In God we seek refuge from the harm of what runs deep inside the earth and what comes out from it, and we beg Him for success in describing it and escaping from it. We beg for God's help and seek His protection from what has poisoned the current year, it being the 44th [of the eighth century of Islam], in which an earthquake struck Syria, turning its men, horses, and all who drag a tail into direct objects of the earth's transitive action. May there be no return of earthquakes! They hamper the intellect and halt it, and drive people out to the deserts and the wastes, where they exhaust themselves with constant prayer.
Time is a deceiver of man.
It enfeebles and abases him and does him harm.
When the Earthquake strikes, how much is left
of Ornament that captivated formerly?
Sixty days have passed, and one family is warned by another's example. When I was asked how the wall [of a certain house] could remain standing for two consecutive months, I said: "It is seeking atonement." For on a day of Ramadan it collapsed onto its people.
In the Merciful we seek refuge from the like
of earthquakes which rout all hope of sleep.
It sprang violently upon the unresistant
and condemned the chaste to death by stoning.
It was the sentence of the Almighty, Powerful and Triumphant,
Whose kindliness is unconditional and eternal.
In fear we eyed the shaking stones as they separated from each other. "Some there are that split apart... and some fall down in fear of God" and fly to pieces. How many houses did workers and technicians enter whose hard stones were freshly spattered, "wherein they found a wall about to collapse"! How many high places brought low, never to be raised! and how many buildings reduced in height, to await the Day of Judgment! How many nights we stayed awake - as on nights of travel - and called on God, praised be He, that there be "peace, until the rising of the dawn"! We ask God for recompense without affliction, and we seek refuge in God from affliction without recompense.
The refugees avoid the valleys and remain out of doors in January, hobbled by the cold:
Fear of the heaving earthquake
hurled us "onto the open shore"
of the empty desert, where nothing can land on us
but rain from the sky.
The natural philosopher said: "This was caused by vapors of the pent-up wind." The astrologer said: "It was provoked by the movement of a star." Whereupon the legal scholar declaimed:
In the agency of God I am the first believer,
and the first to disbelieve that this was star-ordained.
The philosopher is without grace or warrant,
and the star-struck have nothing to back them up.
The scholars have a clearer perspective, for God's law is more on point.
Aleppo prevailed over the disaster. Cracks appeared in its mosque, and its minaret waved and fell to leaning. and had the call been stronger it would have been apocopated. Thanks to God, however, the mosque remained intact and its minaret was spared emasculation, in order that God's word might still resound. But tears for [the neighborhood of] al-'Aqaba flow like water from the sky. "What will make you know what is al-'Aqaba?" Men's and women's quarters were thrown together inside the moving buildings, whose walls came together in a farewell embrace, and many necks were broken and rib cages intermixed, inspiring this rajaz couplet:
The earthquake took a special delight
in the flesh of the neckbone of the 'Aqabite.
Downcast by the whole catastrophe, Aleppo's provincial deputy left the city. His grief and remorse were evident, as he walked with a copy of the Qur'ān shielding his head.
I guarantee that if you saw him
promenading beneath that Qur'ān
you would have thought him the very picture of Joseph
with a copy of Sūrat Yūsuf on his head.
And if you had seen the citadels and fortresses, when all their guardhouses were brought down:
The earthquake flew at the Citadel of citadels
without fear of archers or traps.
When the fortress learned who was the Aimer of the blow
it left its foundation and went to its knees before Him.
Those who escaped the ruin to live on in dread
of the joint extinction of novelty and antiquity know that
the matter belongs to God. And many a speculator
does not err until he acts.
The people were reduced to camping next to the sites vacated by their houses when the earthen tide swept them away.
But if you had seen Manbij, birthplace of streams and source of the early morning's blowing breeze—Manbij, in the grip of obliterating force—"as if it had not flourished yesterday," and the gloom of the sun and full moon on its rubble!
Their deaths in the rubble did not fall short
of His decree, and they entered the company of martyrs.
The Creator's might is blameless
and there is no disgrace in His creation brought low.
Alas for Manbij, the splendid city! It became a ruin whose description wearies the tongue, enveloped in dust and shadow and ridden by a dark black wind.
They and their houses perished in an instant
as if on schedule.
May there be a disinterment of their bright faces
like swords taken out from sheaths.
I am told that the stones of its minaret flew across the sky like missiles:
Drunk on the earthquake's wine, it danced
like a sportive camel under a hasty rider.
Its libation set my tears to pouring out
for what befell its house and the people in it.
When they heard the horrible sound, "they left their homes by the thousands, fearing death." But their fear was no protection, nor were the tears they shed, nor the porticoes of their kings when their kings lay dead.
With the walls around our young maids fallen,
what can I say to Him? "Be Thou our wall"?
The feebleness of my descriptive powers is too great, and my own greatness is too feeble, and with these verses I conclude:
The people of Manbij were like silkworms,
whose homes turn into graves.
Blessed were they, whose mulberry tree
was a garden paved with silk.
The Epistle of the Earthquake by Zayn al-Din ibn al-Muzaffar ibn al-Wardi
