I was told by Abu 'l-Qasim al-Juhani:
The caliph al-Muqtadir bi-'llah wanted to drink wine amid a bed of narcissus, in a small courtyard of the palace where there was a well-kept garden. One of the gardeners told him, "With narcissus, the trick is to fertilize them several days before your party, so they'll be nice and strong."
"Don't you dare!" the caliph said. "You would use manure on what I want to sit among and savor the smell of?"
"That's ordinarily how it's done with plantings, to strengthen them," the gardener said.
"But what is the rationale?" the caliph asked.
"Manure protects the plant," the gardener said, "and helps it grow and send out shoots."
"Then we will protect it with another substance," the caliph said, and gave the order for musk to be pulverized in a sufficient qualntity to manure the whole garden, and this was carried out.
For one day and one night, the caliph sat there drinking, and when the sun came up he greeted it with another drink. Then he got up and ordered that the garden be sacked, and the gardeners and the eunuchs pillaged the musk from the narcissus bed, leaving the bulbs uprooted from from the soil, until the musk was gone and the garden was a barren waste. The cost of this quantity of musk was enormous.
One day, we were drinking with the caliph al-Radi bi-'llah in a courtyard that was shaded by a canopy of choice fruits, until he tired of sitting there and commanded that another seating area be prepared. "Scatter the carpets with fragrant herbs and lotus flowers, without the salvers and the usual arrangements for a smelling party. Do it quickly, now, so we can move our party over there."
In the blink of an eye, they told him it was done. "Stand up!" the caliph told us, and we followed him. But when he saw the room, it was not to his liking, and he instructed his sommeliers to sprinkle the herbs with powdered camphor to change their color. In they came with golden caskets full of powdered Rubahi camphor, and scattered it over the herbs by the scoopful. The caliph ordered them to add still more camphor, until the herbs were coated white, and looked like a green robe with downy cotton carded over it, or a garden struck by hoarfrost. "That's enough," the caliph said. I estimate the amount of camphor they used at over one thousand dry-weight measures, which is a lot.
So we sat and drank there with him. Then when the party was over he ordered the room to be sacked. and my servants gathered up many measures of camphor, along with the eunuchs and decorators and servants of the palace who did the same.
From Leavings of the Learned Gathering by al-Tanukhi
a.k.a. Table-Talk of a Mesopotamian Judge
