on his part.  He will admit of no excuse for he was his friend and companion.  When the Naib of Damascus heard that he awoke from his slumber and conformed to the words of the Emir.  He ordered that Attaf should be put in prison, enchained and with a padlock upon his neck, and bade them, after severely tightening the bonds, illtreat him.  They dragged him out, listening neither to his prayers nor his supplications; and he cried every night, doing penance to God and praying to Him for deliverance from his affliction and his misfortune.  In that condition he remained for three months.  But one night as he woke up he humiliated himself before God and walked about his prison, where he saw no one; then, looking before him, he espied an opening leading from the prison to the outside of the city.  He tried himself against his chain and succeeded in opening it; then, taking it from his neck, he went out from the gaol running at full speed.  He concealed himself in a place, and darkness protected him until the opening of the city gate, when he went out with the people and hastening his march he arrived at Aleppo and entered the great mosk.  There he saw a crod of strangers on the point of departure and Attaf asked them whither they were going, and they answered, To Baghdad.  Whereupon he cried, And I with you.  They said, Upon the earth is our weight, but upon Allah is our nourishment.  Then they went on their march until they arrived at Koufa after a travel of twenty days, and then continued journeying till they came to Baghdad.  Here Attaf saw a city of strong buildings, and very rich in elegant palaces reaching to the clouds, a city containing the learned and the ignorant, and the poor and the rich, and the virtuous and the evil doer.  He entered the city in a miserable dress, rags upon his shoulders, and upon his head a dirty, conical cap, and his hair had become long and hanging over his eyes and his entire condition was most wretched.  He entered one of the mosks.  For two days he had not eaten.  He sat down, when a vagabond entered the mosk and seating himself in front of Attaf threw off from his shoulder a bag from which he took out bread and a chicken, and bread again and sweets and an orange, and olive and date-cake and cucumbers.  Attaf looked at the man and at his eating, which was as the table of ’Isa son of Miriam (upon whom be peace!).  For four months he had not had a sufficient meal and he said to himself, I would like to have a mouthful of this good cheer and a piece of this bread, and then cried for very hunger.  The fellow looked at him and said, Bravo! why dost thou squint and do what strangers do?  By the protection of God, if you weep tears enough to fill the Jaxartes and the Bactrus and the Dajlah and the Euphrates and the river of Basrah and the stream of Antioch and the Orontees and the Nile of Egypt and the Salt Sea and the ebb and the flow of the Ocean, I will not let thee taste a morsel.  But, said the buffoon, if thou wish to eat of chicken