THE true king is he who is a king in himself, not made king by treasuries and armies, so that his kingship remains everlastingly, even as the kingdom of the Muhammadan faith.

So it is related of Ibrahim ibn Adham that, being on a journey, he sat down by the margin of the sea. He was stitching his patched cloak, when a prince walking along the shore suddenly came to that place. Now the prince was a servant of the saint; recognizing him, he at once prostrated himself. He was amazed at the saint and his dervish cloak, so greatly his nature and his outward form had changed. He marvelled that he should have abandoned so mighty a kingdom and preferred poverty so exceeding slender, that he should have given up the sovereignty of the seven climes and beggar-like was plying the needle on his dervish cloak.