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History’s Most Lunatic Events and People

Khalid Elhassan August 21, 2020 34 min

La Belle Alliance - Battle of Waterloo — Blucher, left, meeting Wellington at Waterloo. Wikimedia

19. Taking Consumer Protection to Lunatic Extremes

Khan al Khalili, Cairo’s centuries-old historic market, in existence since the Middle Ages. Pintrest

Mad Caliph Al Hakim’s lunatic conduct went beyond religious persecutions. It included one of history’s most bizarre consumer protection practices, ever. He reportedly used to walk through the markets of Cairo, looking for deceptive merchants, while accompanied by a giant African slave named Masoud.

Whenever he came across a merchant cheating buyers, the Mad Caliph would order Masoud to publicly s-o-d-o-m-i-z-e the crook, right then and there. To this day, when people in Cairo encounter a merchant whom they suspect is trying to cheat them, they threaten to “bring Masoud”.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.