Calm thy grief, O afflicted, for it profits not to seek the traces after the substance is gone.

But if what has befallen thee is terrible to thee as the ill-fate of Al Ḥosayn is terrible to the Moslems;

Yet hast thou gotten in exchange for it understanding and cau­tion; and the wise man, the prudent, wishes for these.

So henceforth resist desires, and know that the chasing of gazelles is not easy;

No, nor does every bird enter the springe, even though it be sur­rounded by silver.

And how many a one who seeks to make a prey becomes a prey himself, and meets with nought but the shoes of Ḥonayn!

Now consider well, and forecast not every thundercloud: many a thundercloud may have in it the bolts of death:

And cast down thine eye, that thou mayest rest from a passion by which thou wouldest clothe thyself with the garment of infamy and disgrace.

For the trouble of man is the following of the soul’s desire; and the seed of desire is the longing look of the eye.

Said the narrator,—But I tore the paper piece-meal, and cared not whether he blamed or pardoned me.