alls of the house: and it was a dismal spectacle
for the unhappy ladies, to see all their goods plundered, without
knowing why they were so cruelly treated.

When the house was plundered, Mahummud ordered the civil
magistrate to raze the house and monument; and while that was
doing, he carried away the mother and daughter to his palace.
There it was he redoubled their affliction, by acquainting them
with the caliph's will. "He commands me," said he to them, "to
cause you to be stripped, and exposed naked for three days to the
view of the people. It is with the utmost reluctance that I
execute such a cruel and ignominious sentence." The king
delivered these words with such an air, as plainly made it appear
his heart was really pierced with grief and compassion. Though
the fear of being dethroned prevented his following the dictates
of his pity, yet he in some measure moderated the rigour of the
caliph's orders, by causing large shifts, without sleeves, to be
made of coarse horse-hair for Ganem's mother, and his sister.

The next day, these two victims of the caliph's rage were
stripped of their clothes, and their horse-hair shifts put upon
them; their head-dress was also taken away, so that their
dishevelled hair hung floating on their backs. The daughter had
the finest hair, and it hung down to the ground. In this
condition they were exposed to the people. The civil magistrate,
attended by his officers, were along with them, and they were
conducted through the city. A crier went before them, who every
now and then cried, "This is the punishment due to those who have
drawn on themselves the indignation of the commander of the
believers."

Whilst they walked in this manner along the streets of Damascus,
with their arms and feet naked, clad in such a strange garment,
and endeavouring to hide their confusion under their hair, with
which they covered their faces, all the people were dissolved in
tears; more especially the ladies, considering them as innocent
persons, as they beheld them through their lattice windows, and
being particularly moved by the daughter's youth and beauty, they
made the air ring with their shrieks, as they passed before their
houses. The very children, frightened at those shrieks, and at
the spectacle that occasioned them, mixed their cries with the
general lamentation. In short, had an enemy been in Damascus,
putting all to fire and sword, the consternation could not have
been greater.

It w