with them without their knowing me." So they walked towards the
Tigris pondering the matter, and presently came upon a fisherman
who stood fishing under the pavilion windows. Now some time
before this, the Caliph (being in the pavilion) had called to
Shaykh Ibrahim and asked him, "What noise is this I hear under
the windows?" and he had answered, "It is voices of fisher folk
catching fish:" so quoth the Caliph, "Go down and forbid them
this place;" and he forbade them accordingly. However that night
a fisherman named Karim, happening to pass by and seeing the
garden gate open, said to himself, "This is a time of negligence;
and I will take advantage of it to do a bit of fishing." So he
took his net and cast it, but he had hardly done so when behold,
the Caliph come up single-handed and, standing hard by, knew him
and called aloud to him, "Ho, Karim!" The fisherman, hearing
himself named, turned round, and seeing the Caliph, trembled and
his side-muscles quivered, as he cried, "By Allah, O Commander of
the Faithful, I did it not in mockery of the mandate; but poverty
and a large family drove me to what thou seest!" Quoth the
Caliph, "Make a cast in my name." At this the fisherman was glad
and going to the bank threw his net, then waiting till it had
spread out at full stretch and settled down, hauled it up and
found in it various kinds of fish. The Caliph was pleased and
said, "O Karim, doff thy habit." So he put off a gaberdine of
coarse woollen stuff patched in an hundred places whereon the
lice were rampant, and a turband which had never been untwisted
for three years but to which he had sown every rag he came upon.
The Caliph also pulled off his person two vests of Alexandrian
and Ba'lbak silk, a loose inner robe and a long-sleeved outer
coat, and said to the fisherman, "Take them and put them on,"
while he assumed the foul gaberdine and filthy turband and drew a