ABSTRACT
IT is related, O auspicious King, that there was once, in the antiquity of time and the passage of the age and of the moment, a valorous king, to whom Allah, in His goodness, had given three handsome sons: the eldest was called Ali, the second Hasan, and the third Husain. These three princes were brought up in their father’s palace with their orphan cousin, Princess Nur al-Nihar, who had no equal among the daughters of men for beauty and intelligence. She had a deer’s eyes and her mouth was a rose; the narcissus and the anemone were in her cheeks and she wavered like a branch of the ban tree. She had grown in joy from babyhood with her three cousins, eating and sleeping with them, and the Sultan ever had it in mind to marry her to the son of some neighbouring king.
