Explore "Saïd the Fisherman" by Marmaduke Pickthall on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was evening when Saïd at last came in sight of the great city. He reined in his horse on the brow of a steep hill, the last wave of the bare brown highlands through which his way had lain all day. Hard by was a little shrine, the crescent fiery above its dome. The sun was just setting among the dark peaks behind him, and the last gleam of day was warm upon the shrine and all the hilltop. Horse and man had a glory at their backs. But beneath, the city and its endless garden lay already in the lap of night. White domes and minarets, mosques and palaces, loomed wanly in the heart of a vast grove, which stretched, far as the eye could ascertain, to eastward towards a smooth horizon which was the desert. Gathering shades spread a thin veil over all the plain, like the bloom on a purple grape. An amethyst flush suffused the eastern sky -- a spirit flush, soft, yet living, wherein starlight and daylight seemed mingled. Saïd's heart leapt as he beheld the mistress of his dreams, set in her gardens, seeming the fairer and more desirable for the grim, treeless mountains which were her girdle.
"It is paradise," he murmured in ecstasy.