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 stays clear. 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
