burton--1001-nights--sample

“And who was the Wazir of King Yunan and who was the sage
Duban; and what was the story about them?” quoth the Ifrit, whereupon
the Fisherman began to tell the
Tale of the Wazir and the Sage Duban.
Know, O thou Ifrit, that in days of yore and in ages long gone before,
a King called Yunan reigned over the city of Fars of the land of the
Roum. 28 He was a powerful ruler and a wealthy, who had armies and
guards and allies of all nations of men; but his body was afflicted with
a leprosy which leaches and men of science failed to heal. He drank
potions and he swallowed powders and he used unguents, but naught
did him good and none among the host of physicians availed to procure
him a cure. At last there came to his city a mighty healer of men
and one well stricken in years, the sage Duban hight. This man was a
reader of books, Greek, Persian, Roman, Arabian, and Syrian; and he
was skilled in astronomy and in leechcraft, the theorick as well as the
practick; he was experienced in all that healeth and that hurteth the
body; conversant with the virtues of every plant, grass and herb, and
their benefit and bane; and he understood philosophy and had compassed
the whole range of medical science and other branches of the
knowledge-tree.
Now this physician passed but few days in the city, ere he heard of
the King’s malady and all his bodily sufferings through the leprosy with
which Allah had smitten him; and how all the doctors and wise men
28
“Fárs” (whence “Persia”) is the central Province of the grand old Empire now a
mere wreck, “Rúm” (which I write Roum, in order to avoid Jamaica) is the neo-
Roman or Byzantine Empire, while “Yunan” is the classical Arab term for Greece
(Ionia) which unlearned Moslems believe to be now under water.
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