It is related -- but Allah alone sees and knows what lies hidden - how the Commander of the Faithful, al-Aziz, fifth of the caliphs who reigned over Egypt, was a prince whose foresight was the equal of King Solomon’s. One evening, feeling much troubled, he summoned to his presence Haroun al-Vakhel, his most trusted servant and intimate friend, who was as great in wisdom as his heart was good.
‘Come,’ said the Caliph, ‘let us walk together, and breathe in the sweet scent of roses and jasmine - for there is nothing more restful than the cool of a garden, when the day is hot and the soul ill at ease.’
Haroun rose from his couch and followed his master. Together, the two men strolled amidst the fountains and flowers until at length, approaching a marble bench beside a pool, they sat down. The Caliph sighed deeply, then turned to his friend.
‘You must know,’ said the Caliph, ‘how I am mortally sick. Do not think I fear Death on its own account, for it is the inexorable, the inevitable, the builder of tombs. Yet all men must have their regrets -- those things undone which they would hope to see complete. And so it is, O Haroun, that I would put two requests to you before I die.’
‘Even were you not my Prince, your merest whim, O Commander of the Faithful, would be to me as a command.’
The Caliph smiled softly, as though suddenly lost in his memories, and rested his hand upon the hilt of his sword. ‘Together, O Haroun,’ he murmured, ‘what conquests have we made! Not for our own sake, but for the glory of our Faith!’
He glanced at his friend. Haroun had clasped his hands together, and appeared to be staring far away at nothing. The Caliph frowned. ‘Tell me, what is the matter, for you do not reply’
Haroun appeared to hesitate, for he did not wish to say what was really the truth, that he was exhausted by bloodshed and sickened of war. ‘Your lands, O Caliph, are all at peace,’ he said at last. ‘Every nation praises the wisdom of your rule.’
The Caliph shook his head. ‘You know, O Haroun, how there are those unbelievers who will welcome the news of my death, and see in it their chance to take up arms once again.’ The Caliph clasped his servant’s hands. ‘Be to them, O Haroun, my unsheathed sword! Do not rest until their idols are broken, and you have proclaimed within their shrines how there is no God but the one God, and Mohammed is His Prophet!’
Haroun met his master’s eye. ‘To hear is to obey’ he murmured at last. He turned away again. ‘And what, O Commander of the Faithful, is your second request?’
The Caliph opened his mouth to reply, but at that very moment there came a sudden scream, and then a sound like that of a young girl weeping. Both the Caliph and Haroun rose at once to their feet and hurried through the gardens, concerned to discover what the cause of the weeping might be. They found, standing in the shadow of an overspreading tree, the young Prince al-Hakim Bi-amr Allah. He was a boy of extraordinary beauty and grace, with a waist as fine as silken thread, cheeks as lovely as the hue of anemones, and eyes with the brightness of coloured agate. But in his hand was a whip, and his arm was upraised, and by his feet was a girl with the clothes torn from her back. Her shoulders were bleeding, and her heaving sobs were pitiful to hear. As the Caliph approached her, she turned her head and he recognised his daughter, the Princess Sitt al-Mulq.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ the Caliph demanded in a fury.
The Prince turned round. ‘I am punishing her for her impudence,’ he answered, as he brought down the whip once again across her back. ‘She denied me certain requests.’
‘She is your elder,’ the Caliph frowned. ‘She is entitled to command you.’
‘But she is a girl, O Father -- a compound of sticky slime and unclean blood! Is it not written in the Koran, how a man should never be subject to a woman?’
‘You are not yet a man.’
The boy stared at him very strangely. ‘But soon, O Father, I shall be. For my sister has told me’ -- he lashed at the girl again -- ‘that you are dangerously ill, and I shall soon be Caliph myself.’
His father’s frown deepened, and his eyes began to blaze. He struck the whip suddenly from the Prince’s hand, and flung it away as far as he could. But the effort made him gasp and clutch at his heart, and he would have fallen had Haroun not been able to catch him in his arms. As he gazed at his father, Prince al-Hakim narrowed his eyes, and a very cold smile began to touch his thin lips. Then he hurried away down the path, and as he did so his sister stumbled to her feet. Still choking back her sobs, she did not even glance at her father but turned and ran in pursuit of the Prince. The Caliph watched them both go. He sighed very deeply. ‘My son,’ he whispered, ‘who will be your master very soon.’
Haroun shook his head. ‘As Allah wills it,’ he replied, ‘you will live for many years yet.’
‘But if He does not will it . . .’ The Caliph tottered back to his feet. ‘You must swear you will always look after my son. He is wild, Haroun, wild and very rash. He will need good friends, to keep him upon the way of Allah’s path.’
‘You know, O Caliph, that I will always be the loyal servant of your house.’
‘You will always be true to him?’ The Caliph grasped his friend’s hands and pressed them very eagerly. ‘You swear you will never raise your hand against him?’
‘I swear it,’ he answered, ‘in Allah’s name.’
The Caliph smiled, then kissed both the cheeks of his friend. ‘At last,’ he whispered, ‘I can die in peace. Three of my servants and friends have I appointed here in Cairo to serve as guardians to my son -- my brother, my Vizier and my Master of Horse. But of all my servants, you, O Haroun, are the most precious to me, and of all my many friends, you are the one whom I most trust to keep his word. Allah bless you, then, O Haroun. Praise be to Allah.’
So it was, in obedience to the wishes of the Commander of the Faithful but in conflict with his own, that Haroun al-Vakhel left Cairo, journeying as though he were the breath of the wind, and with his bright sword unsheathed to be the terror of the infidel. For even as he rode, there had come a messenger with the news of the Caliph’s death, and then the next day a second reporting how the faithless had risen in revolt, from the mountains of Khurasan to the deserts of Shem, and from the islands of Kamar to the bright sea of Rum. But Haroun al-Vakhel was nothing daunted, for he had the courage and the strength of a hundred lions, and there was no one living who could match his sword in battle. Many were the captives, and much the gold which he won for the greater glory of his Faith, and which he sent in mighty trains to the Caliph al-Hakim. But the Caliph, all the while, sent him back no reply.
Seven long summers and seven winters passed, until at last such were the victories of Haroun al-Vakhel that all the Caliph’s lands seemed at peace once again. ‘Now Allah be praised,’ said Haroun to himself, ‘for the time has arrived for me to journey back to Cairo, the unrivalled city, the Mother of the World! Too long I have been a stranger to her streets, and all her arts of peace.’ And he thought with pleasure of how he would sit amidst his gardens and take a wife to himself, since although no longer young, he was still without a child, that most perfect blessing which Allah can afford.
First, though, before his sword could be sheathed, he knew that he would have to gain the blessing of the Caliph. Arriving in Cairo, he journeyed at once to the Palace. Above the gates, he saw a man upon a stake. ‘Is that not the brother of the former Caliph?’ he asked in astonishment. The guard nodded very faintly, but seemed reluctant to speak. Instead he led Haroun in silence through a second gate. Above that one too, Haroun saw, there was a man upon a stake, and when he inspected the poor wretch’s face he gasped and cried out aloud, ‘Is that not the Vizier of the former Caliph?’ Again the guard nodded, but again he did not speak, and he led Haroun instead through a further gate. Above this gate there was a third man on a stake, and his groans and cries for mercy were pitiful to hear. Haroun cried out a blessing upon him. ‘Is that not the Master of Horse of the former Caliph?’ he asked the silent guard. Still, though, the guard would say nothing, but when they passed through a fourth gate he pointed to a stake which had no one yet upon it. Haroun gazed at this in silence. ‘Walk on,’ he said at last.
The guard led Haroun into the throne room. Straight away, all who were gathered there fell silent, as Haroun approached the throne and prostrated himself.
‘Rise,’ the Caliph ordered him.
Haroun rose back to his feet.
‘Draw near,’ the Caliph ordered.
Haroun did as he was commanded. He could see now that al-Hakim had grown into a tall and shapely youth, and that his beard was trimmed and fine like silk. Upon his knees sat his sister, the Princess Sitt al-Mulq, and she too was no longer a child but arrived upon the bloom and loveliness of womanhood. Curved and supple were her limbs, sweetly swelling her breasts, and upon one of them the Caliph had laid his slim-fingered hands.
For a long while he gazed at Haroun in silence. ‘Tell me,’ he said at last, ‘why you have returned to us here when your work is not yet done.’
‘But all your lands, O Prince, now stand at peace, from the western ocean to the borders of Hind.’
‘You lie.’
So startled was Haroun, and so angered as well, that his hand reached at once for the hilt of his sword. But then he thought upon his oath to the father of al-Hakim, and so he swallowed back his fury and humbly bowed his head. ‘Tell me, O Commander of the Faithful, what enemy yet remains unconquered by your slave.’
The Caliph smiled very thinly. ‘Did you not,’ he inquired, ‘recently despoil the city of Iram?’
‘Indeed, your Highness, Iram of the Many Columns, far beyond the furthest reaches of the desert.’
‘From which you sent me many captives and slaves?’
‘For your greater honour and contentment, O Prince.’
The Caliph nodded very faintly, then clapped his hands together. ‘Here is one of them.’ At once from the shadows there stepped a blackamoor of a hideous ugliness and massive size, so that he seemed more like a demon than a mortal man, for his eyes were ablaze with a hell-like fire and his white teeth grinned with a terrible menace.
‘Make known to him, O Masoud,’ the Caliph ordered, ‘what you have lately made known to me.’
The blackamoor stepped forward, so that he was gazing directly down at Haroun. ‘Learn, O General, that beyond Iram there lies a yet further city, by the name of Lilatt-ah, and it is rich in treasure and all wondrous things, for no man has ever lived to breach its high-towered walls. For this city is known as the City of the Damned.’
‘Why’ asked Haroun, half-caught between dread and a sudden curious wonder, ‘what is the nature of this city, that it has been given such a name?’
‘It is claimed,’ replied the blackamoor, still grinning vilely, ‘that the dwellers of that city have surrendered their souls.’
‘But to whom?’ The Caliph twitched. ‘Tell him! To whom?’
The blackamoor folded his two massive arms. ‘In their temples,’ he answered, ‘they worship not Allah but Lilat, whom they call the Great Goddess, the authoress of all. They claim - may Allah preserve me! - that even man was the creation of this goddess, moulded and granted life through the discharge of her blood.’ The blackamoor paused, then glanced back at the Caliph. ‘And all this I affirm and swear to be true.’
‘Well?’ the Caliph asked, his voice very thin. He gripped his sister’s breasts as though clinging to them, and a shudder of rapture passed across his face. ‘I would know,’ he whispered, ‘what prize could ever have induced this City of the Damned to sell its soul.’ He glanced down at his sister and again he cupped her breasts, the same look of ravishment as before upon his face. ‘It would needs have been something wonderful.’ He bowed his head slowly. ‘Wonderful indeed.’
Then all at once he shuddered, and even as he gazed at his sister once again, he narrowed his eyes, as though it were the first time he had ever truly seen her, and his face seemed to darken with a violent disgust. ‘Well?’ he screamed, rising to his feet, so that the Princess was flung from his lap and dashed down on the floor. ‘Am I not the Commander of the Faithful?’ he shrieked. ‘Should not the treasures of this city be my own? Should not its walls be levelled with the sands? And should not its idols be shattered into dust?’ He jabbed with his finger. ‘How can you rest here, O Haroun al-Vakhel, when you know that such a city still stands, proclaiming that man was fashioned by a harlot, created not from dust but from unclean blood, from the foul, oozing blood of a woman’s secret parts? It is not to be endured!’ His eyes began to roll, and foam to fleck his lips, as he pointed to the gates. ‘Go,’ he screamed, ‘go!
It is not to be endured!’
Haroun bowed his head and did as he was ordered, for still he felt bound by the oath he had sworn, that he would obey the son of his late master in all things. Yet he wondered, even as he saddled up his horse once again, and rode from Cairo, his bright sword hanging by his side, at the memory of how the Caliph had caressed his sister’s breasts, and at how a man so fervent in the cause and name of Allah should at the same time appear so vicious and depraved. ‘But there is much in this world which must be a mystery,’ Haroun thought, ‘for only Allah has the knowledge of all things.’ And so he sought to banish such confusion from his mind, and to think instead upon the City of the Damned.
For forty days and nights, then, he led his soldiers through the desert, until at length he arrived before the city of Iram. But his view of it this second time was very different from his first, for the city’s walls and columns were nothing now but ash, and its people beggars camped amidst the ruins. And seeing them, Haroun felt a terrible shame to think that it was he who had reduced them to such a state. And he ordered that food and alms be given to them.
But when he offered even greater gifts to anyone who would guide him to Lilatt-ah, all who heard him grew pale and shrank away. ‘Turn back,’ they cried, ‘turn back, for not even your matchless sword, O General, will be proof against the curse of the City of the Damned!’
Haroun demanded to know what this terrible curse might be; but the people if anything grew even paler still, and they cried that no one had ever returned to say. But when they saw that Haroun remained undaunted, and his resolve as firm as before, they agreed to tell him a certain means by which the city could be found. ‘Drop a shower of blood upon the sands,’ they advised, ‘and mark the direction in which it flows, for it will always be drawn towards the idol of Lilat. And in that way -- may Allah guard your head! -- you may discover the secret of the curse for yourself.’