A gift of reed pens

By way of an auspicious token of the lucky stars betokening the success of your affairs in every latitude, I add [this gift of] reed pens, whittled clean of flaws, in which repose all blessings and from which every infirmity is repelled. For overlength or stubbiness they cannot be faulted, nor is there warp or weakness in them, nor flimsiness or greenness, nor brittleness or stiffness to detract. Durable under pressure, but yielding to the pen-knife, in form and color they are pleasures to behold and handle, smooth to the touch from tip to butt, withstanding careless breakage and overlong immersion [in ink], their every attribute a distinction which close inspection only magnifies. And that is how they were chosen.
      Before their lengths were trimmed and their rinds peeled by cutting tools, before the crooks in them were rectified with braces, they shot up between sun and shadow and extremes of heat and cold, scorched in summer months by the glare of midday heat, then pummeled by the frost rained down by asterisms of the months when frigidity rains down in cloudbursts. Over time, their fibers knit together and ripened into ropes, and they took on features and proportions proper to their various habitats and far-flung countries of origin.
      What unites them is nobility of form, joints of cane belonging to the same genus as spear-shafts, resembling lions of the thicket in their dens, of gilded tawn with a silky sheen, each one a veritable clinamen that holds sway, and a kairos that is decisive, whose strength is hegemonic and slow to abrade and splinter, whose carven tip lays down a line that never forks.

The white ones come from Egypt, white as unmixed linen of Coptic weave. Steeped in purity, nourished from the seed by Upper Egypt's loam, nursed on the sweetness of the Nile, which kept them safe from drought and waterlog, their segments of long, straight ridges are firmly joined without a twist or hint of obliquity in either direction.
      With them go these yellow ones like gold with silver, as if soaked in saffron juice or stained with attar of khalouq before they touch the ink, as if parading in yellow finery tinged with turmeric, the color of the setting sun.
      There are some with gorgeous dappled surfaces to delight the eye and mollify the soul. Bringers of relief to the hearts [of writers], dowered with gifts of noble intellect given off freely by their aesthetic charm—like varieties of swelling fruits or flowers of many colors, when you scrutinize them closely you will say, "The very stars that foretell rain have lent [these pens] their light!" Or "Sana‘a herself endowed them with her mantles!"
      These are striped ones [whose reeds come] from the sea. The delightful pattern of their outer layer—quite like stippled leather, or the bed of a wadi in full flood—overlies a reddish substrate like the selvage of a bordered robe dyed with dragon's blood without a hint of indigo. The colors they have imbibed put rosy cheeks to shame, and the straightness of their shafts highlights the crookedness of all other things.

From a letter to an unknown luminary on the occasion of his birthday,
by Abu 'l-Khattab al-Sabi (d. 367 H/977-8 AD) as preserved
in the Tadhkira of Ibn Hamdun

The Idol

     [I know] an idol whose Shaper shaped him
          beautiful of make. He came out matchlessly.
      God made him a thing of beauty, a thing of wonder,
          to be the prototype of Paradise's maidens.
      Why else adorn his features with that languid fineness,
          or paint his eyes with looks that don't let go?
      Flecked with downy whiskers of an ingénu,
          his cheeks are like the facets of a jewel.
      His frame was elegantly draughted,
          a study in dark shade against the light.
      His lovers are forgiven their madness,
          now that the down beards him,
      and the dew of his cheek flashes
          with what flashes on the cheek of
              a bringer of joyous news.
      He brandishes his coquetry like a rose
          kissed by blazing drops of unstrung pearls.
      Envy leads to grief. You see it on the face of
          lesser beauties, [sharp] as the grief of parted lovers.
      I reckon his excellence without parallel or equal
          to be beyond compare.
      How many mad lovers fall to their knees in his precinct
          like Moses in the precinct of the Mount?
      When his banner comes waving, they're like
          prisoners of war beholding the countenance
             of their [new] commander

By Nasr ibn Ahmad al-Khubza’aruzzi (meter: kāmil)

Five poems by David Larsen

appear in the third issue of Eternal Sections (2026). Thanks, Jason! Thanks, Ryan.

64 pages, 8" x 10". Risograph-printed, saddle-stitched with covers illustrated by Jason Mitchell and printed by Pet Riso Studio, Philadelphia. 75 copies printed. $15

Bad connection

Al-Farazdaq asked ‘Umar ibn Yazid al-Usaydi to send him some khat kind of horse fodder, and what he received was not to his standard. On meeting him again, the poet said (meter: basīṭ):

      Attention, ‘Umar ibn Yazid! I'm a guy who[se poetry]
          cauterizes madmen on their occiputs.
      May the rustling crop of your garden plots
          blossom with donkey dicks!
      May each engorged prick rearing up from the soil
          be bound [into sheaves of dicks]!

From Muhammad ibn Habib's commentary
on the Collected Poems of al-Farazdaq

Ink

Ink (ḥibr) is called lawn "color." A man is said to be "pure of ḥibr" when his complexion is of one single unmixed color. Ibn Ahmar said (majzū’ al-ṭawīl):

      She captured him with curly black
          and white of ḥibr pure,

meaning the blackness of her hair and the whiteness of her complexion.
      A man whose ḥibr and sibr are all gone has lost his good looks (ḥibr), neat dress and shapely form (sibr).
      Al-Aṣma‘ī said: Ink is called ḥibr because it leaves a mark (ḥibr). A man is said to have ḥibr on his teeth when their yellowness progresses until they are black in color. Also, a ḥibr "bruise" is the mark left on the skin by a beating, and the verb aḥbara means to leave someone with such a mark. A poet said (meter: ṭawīl)

      By Bint Maṣṣān my misery was made a thing of mirth
          to folks of means, and thanks to her the ḥibr [of punitive strokes]
              stands forth upon me.

      Abū 'l-‘Abbās [al-Mubarrad] said: I surmise that ink is called ḥibr because books are made muḥabbar "richly patterned" through its use, i.e., made beautiful.
      [‘Abd Allāh b. Sa‘īd] al-Umawī said: The reason ink is called ḥibr is that when an eloquent person uses it to delineate their words with beauty and precision, and their lucidity is complete, it is then that their sagacious meanings are more comely than luxury mantles (ḥabarāt) of Yemen and white-striped robes of Sana‘a.

From the Epistle on Script and the Pen attributed to Ibn Qutayba

Two crutches

I was told by my uncle, who was informed by al-Kurani, and also by Ibn ‘Ammar who said: I was informed by Ya‘qub ibn Nu‘aym, who said: I was informed by Abu Ja‘far al-Qurashi, who said:

Al-Hakam ibn ‘Abdal, who lacked the use of his limbs, was friends with a blind man named Abu ‘Ulayya. One night, the two set out from their homes to the home of one of their confidants—Ibn ‘Abdal being carried, Abu ‘Ulayya being led—only to run into the security chief of Kufa, who jailed them on the spot.
      They had been locked up for a while when Ibn ‘Abdal noticed Abu ‘Ulayya's cane lying next to his. At this, he burst out laughing, and came up with this poem (meter: majzū’ al-kāmil):

     Locked up with Abu ‘Ulayya!
          This is a marvel of the age,
      one of us a blind man led around, the other one
          a paralytic whose hands and foot are of no use,
      I, whose shanks disown me!
          The sightless one is him right there.
      Ever seen a spiny-tailed lizard of the desert
          in cahoots with a fish?
      My steed and Abu ‘Ulayya's
          are one such fated pair.
      To you who boast of equine nobility
          we boast of two crutches,
      two stallions that never fight each other
          and need no costly fodder.
      Suppose they caught fire, his and mine.
          Would there even be smoke?

These verses by Ibn ‘Abdal are also about Abu ‘Ulayya, whose name was Yahya (meter: ṭawīl):

      To Yahya I said in amazement on the night that we were jailed,
          in my sleep which was the sleep of a fettered prisoner:
      Help me scan the stars and shepherd them,
          and I will help you out with odes of exquisite pattern.
      Our state at present is a caution to be pondered.
          The jailing of the blind and crippled is a shocking thing.
      If he or I lose hold of our crutches, we are flung
          flat on our faces, prostrate on the ground.
      One crutch leads the way blindly.
          The other one stands for a foot in the hand.

From the Book of Songs

Al-Farazdaq and the wolf

Abu ‘Ali al-Hirmazi said: The poet al-Farazdaq halted with his traveling party at al-Ghariyyan at the end of their first night's journey out of Kufa. On one of their camels went the skinned and dressed carcass of a sheep he had just had slaughtered when their departure was made in haste.
      There came a wolf, who tried to wrest the carcass from the back of the camel it was tied to. This threw all the camels of the riding party into a panic, at which al-Farazdaq rose to see the wolf tugging at the meat. He cut off one hoof of the sheep and threw it to the wolf, who picked it up and went a little ways off with it. When the wolf came back, al-Farazdaq cut off another hoof and threw it.
      Morning came, and when the company awakened, al-Farazdaq told them what had happened, and went on to say this about it:

      The loping wolf, whose coat is threadbare. How affable was he!
          I invited him to share my fire when night was late.
      When he came close, I said: "Come closer!
          What's mine has been provided us in common."
      That night, I divided my provisions equally,
          now in the fire's light, now in its smoke.
      He laughed and bared his teeth, and I said to him,
          with the grip of my sword firm in my hand:
     "Eat up, wolf! Now that there is trust between us,
          let us be like boon companions.
      You are a gentleman, wolf, but you
          were nursed on the same teat as treachery itself.
              You and treachery are each other's little brother!
      Anyone else you woke to beg a meal from
          would come at you with arrows, or the point of a spear.
      But even though companions come to blows,
          on the road they must be brothers to each other.
      [After all,] when has God ever put a disunited soul back
          upon the track of travelers, anywhere they go?"

Verses 1–9 of a 47-verse poem (meter: ṭawīl)
from the Collected Poems of al-Farazdaq (cf.)

Far-fetched ambiguity

We have discussed cases of ambiguity that fail due to some misconception of the poet's. Ambiguity that is far-fetched belongs in a separate category. This type of ambiguity comes about when a condition or attribute pertaining to the explicitly-stated referent is transferred to a referent that is hidden, or vice versa. Without full exercise of the poet's discrimination, comprehension, and taste, this type of ambiguity cannot be achieved, as it was achieved by Shams al-Din Muhammad al-Tilimsani in these verses [corrected against the edition of Shams al-Din's poem by Shakir Hadi Shukr, ditt. Charakh, meter: basīṭ]:

      Many are stripped of intellect by a certain gazelle fawn
          who abandons them ungently to their passions.
      How many are slain by his come-hither looks
          that fill their hearts with obsession?
      They cast a spell that never gets old,
          ever spinning and speaking of passion

Here the word maghzal "spinning" denotes the action of the spinner's tool called al-mighzal. Neither of these is an affiliated noun [of ghazal "amorous discourse"]. Maghzal in this context makes no sense, but when poets expand the ghazl that is spinning to signify the ghazal that is flirtatious speech, they are forgiven, it being so commonplace.
     And that is how the act of spinning became attributed to the look in someone's eye. If you think about what I'm saying, the truth of it will dawn on you—because the same poet is correct [in his critique of the idiom] in another poem where he said (meter: ṭawīl):

      Your looks are virile weapons—nothing like
          widows at their spinning, as has been claimed

And ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Amidi said (meter: sarī‘):

      Fenced by hateful censure
          is the garden of his face.
      The orb of his eye lodges in my heart.
          It is a widow who lives by her spinning

From Breaking Open the Seals on Ambiguity and Polysemic Usage
by al-Khalil ibn Aybak al-Safadi

Bathhouses of Damascus

     The bathhouse of the Guarded Citadel
     The Judge's Bathhouse, by the al-Jabiya Gate
     The bathhouse in the quarter of al-Qassa‘
     The bathhouse along the Hashimites' Lane, which was old and fallen into ruin, becoming known as "The New Bathhouse" after its restoration by the eunuch Hasan
     The Bathhouse of al-Qusayr
     The Bathhouse of the Daughter of the Emir Jarukh is a nice one.
     The Bathhouse of al-Sharif al-‘Aqiqi
     The Bathhouse of the Diwan is a nice one.
     The Hatters' Bathhouse in the al-Fakhriyya bazaar
     The Saddlers' Bathhouse in the Market of ‘Ali
     The new Bathhouse of Nur al-Din, in the Corn Market
     The Bathhouse of Ibn Abi Nasr, behind the little market of Bab al-Saghir
     The bathhouse of Palm Lane by the same Bab al-Saghir, an endowment of Nur al-Din, may God have mercy on his soul
     The bathhouse of al-Hijji [al-Hamawi] on al-Jumahi Lane, near the quarter of al-Maqsallat [< Gk. makella], which fell into ruin and was converted into a house by Ibn Qawwam
     The Bathhouse of Suwayd, by the house of Ibn Manzu
     The Bathhouse of the Staircase, on Staircase Alley by the slaughterhouse
     The Bathhouse of Greengrocers Lane
     The Bathhouse of al-Rahba
     The bathhouse by the Confectioners' Gate [of the Umayyad Mosque], known as the Mu’ayyad Bathhouse
     The bathhouse next to it, known as the Bathhouse of al-Sallariya
     The Bathhouse of Khafif, on Khafif Lane near the Bab al-Faradis
     The Bathhouse of Ibn Kulli, by the Tarkhan's house
     The Coppersmiths' Bathhouse near the portico of Karrus, which sits over a well
     The bathhouse right by it, known as the bathhouse of Ibn Qutayta, which also sits over a well.
     The small bathhouse of the vizier al-Mazdaqani's house
     The Cheesemakers' Bathhouse, on Cheesemakers Lane, behind the ironworkers
     The Bathhouse of Ibn Abi Hisham, on Ropemakers Lane
     The Bathhouse of al-Tamimi in the Watermelon Building, which fell into ruin and was converted into homes
     The bathhouse in [the market of] the Khuraymis, behind the Embroiderers' Market, sits on a well.
     The Embroiderers' Bathhouse, behind the covered acqueduct of the Sunday Market
     The Bathhouse of al-Lu’lu’a (The Pearl), known long ago as the Bathhouse of the Yazidis, used to be nice. It was built on a circular plan, later enlarged, and an aqueduct was dug for it. Now only its circular outline remains.
     The Bathhouse of Ibn Abi Hadid, by the minaret of Fayruz
     The ‘Alawi Bathhouse, behind ‘Alawi Way, in the Church of Mary
     The Bathhouse of the Lane of the Rock sits over a well, and water was diverted to it [later on].
     The bathhouse by the head of the Bridge of Sinan
     The Bathhouse of Khutluba, near the Church of Mary
     The Bathhouse of Ibn ‘Ubada, near the park of Qassam and the portico of Janah
     The Bathhouse of ‘Ali al-Manjaniqi, by the Eastern Gate
     The Bathhouse of Ibn Sasri, by the Gate of Thomas
     The Bathhouse of al-Sharif, by the house of Ibn Buri, fed by an aqueduct and a well

From Ibn ‘Asakir's History of Damascus

Icemen of Damascus

THALLĀJ is the name for a bringer of ice from spots where it is deposited in winter, like a mounded knoll or a crevasse or some such place in barren high country where frost descends during the winter months. They then take it and compress it and lay it away in special storehouses they maintain, where it is prevented from melting away by some means they have adopted, until the summer months when they haul it around and sell it for a considerable price.

The profession of the durma shukr (?) proliferates among us in Syria. More than a hundred loads of ice are sold every day in summer, to licorice and syrup vendors, and for domestic use as well as other purposes. In Syria, our supply never gives out in summer or in winter, with Mt. Hermon covered in snow year round since God created it.

Doctors of science tell us that snow is formed from water that rises from the sea. When it hits the sphere of celestial cold called al-zamharir, it becomes rain, but when played by cold winds it coagulates and falls on countries that are far from the sun, in the nutlike pellets we know as hail, or the delicate flakes that we call snow.

Against high fevers, against mange and other inflammations of the skin, and for digestion systems weakened by the heat, the benefits of ice are huge. It is an aid to fattening every animal except the human. Its effects can be injurious to the aged, the phlegmatic, and those afflicted with chronic dry mouth, unless it is mixed with cloves and honey.

Al-Sayyid ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, God bless and keep his soul, [reported that ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Ibrahim ibn ‘Abd al-Razzaq] said in its praise (meter: khafīf):

      Ice is water from the fount of life.
          It soothes the heat of fevers,
      cools down livers, and keeps
          stomachs from boiling over.
      Be free from words of doctors and their promises,
          and brush off their advice,
      and smile and sip its waters, and the toughest
          foods will go down nice.
      Cold and white as cotton fluff,
          to the overheated it's like rain to tender plants.
      May we never be without our bringer
          to the ailing of the cure of cures.
      Ice of Damascus takes away more pains
          than ice of any other place.

Here's another charmer of a witty poem on the subject (meter: khafīf):

      Don't despise Damascus when you visit.
          She doesn't hide from you what she's about.
      Pass through in the spring, and
          in your face she'll laugh with flowers.
      Come by in winter, and you'll see
          her snow gobbed on your beard.

In sum: It is a trade by which a lot of people earn their living, praise be to Him Who inspires anything He wants to do anything He wants.

From the Dictionary of Syrian Trades, vol. 1
by Muhammad Sa‘id al-Qasimi (1843–1900)

If on Washington Square @ Sullivan Street

Wednesday 12 November
was the day of the Book of Rain's launch at NYU's
Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies.
For captioned video, please follow this link

Fun and games

Ibn Jinni related this anecdote from the poet Abu ‘Ali al-Sanawbari [altered to Abu ‘Ali al-Farisi in a later report], who said:

At Aleppo, I set out for Sayf al-Dawla's palace. Just outside the city walls, I was met by a masked rider making for me with a long spear! Aiming its tip at my chest, he blocked my movement and nearly hurled me from my mount. Not until he drew closer and loosed his mask did I recognize the grinning countenance of al-Mutanabbi, who recited (a verse from his "Ode on the Reconquest of al-Hadath," meter: ṭawīl):

      At al-Uhaydab we scattered their leaders
          like coins scattered over a bride

     "How do you like my poem?" he asked. "It's good, right?"
     "Damn you!" I said. "You could have killed me."

Ibn Jinni said: [Later on,] I recounted this anecdote to al-Mutanabbi in Baghdad. He didn't deny it, but laughed and declared his admiration for al-Sanawbari, and praised him for spreading the story around.

From The Pearl of the Age by Abu Mansur al-Tha‘alibi