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In the days of Abd-er-Rahman, who was among the wisest and most / glorious of the Commanders of the Faithful, there resided in the / City of Bagdad an elderly merchant of such enormous wealth that his / lightest expressions of opinion caused the markets of the Euphrates / to fluctuate in the most alarming manner.
This merchant, whose name was Mahmoud, had a brother in the middle / ranks of Society, a surgeon by profession, and by name El-Hakim. To / this brother he had frequently expressed a fixed determination to / leave him no wealth of any kind. "It is my opinion," he would say, / "that a man's first duty is to his own children, and though I have / no children myself, I must observe the general rule. " He was fond of / dilating upon this subject whenever he came across his relative, and / would discover from time to time new and still better reasons for / the resolution he had arrived at. His brother received with great / courtesy the prospect held out to him by the wealthy merchant; but / one day, finding tedious the hundredth repetition of that person's / pious but somewhat wearisome resolve, said to him: