There was once in the land of Egypt a most wise and learned wazir, as renowned for his mercy as for his justice, whom even his enemies honored with the name of incorruptible. Egypt, it was said, was blessed in its sultan; the sultan was blessed in his wazir; and the wazir was blessed in his wives and in his servants, and in a son who was the light of his eyes. This son, the only child of his old age, was much loved and much indulged, and he was most appealing to look at, a fact of which he was all too well aware. Between his father’s love and his own great beauty, he had managed to elude all but the most ineluctable of duties, and even those had not excessively troubled his peace. For he had a mamluk, a slave taken from among the most beautiful youths of the Franks and raised in all the ways of the True Faith, who was his age to a day, and who was closer to him than any brother in blood. In one respect only did they differ: the mamluk, whose name was Khalid, was a slave as much of duty as of the wazir’s son.
