The genie, turning to the fisherman with a fierce look, says, You must speak to me with more civility; thou art very bold to call me a proud spirit.  Very well, replies the fisherman, shall I speak to you with more civility, and call you the owl of good luck?  I say, answers the genie, speak to me more civilly, before I kill thee.  I have only one favour to grant thee.  And what is that, says the fisherman?  It is, answers the genie, to give you your choice in what manner you wouldst have me to take thy life.  But wherein have I offended you, replies the fisherman?  Is this the reward for the good service I have done you.  I cannot treat you otherwise, says the genie; and that you may be convinced of it, hearken to my story.

I am one of those rebellious spirits that opposed themselves to the will of Heaven; all the other genies owned Solomon, the great prophet, and submitted to him.  Sacar and I were the only genies that would never be guilty of so mean a thing:  And, to avenge himself, that great monarch sent Asaph, the son of Barakia, his chief minister, to apprehend me.  That was accordingly done; Asaph seized my person, and brought me by force before his master’s throne.

Solomon, the son of David, commanded me to quit my way of living, to acknowledge his power, and to submit myself to his commands:  I bravely refused to obey, and told him, I would rather expose myself to his resentment, than swear fealty, and submit to him as he required.  To punish me, he shut me up in this copper vessel; and to make sure of me that I should not break prison, he stamped (himself) upon this leaden cover his seal, with the great name God engraven upon it.  Thus he gave the vessel to one of the genies that submitted to him, with orders to throw it into the sea, which was executed to my great sorrow.

During the first hundred years imprisonment, I swore that if one would deliver me before the hundred years expired, I would make him rich even after his death:  But that century ran out, and nobody did me that good office.  During the second, I made an oath, that I would open all the treasures of the earth to any one that would set me at liberty, but with no better success.  In the third, I promised to make my deliverer a potent monarch, to be always near him in spirit, and to grant him every day three demands, of what nature soever they might be:  But this century ran out as well as the two former, and I continued in prison.  At last, being angry, or rather mad, to find myself a prisoner so long, I swore, that if afterwards any one should deliver me, I would kill him without pity, and grant him no other favour but to choose what kind of death he would die; and therefore, since you have delivered me to-day, I give you that choice.