The sands’ amount, the measures of the sea, Tho’ vast in number, are well known to me. I know the thoughts within the dumb conceal’d, And words I hear by language unrevealed.
Oracle of Apollo, given to Croesus
The tales of the Arabian nights combines glittering descriptions of the material world with magical thinking. The story of the City of Brass is a mirror image of Perceval’s quest for the Grail.
Three explorers—an emir, a wazir and a sheikh—and their servants set off across unknown territory to find the fabled City of Brass.
After nearly two years they came to a high hill where they found a brass statue of a horseman carrying a glistening spear. On the spear was an inscription: “O you who come to me, if you do not know the way that leads to the City of Brass, rub the hand of the horseman and he will turn and then will stop, and in whatsoever direction he stops, thither proceed.”
Emir Musa rubbed the hand and the automaton turned and pointed the way with his spear.
The explorers continued their journey until in the middle of a vast and desolate plain they came across a pillar of stone from which protruded two stone wings and four stone legs like the legs of lions. There were also two eyes high up in the pillar that burned like coals and a third eye in the middle, green like a lynx’s eye. A voice seemed to speak to them, telling them he was a jinn trapped in the pillar by Solomon. When they asked him the way to the City of Brass, he directed them and they set off again.
Then one evening they saw on the horizon between two hills a black object with what looked like two fires on either side of it, and one of them remembered that The Book of Hidden Treasures described the City of Brass as having black walls with two great brass pillars. The pillars they were staring at looked like fire in the light of the setting sun. They had found the City of Brass!
As they approached, it rose high in the air above them. The walls were some eighty cubits tall, beautifully and smoothly constructed. The Book of Hidden Treasures claimed it had twenty-five gates, they remembered, but they could find no trace of any of them. They called out, but there was no reply.
They climbed a nearby hill and looked down into the city. They could see shining domes, pavilions and palaces and treetops. They strained their ears, but could hear nothing except the sound of running water, as of a river, and the flapping of tents.
The wazir proposed they construct a ladder. The servants set to and made a stout ladder of wood and iron, which they placed against the wall.
One of the servants volunteered. He climbed to the top and stood on the wall gazing down on the city. He clapped his hands, cried out, “How beautiful you are!” and threw himself down into the city and certain death.
A second servant volunteered and exactly the same thing happened.
The sheikh insisted he would try himself “in the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.” He ascended the ladder, and when he reached the top he too clapped his hands.
The emir called out, “Don’t do it, don’t do it!”
The sheikh laughed and said, “God has saved me from the artifice of the Devil because I recited ‘in the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.’ ”
“What can you see, sheikh?”
“When I reached the top of the wall I saw ten damsels, beautiful like the moon, who were beckoning me as if to say ‘Come to us.’ I looked and I thought I saw a river I could dive into to be with them, but as I continued to recite, the river faded away and I saw the mashed bodies of our servants.”
The sheikh now walked along the top of the wall until he came to one of the brass towers. He found himself facing two golden gates set in the tower, but apparently without knob or lock. Looking more closely, he saw molded onto the gate the small figure of a horseman with his hand pointing out of the surface. On the hand was an inscription: “Turn the pin in the middle of the horseman’s body twelve times and the gates will open.”
He couldn’t see the pin at first, but he kept looking until he found it, strong, firm and fixed. When he turned it twelve times, the gates ground open with a sound like thunder.
The sheikh went in and found himself in a long passage, at the end of which was a staircase.
At the bottom he found a room with benches on which were lying men with shields over their heads. They were dressed as guards and armed with swords, bows and arrows. They turned out to be stone cold—dead.
The sheikh wondered if they might have on them the keys to the city. He found the oldest man, lifted up his garments, and yes, there was a bunch of keys hanging from his belt.
With a spring in his step, the sheikh made his way to a gate at the foot of the brass tower. He inserted the largest, brass, key into the fine, delicate and very complex mechanism. It whirred and clicked and suddenly and noiselessly the great brass gates slid open.
The emir, the wazir and the others who had been waiting outside greeted the sheikh with a cheer. They entered the city, passing chamberlains and lieutenants lying dead on beds of silk, then went into the marketplace. There were shops on all sides and on many levels, some projecting over the walkways. All the shops were open, with rows of brass utensils ranged in order of size. The merchants were in their shops, too, fallen as if they were sleeping, but they were all dead.
On the other side of the market the explorers came to a magnificent ultramarine palace. Venturing inside, they found a large hall decorated with gold and silver. In the midst of the hall, surrounded by smaller fountains, was a great fountain of alabaster over which hung a canopy of brocade. Channels of water flowed along the floor—four streams like the four rivers of Paradise meeting in a great tank lined with marble.