The very centre was empty except for the two finest buildings in the city: the Great Mosque and the caliph’s Golden Gate Palace, a classically Islamic expression of the union between temporal and spiritual authority. No one except Mansur, not even a gout-ridden uncle of the caliph who requested the privilege on grounds of ill-health, was permitted to ride in this central precinct. One sympathises with this elderly uncle of the caliph. Unmoved by his protestations of decrepit limbs, Mansur said he could be carried into the central precinct on a litter, a mode of transport generally reserved for women. “I will be embarrassed by the people,” his uncle Isa said. “Is there anyone left you could be embarrassed by?” the caliph replied caustically.
