He found it heavy and brought it not
ashore but with travail, when he found it full of fish of all kinds.
Presently up came a woman with a dish, who gave him a dinar, and he
gave her fish for it, and after her a eunuch, who also bought a
dinar's worth of fish, and so forth till he had sold ten dinars'
worth. And he continued to sell ten dinars' worth of fish daily for
ten days, till he had gotten a hundred dinars.
Now Khalifah the fisherman had quarters in the Passage of the
Merchants, and as he lay one night in his lodging much bemused with
hashish, he said to himself: "O Khalifah, the folk all know thee for a
poor fisherman, and now thou hast gotten a hundred golden dinars.
Needs must the Commander of the Faithful, Harun al-Rashid, hear of
this from someone, and haply he will be wanting money and will send
for thee and say to thee: 'I need a sum of money and it hath reached
me that thou hast an hundred dinars, so do thou lend them to me
those same.' I shall answer, 'O Commander of the Faithful, I am a poor
man, and whoso told thee that I had a hundred dinars lied against
me, for I have naught of this.
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