Free The Holy Sail by Abdulaziz Al-Mahmoud

amir did not miss his prayers and to deny them any more pretexts to rebel against him. But Hussein had not abandoned prayer completely, either. From time to time, he had bouts of faith that made him pray sporadically. He also found it heart-warming whenever Ghawri distributed money among the poor Sufis; he did not have a cold heart after all, but it needed some patching, as the Sufi sheikh who was always outside the fort in Alexandria had told him once. Hussein had not quite understood what that meant, but he imagined his heart as a tattered cloththat needed to be mended like the Sufis did with their ragged garments.
    He took his shoes off outside the door, gave them to the boy and went inside the mosque.
    After prayers, the imam stood holding a staff and began preaching to the crowd. ‘People! Woe to the Arabs for evil is approaching! Woe to the Arabs for evil is approaching!’
    The sheikh’s eyes bulged and his staff vibrated in tandem with his body. Hussein looked around at the other worshippers, waiting for someone to explain to him what was going on, but everyone looked as confused as he was.
    A voice from the back rows called out. ‘What happened? What evil has approached, my sheikh?’
    The imam did not answer immediately, and continued to repeat his cryptic warning until he felt they were finally ready to hear the story. Then he said in a quieter voice, ‘Woe to the Arabs for evil is approaching! A Frankish * ship has been spotted in the Abyssinian Sea. They have breached the dam of Dhul-Qarnayn * and are now at the gates of Mecca and Medina!’
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    Al-Ahsa, Eastern Arabian Peninsula
    The Hormuzi messenger leaned on a pillow and looked Sultan Muqrin straight in the eyes before he started speaking. ‘Your Grace, I think you are aware of the conflicts taking place in our kingdom between the members of the royal family. A king hardly sits on the throne before he is killed or deposed. The kingdom has suffered greatly from such struggles, and lost a lot of blood and treasure.’ Turan Shah, the king of Hormuz, had died recently and left four sons: Maqsoud, Shahabuddin, Salghur and Vays. A bitter struggle had erupted between the sons over the throne.
    The messenger breathed out and hunched over himself, making him appear smaller than he actually was. He glanced at the palm trees in front of him and then continued. ‘Maqsoud succeeded his father first, but Shahabuddin did not let him rule for long. He deposed him and sat on the throne for a few months, before he was ousted in turn by Salghur. Vays then overthrew him, and he remains the ruler of Hormuz.
    â€˜The spiral of violence is almost never ending. Before I came here, I visited Sheikh Suleiman bin Salman al-Nabahani in Oman, who is Salghur’s father-in-law. But he could not promise us anything because he is preoccupied with another battle. Salghur feels that Suleiman has betrayed him because he has not backed him in this struggle, andhas vowed to take revenge on him when the opportunity arises.’
    The sultan was listening to the messenger intently. When he finished, the sultan said, ‘I have heard of all these conflicts among the king’s sons but I thought things had settled down after Vays ascended the throne. Tell me, what was the childhood of the four men like? Who raised them?’
    The messenger replied, ‘They all grew up in their father’s palace. But he made a mistake when he put each one under the care of a different tutor. These tutors imparted their rivalries into the young princes. Disputes between them started early on, and the father could hardly resolve one before another erupted. At the time, he was not aware that the problem was not the children, but rather the tutors he had not chosen so well.’
    The sultan smiled faintly, and then remarked, ‘This is a problem in many royal palaces. In our palace, we tried to avoid this by appointing one educator for