The Scented Garden

118 The falsity of the Orthodox. XXXIII THE MULLAH1 I have kept my dinars, Habib, to buy thee a new tarband withal ; having reflected upon the case of the Mullah, that about his father we know nothing, while on the contrary about his mother everything is known. For himself, since we know so much, none desireth to know more. I think, however, that we will make him some- what drunk, or even excessively drunk, and that in that condition we will lead him to the house of Fatma, where the old humbug3 shall fornicate with the ugliest of the slave girls. Also setting him upon an ass4 with his face to the tail, we will conduct him to the Qazi saying : “ These, O Qazi, be broth- ers ; but the malice of a wizard hath changed the elder and more foolish into the semblance of a drunken Mullah.” By this means will he become ashamed,5 and prate no more of beasts. 1. This ode is by most considered spurious, or the work of a pupil on a skeleton left by the mas- ter. But the very stigmata on which this view is based — the absence of the Takhallus, and of the word “ kun ” — seem to us to point the other way. No forger would have omitted so simple a precau- tion. It is possible that the ode is incomplete. More reasonable seems the suggestions that el Haji (1) disliked the introduction of his holy word [Persian text] and of his sacred Name in an ode of