There was another morning no less pleasant when I went with the faithful Selīm to pay my respects on a charming old man, the most famous scribe in all the city, Muṣṭafa el Asbā'i was his name. He lived in a house, decorated with the exquisite taste of two hundred years ago inlaid with coloured marbles and overlaid with gesso duro worked in patterns like the frontispiece of an illuminated Persian manuscript and painted in soft rich colours in which gold and golden brown predominated. We were, taken through the reception rooms into a little chamber on an upper floor where Muṣṭafa was wont to sit and write those texts that are the pictures of the Moslem East. It was hung round with examples from celebrated hands ancient and modern, among which I recognised that of my friend Muḥammad 'Ali, son of Beha Ullaḥ the Persian prophet, to my mind the most skilful penman of our day, though Oriental preference goes out to another Persian of the same religious sect, Mushḳin Kalam, and him also I count among my friends. We sat on cushions and drank coffee, turning over the while exquisite manuscripts of all dates and countries, some written on gold and some on silver, some on brocade and some on supple parchment (several of these last being pages of Kufic texts abstracted from the Ḳubbet el Khazneh before it was closed), and when we rose to go Muṣṭafa presented me with three examples of his own art, and I carried them off rejoicing.
Later in the afternoon we drove out to the valley of the Barada, Selīm and I, and called on a third soil of 'Abd ul Ḳādir: "Amīr Omar, princ d'Abd ul Ḳādir" ran his visiting card, printed in the Latin character. He is the country gentleman of the family. 'Ali has been carried into spheres of greater influence by his marriage with a sister of 'Izzet Pasha, the mighty Shadow behind the Throne in Constantinople; 'Abdullah has always a thousand schemes on hand that keep him to the town, but 'Umar is content to hunt and shoot and tend his garden and lead the simple life. So simple was it that we found him in a smoking cap and a dressing gown and carpet slippers walking the garden alleys. He took us into his house, which, like the other houses of his family, was full of flowers, and up to a pavilion on the roof, whither his pointer followed us with a friendly air of companionship. There amid pots of hyacinths and tulips we watched the sun set over the snowy hills and talked of desert game and sport.