So where did Howard encounter it? In answer, we need only turn to the works of two of REH’s favorite writers: Harold Lamb and Stanley Lane-Poole. Both men read Latin and traveled to the lands they wrote about. Lamb, an American adventure writer, split his time between fiction and non-fiction; Lane-Poole, a British archaeologist and Orientalist, wrote non-fiction histories with a storyteller’s eye. Both men wrote extensively on the Crusades. In their books, Howard no doubt found limitless inspiration.

Weigh the passage from Gates of Empire against this, Lamb’s version of the Caliph’s opulent palace, from The Crusades: the Flame of Islam:

The Fatimid kalif lived in guarded seclusion. Sudani swordsmen filled the corridors of the Great Palace, and paced the mosaic floors of the antechambers, by the marble fountains where peacocks strutted and parrots screamed. The audience hall glistened like a gigantic treasure vault with its ceiling of carved wood inlaid with gold, and its inanimate birds fashioned of silver and enamel feathers and ruby eyes. But the kalif was hidden from the eyes of the curious by a double curtain of gilt leather. Now, place both against an excerpt from Stanley Lane-Poole’s Saladin and the Fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which incorporates both the colorful description of the palace and the mission of the ambassadors – much of it in the words of Guillaume de Tyr, himself:

The introduction of Christian ambassadors to the sacred presence, where few even of the most exalted Moslems were admitted, was unprecedented; but Amalric was in a position to dictate his own terms. Permission was granted, and Hugh of Cæsarea with Geoffrey Fulcher the Templar were selected for the unique embassy. The vezir himself conducted them with every detail of oriental ceremony and display to the Great Palace of the Fatimids. They were led by mysterious corridors and through guarded doors, where stalwart Sudanis saluted with naked swords.