This historical novel, first published in Arabic in 1974, is set in early 17th century Mamluke Cairo. It traces the career of Zayni Barakat ibn Mousa as Cairo's puritanically moral and severe wali or governor, who employs several corps of spies and informers to rule the city. The author has used various narrative devices including diary extracts, police reports, legal decrees, first-person narratives and religious discourses which together with oblique references to the Cairo of Nasser, serve to give the novel the dimensions of a political and historical fable.