On the shrouded corpse hung a tablet of green topaz with the inscription: \'I am Shaddad the Great.
You who see me take heed: for Time is not to be trusted.\' Dating from at least a millennium ago, these are the earliest known Arabic short stories, surviving in a single.
I conquered a thousand cities; a thousand white elephants were collected for me
I lived for a thousand years and my kingdom covered both east and west, but when death came to me nothing of all that I had gathered was of any avail.
On the shrouded corpse hung a tablet of green topaz with the inscription: \'I am Shaddad the Great