The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Vol. 1

“Shame on you! What is the matter?” they both answered, “Truly our master Nur al-Din came in and beat us, so we fled. Then he went up to Anis al-Jalis and threw his arms around her, and we do not know what he did after that; but when we cried out to you, he ran away.”

Upon hearing this, the lady went to Anis al-Jalis and said to her, “What is the news?”

“O my lady,” she answered, “as I was sitting here, a handsome young man came in and said to me, ‘Are you the one my father bought for me?’; and I answered ‘Yes’; for, by God original: "Allah", my mistress, I believed that his words were true; and he instantly came in and embraced me.”

“Did he do nothing else with you but this?” asked the lady, and she replied, “Indeed he did! But he did it only three times.”

“He did not leave you without dishonoring you!” cried the Wazir’s wife, and she began to weep and beat her face—she, the girl, and all the handmaidens—fearing that Nur al-Din’s father would kill him. In a case like this, a father would be justified by custom Rasm, though not by Koranic law, in acting like the Roman consul Brutus and executing his own son. This was also the case if a son was caught in an affair with a father's concubine or, in very strict households, with a slave-girl.

While they were in this state, the Wazir came in and asked what was the matter, and his wife said to him, “Swear that you will attend to whatever I tell you.”

“I will,” he answered.

So she related to him what his son had done, at which he was deeply distressed; he tore his clothes and struck his face until his nose bled, and pulled out his beard by the handful.

“Do not kill yourself,” said his wife, “I will give you ten thousand gold coins dinars, her original price, out of my own money.”

But he raised his head and cried, “Nonsense! I have no need for her purchase money; my fear is that we will lose our lives as well as the money.”

“O my lord, and how is that?”

“Don't you know that our enemy Al Mu’in bin Sawi is waiting there? As soon as he hears of this matter, he will go to the Sultan—”

And Shahrazad noticed the dawn of day and stopped her permitted storytelling.

Now when the Thirty-fifth Night arrived,

She continued: It has reached me, O auspicious King, that the Wazir said to his wife, “Don't you know that our enemy Al-Mu’in bin Sawi is waiting? As soon as he hears of this matter, he will go to the Sultan and say to him: ‘Your Wazir...’”