gloomy. He asked him: 'Why this sadness I see from you?' He said: 'Fear for my mention [legacy], that I die and be cut off and have no offspring.' He said: 'O my brother, indeed righteous deeds keep the mention as long as time remains.' He said: 'Leave me from this speech and take with me a discourse which, if I do it, I shall be provided a child with whose remaining my mention remains and my trace is not erased from the world.' He [the brother] said to him: 'Do not cast a seed in salty ground, and do not throw your water except in pure earth.'

The man did not know the meaning of what his brother said nor did he understand his speech. He rose at that hour and time, brought his maidservants, picked the best of them, and lay with her. She conceived and he kept her until she delivered; she gave birth to a daughter. Her mother encompassed her and raised her with the best raising until she grew up. Her father saw her, and behold, she was the most beautiful of the people of her time, the most lovely of them, and the wisest of them. She did not cease thus until she reached the age of women. Her mother said to him one day: 'Indeed, women were only created for men. If you were to look for a man for her to marry her to him, children would come to you from her, and your helpers and numbers would increase.' He said to her: 'Woe to you! I indeed envy her [even] by looking at her; so how could I point another to her? If I were able, I would not show her to you, let alone another. No one shall see her, and I shall not show her even to the sun that shines upon her.' She said to him: 'Leave the speech of others and leave her matter to another; she must be married during your life to a man by whom Allah will gladden your eyes.'

He said to her: 'If it must be so, then seek for her a man who deserves her so I may marry him to her.' So, she dispersed the matchmakers; they came to her and saw her beauty, loveliness, and intellect in a magnificent state that crossed description. The matchmakers went and described her affair to the kings of the time and to every magnificent person. Whenever they presented to her father a man among those proposing, he did not like him nor was he pleased with him, until she