ments were beyond all reckoning. And there were

in the trousseau, besides thirty-three magnificent horses bearing saddles of gold studded with every kind of gem, three thousand horsemen and three camel-litters, the attendants of the Sultan's daughter. As for the people, they scattered dinars and garments over those marching in the procession, in proclamation of their joy and delight.

Five days after the arrival of the trousseau, the caliph sent his vizier one evening to fetch the bride. Before the vizier went three hundred processional candles and as many naphtha torches, which lit up Baghdad that night, so that not a shop or stall remained in the markets but had a candle or more burning in it. On the return, the procession was accompanied by the emirs and grandees of the Seljuk state, and by the wives of the emirs and others, each with her own retinue, and before them all were candles, processional tapers, and torches borne by horsemen on their mounts; and at the end of this magnificent, luminous procession came the daughter of the Sultan in a litter adorned with gold and studded with jewels, surrounded by two hundred Turkish slave girls on splendidly appointed horses.

That night the Sultan went out to hunt, beyond Baghdad, according to the custom of kings in that age on the day of their daughters' marriage. As for the caliph, on the morning of that night he made for the Sultan's emirs and his army a great banquet in which he used, of sugar alone, forty thousand manns, worth eight thousand dinars. He bestowed robes of honor upon the emirs, and sent to the bride's mother many robes, and to all the noble ladies gifts according to their rank.

And when the Sultan returned from the hunt, he visited the dec-orated shops and establishments, and great quantities of dinars and dirhams were scattered over him there. The wealth of the Abbasid

caliphs was immense, and they spent and lavished with the spending of one who fears no poverty. And as for these weddings I have recounted —

one hesitates over the truth of their description and their authenticity, for the luxury and extravagance in them bring them close to the stuff of legend.