not that which befitteth the subject."
Then, after a few days, the Sultan's sickness redoubled on him and he
accomplished his term and died; and as for his son Zein ul Asnam, he
arose and donning the raiment of woe, [mourned] for his father the space
of six days. On the seventh day he arose and going forth to the Divan,
sat down on the throne of the sultanate and held a court, wherein was a
great assemblage of the folk, [34] and the viziers came forward and the
grandees of the realm and condoled with him for his father and called
down blessings upon him and gave him joy of the kingship and the
sultanate, beseeching God to grant him continuance of glory and
prosperity without end.

When [35] Zein ul Asnam saw himself in this great might and wealth, and
he young in years, he inclined unto prodigality and to the converse
of springalds like himself and fell to squandering vast sums upon his
pleasures and left governance and concern for his subjects. The queen
his mother proceeded to admonish him and to forbid him from his ill
fashions, bidding him leave that manner of life and apply himself
governance and administration and the ordinance of the realm, lest the
folk reject him and rise up against him and expel [36] hira; but he
would hear not a word from her and abode in his ignorance and folly.
At this the people murmured, for that the grandees of the realm put out
their hands unto oppression, whenas they saw the king's lack of concern
for his subjects; so they rose up in rebellion against Zein ul Asnam
and would have laid violent hands upon him, had not the queen his mother
been a woman of wit and judgment and address, and the people loved her;
so she appeased the folk and promised them good. Then she called her son
Zein ul Asnam to her and said to him, "See, O my son; said I not to
thee that thou wouldest lose thy kingship and eke thy life, an thou
persistedst in this thine ignorance and folly, in that thou givest the
ordinance of the sultanate into the hands of raw youths and eschewest
the old and wastest thy substance and that of the realm, squandering it
all upon lewdness and the lust of thy soul?"

Zein ul Asnam hearkened to his mother's rede and going out forthright to
the Divan, committed the manage of the realm into the hands of certain
old men of understanding and experience; save that he did this only
after Bassora had been ruined, inasmuch as he turned not from his folly
till he had spent and squandered all the