Mosleh ebn Abdollah Sadi Shirazi
"From Slavery to Slavery"
from "Golestan"


Having taken offence with the society of my friends at Damascus, I retired into the wilderness of Holy Land, Jerusalem, and sought the company of brutes till such time as I was made a prisoner by Franks, and employed by them, along with some Jews, in digging earth in the ditches of Tripoli.

At length one of the chiefs of Aleppo, between whom and me an intimacy had of old subsisted, happening to pass that way, recognized me, and said: "How is this? and how came you to be thus occupied?" I replied: "What can I say? I was flying from mankind into the forests and mountains, for my resource was in God and in none else. Fancy to thyself what my condition must now be, when forced to associate with a tribe scarcely human? To be linked in a chain with a company of acquaintance were pleasanter than to walk in a garden with strangers."

He took pity on my situation; and, having for ten Dinars redeemed me from captivity with Franks, carried me along with him to Aleppo. Here he had a daughter, and her he gave me in marriage, with a dower of hundred Dinars. Soon after this damsel turned out a termagant and vixen, and discovered such a perverse spirit and virulent tongue as quite unhinged all my domestic comfort. A scolding wife in the dwelling of a peaceable man in his hell even in this world. Protect and guard us against a wicked inmate. Save us, O Lord, and preserve us from the fiery, or hell, torture.

Having on one occasion given a liberty to the tongue of reproach, she was saying: "Are you not the fellow whom my father redeemed from the capacity of Franks for ten Dinars?" I replied: "Yes, I am the same he delivered from captivity for ten Dinars, and enslaved me with you for a hundred!" I have heard that a reverend and mighty man released a sheep from the paws and jaws of a wolf. That some night he was sticking a knife into its throat, when the spirit of the sheep reproached him saying: "Thou didst deliver me from the clutches of a wolf, When I at length saw that thou didst prove a wolf to me thyself."