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, an Egyptian merchant adventurer, whose name was Crown. He had passed his early life in voyaging on land and sea, among isles and through deserts, by shores known and unknown; and, in so doing, had affronted dangers and fatigues whose recital would have blanched the hair of little children. But, at the time of this tale, he had done with travel and lived happy and respected in his palace, seated upon his diwan, his brow girt with a turban of immaculate white muslin. He lacked nothing; for the rooms of his palace, his harim, his chests and presses were filled with sumptuous garments, with silks of Hims and Baalbakk stuffs, with Damascene swords and with Baghdad brocades, Mosul gauze and Moorish mantles, and all the embroideries of India, in such profusion that no king of earth has known the like. Also he had many black and white slaves, Turkish mamluks, concubines, eunuchs, blood horses and mules, Bactrian camels and racing dromedaries, Greek and Syrian boys, small Circassian girls, little Abyssinian eunuchs, and women from all lands. There is no doubt that he was the most honoured merchant of his time.
