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The Thousand and One Nights, Or, The Arabian Nights Entertainments
The Thousand and One Nights Or The Arabian Nights Entertainments Author:Edward William Lane Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: complained to the other of the distress that he had suffered from the separation of his brother. The Sultan next caused the Magian to be brought, and commande... more »d to strike off his heaci. Bahrain said, O most excellent King, hast thou determined to kill me ? lie answered, Yes. Then said Bahrain, Have patience with me a little, O King. And he hung down his head towards the ground, and presently, raising it, made profession of the faith, and vowed himself a Mahometan to the Sultan. So they rejoiced at his embracing the Mahometan faith. Then Amgiad and Assad related to him all that had happened to them ; and he said to them, O my lords, prepare yourselves to journey, and I will journey with you. And they rejoiced at this, as they did also at his conversion to the Mahometan faith; but they wept violently. Bahrain, therefore, said to them, O my lords, weep not; for ye shall eventually be united [with your family], as Nea- meh and Noam were united.—And what, they asked him, happened to Neameh and Noam ? He replied as follows:— THE STORY OF NEAMEH AND NOAM. Persons have related (but God is all-knowing), that there was, in the city of Cufa, a man who was one of the chiefs of its inhabitants, called Rabia the son of Hatim. He was a man of great wealth, and of prosperous circumstances, and had been blessed with a son whom he named Neameh. And while he was one day at the mart of the slave-brokers, lie beheld a female slave offered for sale, with a little girl of surprising beauty and loveliness on her arm. So Rabia made a sign to the slave-broker, and said to him, For how much are this female slave and her daughter to be sold ? He answered, For fifty pieces of gold. And Rabia said, Write the contract, and receive the money, and deliver it to her master. He then paid to the slave-broker...« less