The East

For the conflagration, which has fed upon much of the East, is now creeping over ours as well, and, having burned all around, strives contentiously to lay hold even of the churches in Cappadocia, which until now the smoke from the neighborhood moved to tears.

So we exhort you now at least to stretch out a hand to the churches of the East, already bent to their knees, and to send some men to remind us of the rewards laid up for the endurance of sufferings for Christ.

and, if this is difficult, at least that some should come from you to visit and console the afflicted, in order that they may set before your eyes the sufferings of the East, which it is impossible to take in by hearing, since no words can be found to set our condition vividly before you.

We perused it at leisure, out of a desire to acquaint ourselves with that view and to weigh it, for its author is among the great ones of the Orientalists, and he has researches and works of consequence upon the East and its letters, such as his book on the religions of the Semites and other of his engaging essays.

Nor has anything of that come in the Qurʼān, nor has it been seen inscribed upon the remains in any kingdom of the kingdoms of the East, ancient or modern;

or that he heard it from certain narrators and credited it for its strangeness, setting it down with all its blemishes, as many of his like do who journey to the lands of the East and lean, in describing their people and their usages, upon what is thrown to them by some interpreter or passer-by, with whatever is in it of exaggeration or invention — they being the more eager to publish the strange, …

and by composing it I have served the library of the most great patron, master of the necks of the nations, lord of the viziers of the East and of China, quintessence of the sultan of sultans, deliverer of creation from destruction, holder of the chancery of the realms, succour of mankind, rain-shower of liberality, banner of guidance:

and when he was put to trial along with his shaykh over the Ẓāhirī school, he fled to

[8] the East, and thereafter made no open show of his school until he died at Baghdād.