ألف ليلة وليلة (Thousand and One Nights — 14th-15th century MS)

They slept there until the morning and sat in the window of the palace and looked at the garden. They sat talking until the light appeared, the day shone, and the sun rose. They looked at the secret door and it had opened, and the wife of King Shahryar came out according to her custom among twenty slave girls. They walked under the trees until they arrived under the palace in which they were. They took off their women’s clothes, and behold, they were ten slaves They corrupted them with the ten slave girls, and they had sex with them. As for the mistress, she called out, 'O Mas‘ud, O Mas‘ud!' And behold, a black slave jumped from the top of the tree and landed on the surface of the ground and came to her and said, 'What do you want, O lady? I am Sa‘d al-Din Mas‘ud.' The lady laughed, lay on her back, and the slave fell upon her and accomplished his business with her, and likewise the slaves. Then the slaves stood up, washed, returned, and put on the clothes that were on them, and they mixed with the slave girls. They all stood up, entered the palace, and closed the door. As for Mas‘ud, he jumped from the wall, descended from the road, and went on his way. The author of the narrative said, 'Then she went down. And when Sultan Shahryar saw what had happened with his wife and her slave girls, he lost his mind and said, 'No one is safe in this world! This happened in my palace and my kingdom. By God, my son likely referring to his brother in affection, this is nothing but a great calamity.' Then he turned to his brother and said, 'Do you want to obey me in what I do?' He said to him, 'We shall leave our kingdom and wander in the creation of God Almighty, and we shall set out upon our faces. If we find someone whose calamity is greater than ours, we shall return, otherwise we shall burn ourselves in the lands, and we have no need of the kingdom.' Shah Zaman said, 'Yes, what you have seen is correct, and I agree with you on that.' The narrator said, 'Then they descended from the secret door that was in the palace, went out from another path, and traveled. They continued, both of them, traveling in the night, sleeping in those trees, and in the morning, they walked all day long. They reached a meadow on the shore of the salt sea, and the meadow was full of plants and trees. They sat talking about their calamity and what had happened to them. Because of that, behold, there was a shout from the middle of the sea and a great scream, so they were afraid and trembled, and it seemed to them that the sky had collapsed...'