’It is his reign (that of Abou Inau Faris) which has cured Religion of her sickness, which has caused the sword of Injustice to return into the scabbard whence it had been drawn, which has corrected fortune, when it had been corrupted, and which has procured custom for the markets of Science, formerly given up to stagnation.  He has rendered manifest the rules of piety when they would have been obliterated; he has calmed the regions of the earth when they were agitated; he has caused the tradition of acts of generosity to revive after his death; he has occasioned the death of tyrannic customs; he has abated the flame of discord at the moment when it was most enkindled; he has destroyed the commands of tyranny, when they exercised an absolute power; he has elevated the edifices of equity on the pillars of the fear of God, and has assured himself, by the strongest evidences, that he possesses confidence in the Eternal.  His reign possesses a glory, the crown whereof is placed on the forehead of Orion, and an illumination which covers the Milky Way with the skirts of his robe; a beneficence which has given a new youth to the age; a justice which incloses the righteous within its vast tent; a liberality similar to a cloud which waters at once the leaves that have fallen from the trees and the trees themselves; a courage which, even when the clouds shed torrents of rain, causes a torrent of blood to flow; a patience which never tires of hoping; a prudence which prevents his enemies from approaching his pastures; a resolution which puts their troops to flight before the action commences; a mildness which delights to pluck pardon from the tree of crime; a goodness which gains him all hearts; a science, the lustre whereof enlightens the darkest difficulties; a conduct conformable to his sincerity, and acts conformable to his designs!’

Let us here take a long breath, and rest a minute.  O, Abou Inau Faris! we envy the blessed people that were gathered under thy wing; we weep for our degenerate age, wherein thy like is nowhere to be found.  No wonder that Ibn Batuta declares that he lays aside forever his pilgrim’s staff—­that, after traversing the Orient, he sits down under the full moon of the Occident, preferring it to all other regions, ’as one prefers gold-dust to the sands of the highway.’  We, too, had we found such a ruler, would have laid aside our staff, and taken the oath of allegiance.

The traveler gives us the day of his departure from home:  June 14, 1325.  ‘I was alone,’ says he, ’without a companion with whom I could live familiarly, without a caravan of which I could have made part; but I was forced onward by a spirit firm in its resolution, and the desire of visiting the Holy Places was implanted in my bosom.  I therefore determined to separate myself from my friends of both sexes, and I abandoned my home as the birds abandon their nest.  My father and mother were still alive.  I resigned myself, with grief, to separate from them, and this was a common cause of sorrow.  I was then in my twenty-second year.’