'The belief of the Muslims in dreams, sanctioned by the Prophet, will be well illustrated by the following anecdote, which was related to me at Cairo shortly after the terrible plague of the year 1835, by the Sheykh Mohammed Et-Tanlawee, who had taken the trouble of investigating the facts, and had ascertained its truth.

'A tradesman, living in the quarter of El-Hanafee, in Cairo, dreamt, during the plague above mentioned, that eleven persons were carried out of his house to be buried. He awoke in a state of the greatest distress and alarm, reflecting that eleven was the total number of the inhabitants of his house, including himself, and that it would be in vain in him to attempt, by adding one or more members to his household, to elude the decree of God, and give himself the chance of escape. So calling together his neighbours, he informed them of his dream, and was counselled to submit to a fate so plainly foreshown, and to be thankful to God for the timely notice with which he had been mercifully favoured. On the following day one of his children died; a day or two after a wife; and the pestilence continued to ravage among his family until he remained in the house alone. It was impossible for him now to entertain the slightest doubt of the entire accomplishment of the warning. Immediately, therefore, after the last death had taken place among his household, he repaired to a friend at a neighbouring shop, and calling to him several other persons from the adjoining and opposite shops, he reminded them of his dream, acquainted them with its almost complete fulfilment, and expressed his conviction that he, the eleventh, should very soon die. "Perhaps," said he, "I shall die this next night; I beg of you, therefore, for the sake of-God, to come to my house early to-morrow morning, and the next morning, and the next if necessary, and to see if I be dead, and, when dead, that I be properly buried, for I have no one with me to wash and shroud me. Fail not to do me this service, which will procure you a recompense in heaven. I have bought my grave linen; you will find it in the corner of the room in which I sleep. If you find the door of the house latched, and I do not answer to your knocking, break it open."

'Soon after sunset he laid himself in his lonely bed, though without any expectation of closing his eyes in sleep, for his mind was absorbed in reflections upon the awful entry into another world, and the review of his past life. As the shades of night gathered round him he could almost fancy that he beheld, in one faint object or another in his gloomy chamber, the dreadful person of the Angel of Death; and at length he actually perceived a figure gliding in at the door, and approaching his bed. Starting up in horror he exclaimed, "Who art thou?" And a stern and solemn voice answered, "Be silent! I am Azrael, the Angel of Death!" "Alas!" cried the terrified man, "I testify that there is no deity but God; and I testify that Mohammed is God's apostle. There is no strength or power but in God, the High, the Great. To God we belong, and to Him we must return." He then covered himself up with his quilt, as if for protection, and lay with a throbbing heart, expecting every moment to have his soul torn from him by the inexorable messenger.

But moments passed away, and minutes and hours, yet without his experiencing any hope of escape; for he imagined that the angel was waiting for him to resign himself, or had left him for awhile, and was occupied in receiving first the souls of the many hundred human beings who had attained their predestined term in that same night and in the same city, and the souls of the thousands who were doomed to employ him elsewhere. Daybreak arrived before his sufferings terminated; and his neighbours, coming according to their promise, entered his chamber, and found him still in bed; but observing that he was covered up, and motionless as a corpse, they doubted whether he were still alive, and called to him. He answered, with a faint voice, "I am not yet dead; but the Angel of Death came to me in the dusk of the evening, and I expect every moment his return to take my soul: therefore, trouble me not; but see me washed and buried." "But why," said his friends, "was the street door left unlatched?" "I latched it," he answered;

"but the Angel of Death may have opened it." "And who," they asked, " is the man in the court?" He answered, "I know of no man in the court. Perhaps the angel who is waiting for my soul has made himself visible to you, and been mistaken in the twilight for a man." "He is a thief," they said, "who has gathered together everything in the house that he could carry away, and has been struck by the plague while doing so, and now lies dead in the court at the foot of the stairs, grasping in his hand a silver candlestick." The master of the house, after hearing this, paused for a moment, and then, throwing off his quilt, exclaimed, "Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures! That is the eleventh, and I am safe! No doubt it was that rascal who came to me and said that he was the Angel of Death. Praise be to God! Praise be to God! "

'This man survived the plague, and took pleasure in relating the above story. The thief had overheard his conversation with his neighbours, and coming to the house in the dusk, had put his shoulder to the wooden lock, and so raised the door and displaced the latch within. There is nothing wonderful in the dream, or in its accomplishment; the plague of 1835 entirely desolated many houses, and was mostly fatal to the young; and all the inhabitants of the house in question were young except the master.' - The Thousand and One Nights, commonly called The Arabian Nights' Entertainments.