August 21, 2021

A weaver's song

I am informed by al-Husayn ibn Yahya, on the authority of Hammad, that Hammad's father said:

Malik ibn Abi al-Samh was staying in Mecca, at the home of a man of the Banu Makhzum who had a weaver for his slave. Someone came along and asked: "Have you heard your weaver's song?"
       "No!" the man said. "Does he sing?"
       "Yes," he was told, "with lyrics by Abu Dahbal al-Jumahi."
        The man sent for the weaver and told him to sing it. "It's no good unless I'm at my loom," the weaver said. So his master brought Malik to the weaver's room, where the weaver sat at his loom and sang (meter: ṭawīl): 

   This night goes on too long. It is not lifting.
      [I am harried and dragged down by worry with no relief.
   All night long, angst rides me. It's like 
       being stubbed in the ribs with a glowing coal.]

Malik learned the song, and when he sang it, everyone took it for his composition. "By God," he would say, "it was not I. It was none but a weaver who came up with this song."

From the Book of Songs

August 4, 2021

Alexander the Sleepless XI

All along the the Roman frontier, the blessed Alexander went strengthening everybody in their faith. He fed the poor as if they were his children, and taught the rich to do good works. His words struck them with such compunction that they brought forth the documents of their claims against their debtors, and burned them up before him. But some pestilent types, whose wealth was their plumage, rose up with their minds full of darkness and said to him, "Have you come to us to make us poor?" On these men who were so ungrateful for the gifts of God, the blessed one pronounced a curse, and at that fortified camp there was no rain for three years

When the cause for Alexander's anger became known to all, they went in a single-minded body to extirpate the guilty from the camp. In terror these men took refuge in the church, and tearfully begged forgiveness for their wrongs. At this, the rest of the mob were struck with fear of winding up in the same position. It was said that the blessed Alexander had shown up in Antioch, and they agonized over this, conjecturing that he had gone there to denounce them to military high command. So they went to the bishops of the Romans, that they might intervene with the blessed Alexander through letters on their behalf. And the bishops sped their letters to the blessed one, entreating him to take pity on the residents of the camp, and to plead with God on their behalf. 

The holy one cried aloud when he received their letters and learned of the community's anguish, and he spoke sorrowfully to the Lord. "Who am I, my Lord, that at my word You have visited evil on guiltless people? I shall always be grateful to You, Master, for listening to me who am a sinner. And now I beg for your compassion. Take pity on the poor, and restore their lost fruits of the past three years, that I may know Whose servant I am." [....] And it happened that in the fourth year, that camp took in a harvest like none before, just as Alexander had enjoined.

But the Lord's wrath against those pestilential men was unabated. In a matter of days, their children all died, and their herds and homes were raided by barbarians and thieves, leaving no doubt in anyone's mind that it was on account of the grief they had caused the holy man.

From The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.33-4