Before You Begin

Before you begin.

A caliph walks out at night in disguise and finds another caliph already reigning in miniature. That comic spark gives this tale its peculiar brightness: courtly power becomes theatre, hospitality becomes a test, and a young man’s private sorrow opens into a citywide masquerade.

This edition presents the tale as a compact illuminated journey through Abbasid Baghdad: palace gates, river houses, hidden chambers, judgment rooms, banquet lamps and the delicate thread between love and mercy. The plates before the text introduce the faces, places and objects that make the story easier to enter without taking away its surprises.

Read it as a night walk: a little playful, a little dangerous, full of doors that open only after someone dares to knock.