“It was I, Shadhi, who taught your Sultan how to ride and wield a sword when he was not yet eight years old. It was I, Shadhi, who…”
In more normal circumstances, I would have listened intently to the old man, and questioned him in great detail, but that day my thoughts were elsewhere. It was my first visit to the palace, and it would be foolish to deny that I was in a state of great excitement. Suddenly my star had risen. I was about to become a confidant of the most powerful ruler of our world.
I was being taken to the most celebrated private library of our city. The books on philosophy alone numbered over a thousand. Everything was here from Aristotle to Ibn Rushd, from astronomy to geometry. It was here that Ibn Maymun came when he wanted to consult the medical formularies of al-Kindi, Sahlan ibn Kaysan, and Abul Fadl Daud. And, of course, the master himself, al-Razi, the greatest of them all. It was here that Ibn Maymun wanted his own books and manuscripts to be kept after his death.
Entering the library, I was entranced by its magnitude and soon lost in lofty thoughts. These volumes, so exquisitely bound, were the repository of centuries of learning and study. Here was a special section containing books unobtainable elsewhere, works denounced as heretical. Such books, to put it another way, as might help to unlock closed minds. They were only available in the reading rooms of the Dar al-hikma if the reader was prepared to offer the librarian an extremely generous gift. Even then, not everything was possible.
Abul Hassan al-Bakri’s Sirat al-Bakri, for instance, had vanished from the shops and the public libraries. A preacher at al-Azhar had denounced the book, a biography of the Prophet of Islam, as a total fabrication. He had informed the faithful at Friday prayers that al-Bakri was roasting in hell because of his blasphemy.
Here now in front of me lay the offending book. My hands had trembled slightly as I removed it from the shelf and began to read its opening lines. It seemed orthodox enough to me. I was so absorbed that I noticed neither the recumbent form of Shadhi prostrate on a prayer rug in the direction of Mecca, nor the unannounced arrival of the Sultan. He interrupted my private reverie.
“To dream and to know is better than to pray and be ignorant. Do you agree, Ibn Yakub?”
“Forgive me, Your Excellency, I was…”
He signalled that we be seated. Breakfast was being served. The Sultan was preoccupied. I had suddenly become nervous. We ate in silence.
“What is your method of work?”
I was taken by surprise.
“I’m not sure I grasp your meaning, Commander of the Brave.”
He laughed.
“Come now, my friend. Ibn Maymun has told me that you are a scholar of history. He spoke highly of your attempt to compile a history of your own people. Is my question so difficult to answer?”
“I follow the method of the great Tabari. I write in a strictly chronological fashion. I ascertain the veracity of every important fact by speaking to those whose knowledge was gained directly. When I obtain several different versions of a fact, from several narrators, I usually communicate all of these to the reader.”
The Sultan burst out laughing.
“You contradict yourself. How can there be more than one account of a single fact? Surely there can be only one fact. One correct account and several false versions.”
“Your Majesty is talking about facts. I am talking about history.”
He smiled.
“Should we begin?”
I nodded and collected my writing implements.
“Should we start at the beginning?”
“I suppose so,” he muttered, “since you are so wedded to chronology. I mean it would be better to start with my first sight of Cairo, would it not?”
“The beginning, O Sultan. The beginning. Your beginning. Your first memories.”
I was lucky. I was not the eldest son. For that reason not much was expected from me. I was left to myself a great deal, and enjoyed much freedom. My appearance and demeanour did not pose a threat to anyone. I was a very ordinary boy. You see me now as a Sultan, surrounded by all the symbols of power. You are impressed and, possibly, even a bit frightened. You worry that if you exceed certain proprieties your head might roll in the dust. This fear is normal. It is the effect which power has on the Sultan’s subjects. But this same power can transform even the most diminutive personality into a figure of large proportions. Look at me. If you had known me when I was a boy and Shahan Shah was my oldest brother you would never have imagined that I could be the Sultan of Misr, and you would have been right. Fate and history conspired to make me what I am today.
The only person who saw something in me was my paternal grandmother. When I was nine or ten years old, she saw me and a group of my friends trying to kill a snake. As boys we would compete with each other in these foolish things. We would try and grab a snake by its tail and then swing it, before crushing its head on a stone or, as the braver ones among us did, stamping on its head with our feet.
My grandmother, having observed this scene carefully, shouted at me.
“Yusuf! Yusuf ibn Ayyub! Come here at once!”
The other boys ran away, and I walked slowly towards her, expecting a blow around my ears. My grandmother had a legendary temper and, so Shadhi had once told me, she had struck my father across the face when he was a grown man. No one dared to ask the cause of such a public display. My father had left the room and, so they say, mother and son did not speak to each other for a year. In the end, it was my father who apologised.
To my amazement, she hugged me and kissed me in turn on both my eyes.
“You are fearless, boy, but be careful. Some snakes can strike back, even when you have them by the tail.”
I remember laughing with relief. She then told me of a dream she had experienced before I was born.
“You were still inside your mother’s belly. I think you kicked a great deal. Your mother used to complain sometimes that she felt she was going to give birth to a colt. One night I dreamt that a large man-swallowing snake was crawling towards your mother, who was lying uncovered in the sun. Your mother opened her eyes and began to sweat. She wanted to move, but could not lift her body. Slowly the snake crawled towards her. Then suddenly, like the door of a magical cave, her belly opened. An infant walked out, sword in hand, and, with one mighty blow, decapitated the serpent. Then he looked at his mother and walked back into her stomach. You will be a great warrior, my son. It is written in your stars and Allah himself will be your guide.”
My father and uncle laughed at my grandmother and her foolish dreams, but even at that time this interpretation undoubtedly had a positive effect on me. She was the first person to take me seriously.
Her words must have had some effect. After this incident, I noticed that Asad al-Din Shirkuh, my uncle, was beginning to watch me carefully. He took a personal interest in my training as a horseman and sword-fighter. It was he who taught me everything I know of horses. You are aware, are you not, Ibn Yakub, that I know the complete genealogies of all the great horses in our armies? You look surprised. We will talk about horses another day.
If I shut my eyes and think of my earliest memories, the first image that fills my mind is the ruins of the old Greek temples at Baalbek. Their size made one tremble in admiration and awe. The gates leading into the courtyard were still intact. They were truly built for the gods. My father, as representative of the great Sultan Zengi of Mosul, was in charge of the fortress and its defence against the Sultan’s rivals. This was the town where I grew up. The ancients named it Heliopolis, and worshipped Zeus there, and Hermes and Aphrodite.
As children, we used to divide into different groups at the feet of their statues, and hide from each other. There is nothing like a ruin to excite the imagination of a child. There was magic in those old stones. I used to daydream about the old days. Till then the world of the ancients had been a complete puzzle. The worship of idols was the worst heresy for us, something that had been removed from the world by Allah and our Prophet. Yet these temples, and the images of Aphrodite and Hermes in particular, were very pleasing.