Al-Farazdaq asked ‘Umar ibn Yazid al-Usaydi to send him some khat, and what he received was not to his liking. 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 quivering crop of your garden plots
bloom with donkey dicks!
May each engorged prick rearing up from the soil
be bound [into sheaves of dicks]!
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.
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?"
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
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.
For those who care so much about al-Mutanabbi's thievery from Abu Tammam, I shall expose his thievery from a latter-day poet far below Abu Tammam in stature and fame, lacking Abu Tammam's technique, his savvy, and his elevated style: namely, Nasr al-Khubza’aruzzi (The Rice-Bread Baker). Because if you really want to understand how al-Mutanabbi rips off Abu Tammam, you need to stop focusing on just him.
I'm well aware that some reject my view. They don't accept that al-Mutanabbi would copy the baker-poet, preferring Abu Tammam to a contemporary whose verse is ignored by scholars. They care only for imitations of al-Mutanabbi's great predecessor, whose prestige looms in their minds. But al-Mutanabbi's fans only know the sublimity and prosperity of his later years. They didn't know him when he was a total unknown of obscure station, even though this period of his life lasted longer than his riches and high estate, when his name became famous, and the sharpness of his acumen known to all.
The following report came to me from Abu 'l-Qasim ‘Ali ibn Hamza al-Basri, one of his closest friends who knew him best. Abu 'l-Qasim said he was with al-Mutanabbi at the time of his arrival in Kufa from Egypt, and observed his reaction when an old man [who had known the poet as a young man] used him less reverently than al-Mutanabbi was then accustomed to. "Ho, Abu 'l-Tayyib!" the old man said. "When you took leave of us, you had three hundred poems in your catalog. Thirty years later, you're back with just a hundred some-odd poems. Did you go scattering them along the road?"
"Cut the funny stuff," said al-Mutanabbi.
"Then tell me what happened to the poem called al-Shāṭiriyya (?), your emulative response to the poem by al-Khubza’aruzzi. You went all the way to Basra to make him hear it! Why have you stricken it now?"
"That one was a lapse of my early career," said al-Mutanabbi.
"Do you remember any of it?" I asked the old man, and he recited a few verses for me.
Abu 'l-Qasim said: A good while later, I found another pretext for asking al-Mutanabbi: "Were you ever in Basra?"
"Yes," he said.
"Where'd you stay?" I asked him, and he named a place I knew to be just four or five houses down from al-Khubza’aruzzi's shop. And then I knew the old man was telling the truth.
Abu 'l-Qasim reported also that he asked the baker-poet's neighbors about al-Mutanabbi, and was told that long ago, in his youth, Abu 'l-Tayyib had indeed fraternized with him. But the stans deny that al-Khubza’aruzzi would hold any appeal. Due to the baseness of his poetic art, and his contemporaneity, they don't consider al-Khubza’aruzzi worthy of study, let alone an actual source for al-Mutanabbi. And so they miss al-Mutanabbi's appropriations of his work.
Abu Ahmad said: ‘Abd Allah Niftawayh said: I heard these verses from Muhammad ibn Yazid al-Mubarrad (meter: wāfir):
I dread the night when leaks flood in and dump their worries,
harrassing me until the break of day.
Unwinking nights, thanks to my house
when skies above are like a lovelorn eye.
That is, it was a house when clouds grew thick.
By the time the clouds moved on, it was a road hazard.
The hearts of all my neighbors fill with pity over me
at the appearance of the faintest cloud of rain.
The verses are by al-‘Abbas al-Mashuq, who was called "The Lovelorn" (al-mashūq) after the namesake verse:
...when skies above are like a lovelorn eye
[Abu Ahmad said:] These verses by Dik al-Jinn were recited to me by someone else (meter: sarī‘):
I've never spent a night, my brothers, and neither have you,
as bad as the one I had last night.
Every inch of my house
has a leak streaming down from above
By al-Sanawbari (meter: wāfir):
What a house I stay in! with a leak for my bunkmate,
who shows no sign of ever moving out.
When heaven weeps out of one eye,
my ceilings weep back out of one thousand
And Ibn al-Mu‘tazz said (meter: ṭawīl):
When I tell about the rain that fell I don't exaggerate,
by the Lord Who into souls art the All-Seeing!
My house's roofing sags to the earth we trample.
Its walls kneel and bow down to the ground.
Thr roof above me has me sleepless, looming over me
like a stormcloud gushing.
When its clay [takes on water and] weighs it down,
its edges creak like chirping crickets.
Hard as a chemist's pestle is the ass they beat on.
Rinsed in his own piss, and gagging on it [if pools of piss be all there is to drink],
his forelegs pebbled like a pox victim's hide,
he lunges at aggressive rivals, and when his bite misses,
his clashing teeth chirp like a sparrow.
In this ass's stable, the yearlings are pregnant.
But do you know the abode in the heights of Dhu 'l-Qur
defaced by dust on the bawling winds?
Blanketing sands are what's left of the place
gone bleak and abandoned to the weather,
only an outline where their trench was
long ago, and it was a joy to the eye
that beheld the dark-eyed beauties there abiding
Nothing remains in doubt after
my assay of every enigma,
from what Hermes said at the beginning
to what Heraclius said at the end,
to the riddles couched by Galen
in twisting dodges,
and the primordial traditions
upheld by sacred revelation,
and the encryptions of Jabir, who
practiced what the ancients did.
For all they held back, I vindicate them.
On all they put forth, I have commentary.
From all the materials I have gathered,
I have clarified and broadcast every secret
in my Keys, the book loaded with wisdom
that springs the lock jammed shut,
and its concomitant Lamps
of brilliant flame,
like nothing produced by anyone
before my time or after.
Nothing less than the epitome
of every long-studied science
is what my verses hold.
By Mu’ayyad al-Din al-Husayn ibn ‘Ali al-Tughra’i (meter: mutaqārib)
This muwashshaha, in which Ibn al-Wakil incorporated hemistichs from the Nuniyya of Ibn Zaydun, is one of the most remarkable poems I have come across:
Our death has been announced.
The crier proclaims our sentence. Were we unschooled in sorrow, it would do us in
The sea of love drowns
all who try to swim it,
and all who fret and moon
the fire of love scorches.
Many's the young hero
whose sleep it takes away.
It racks and ruins bodies
and makes the days turn Lightless, when our nights with you were brilliant
Dear confidant, mine own,
stay a while and hear me out.
Beware of giving in to passion,
it'll burn you up.
An ordeal to be avoided!
So hear and spread the word.
The sea of love is bitter.
Heedless, we dove in And at once the crier announced our annihilation
When hopes turn to fine young things
you are in for disquiet.
My efforts were for
a gorgeous and inhumane lad.
Though his only care was gift-getting,
the favors he got he turned down.
And just as soon as he
favored me with caress or near miss, Morning replaced our closeness with separation
I call on all that
ties us together: Unless
you restore our union
and relieve my burning eyes,
this life of isolation
will grind me down.
Let it be the way it was
with my kin and brethren When the wellspring of our joys was unpolluted
I call on the community
that flees this lovelorn fool,
breaking faith with him
for no wrong done.
It shouldn't be like this.
It is a social ill.
They scant the damage done
by their estrangement Though ever was estrangement lovers' ruin
O seeker after rain!
Turn aside at the wadi
of the people of Badr.
Mayhap your thirst
will be quenched by a torrent
if you stand among them and call out:
"Bring me to life,
and bring me kind word From a distant one whose word alone can revive me"
My days go by
as if they were years.
It used to be the
other way round.
The days flew by like erotic dreams.
I wish they'd never ended,
and a cup of Mixed wine flew
between us, and the singers were singing our song
Ahmad ibn Yahya Tha‘lab was one of Ibn Abu 'l-‘Abbas ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Mu‘tazz's teachers. It is narrated that, after some time apart, Ibn al-Mu‘tazz missed him sorely, and wrote to him (meter: rajaz):
A man in fetters thirsts
for water from cold rainclouds sent careening
by the wind, unsullied, unmuddied,
shed in abundance by dark cloud cover,
wetting the rock and coating it like reflective glass
that would flash if the sun hit it,
unmixed rainwater, clean and pure—
what passion equals his desire, if not mine for you?
And yet I dread you. Unlocker of barred knowledge,
you are the sharp-eyed language critic who,
if he says, "That's no good," then it won't fly.
Now we are apart, and far from one another,
but recollection reunites us, even though we don't unite.
Tha‘lab answered his student: "May God prolong your life! You took the opening lines from a poem of Jamil's that I dictated to you: (meter: ṭawīl)
Women thirsting at a spring. Day and night
they hover, weakened, shrinking from the blows of rods,
never turning away and never getting
close enough to touch cool water.
On every drop, their eyes are fixed. The water-keepers' voices
are all they hear. With death for a barrier,
are they thirstier than I, who rave in love for you,
despite the opposition of the foe?
Although you do not see me, I am
your brother still. You need vigilance, and my eye is on you,
and I love what it sees, whether or not you are seeing me.
Ibn al-Mu‘tazz was open to his teacher's reproach, and accepted it without resentment. It is said that, later on, Tha‘lab wrote to him (meter: basīṭ):
Tell this to your brother. Although he's far away,
and we are not together, really we are,
for my gaze is on my mental image of him
while our homes are far apart.
God knows I cannot recollect him.
How to recollect the one you never forget?
There was a Hanafi jurist named Baqbaq who installed himself at the Mustansiriyya Madrasa, and when the professor Kamal al-Din ibn al-Ibari died a few days later, Ibn al-Maghribi composed this mawali about him:
Can you recite from memory a thousand rulings by Quduri?
How about a thousand lines of Abu Hafs?
[Ibn al-Ibari was equal to it,] but without cribsheets
old Baqbaq gets lost
You're a bird of evil omen in human form,
and bad vibes are your only share
If you'd only pull up stakes and travel on— Hey screech owl! Disappear to anywhere
And in jest he addressed these verses to a friend of his (meter: sarī‘):
Well done, my hoopoe of Bilqis!
Well done, my permit of Iblis!
My spy amid the sodomites
and to the youth my go-between!
Up now, to the monastery!
Drink with me to clanging bells,
where liquid gold that flows in cups
is ransomed by what's hard and cold.
The branches on the spreading tree
are clothed in beauty, don't you see?
When joy comes to your frowny face
the cloud of gloom above our heads
will be made shade of wings of doves
and peacock tails in fans outspread
I wish I had the power to forget her! But
every way I go, it's like Layla's there.
It's been said that he would absent himself [from Buthayna] for fear the Evil Eye would turn her against him:
Abu Ahmad [al-Hasan ibn ‘Abd Allah al-‘Askari] learned these verses of his from [Abu Bakr Muhammad] al-Suli, who heard them from both Ahmad ibn Yahya [Tha‘lab] and Ahmad ibn Sa‘id al-Dimashqi, who heard them from al-Zubayr [ibn Bakkar], and he taught them to me (meter: ṭawīl):
She stuck with me long enough for me to dread the Eye.
Two days I stayed away, fearing separation.
I found it hard. It tested my endurance, but not hers.
My darling found my absence no vexation.
In this vein, Abu Ahmad taught me some eloquent verses by Ibrahim ibn al-‘Abbas [al-Suli], which he heard from [the other] al-Suli, who heard them from both Tha‘lab and Abu Dhakwan, who heard them directly from the poet (meter: ṭawīl):
A passing East wind buffets the scrubland lodger.
The stirring of that wind just breaks my heart,
that East wind lately come from where my beloved is.
What soul is safe from passion where the beloved used to stay?
And now there dawns awareness of despair inside of me,
with the sensation of your strike against my soul.
Ibrahim "raided" this motif from Dhu 'l-Rumma, who said (meter: ṭawīl):
When wind kicks up from the direction
of Mayy and her people, I am kicked by longing too,
and passion wrings the tears out of my eyes.
What soul is safe from passion where the beloved used to stay?
North winds of heartbreak
are all I see from you, Zalum.
When you break us up through no fault of mine,
they'll lay fault for it with you.
My complaint is old, her rebuff nothing new,
but the shock of it is ever renewed.
The sea is the sea. A palm's a palm.
An elephant's an elephant. A giraffe is tall.
Earth is earth. It faces the sky.
In between is where birds fly.
And when the park is tossed by wind,
earth stays put while branches bend.
Water runs on a bed of sand.
It shows up everywhere it flows.
If you think it dispels hunger
you must be a numbskulled dope.
Swim with your robe on. What do you get?
The swimmer and the robe get wet.
I call on bananas to be peeled
and honeyed with sweet syrup.
And kunafeh in sugared layers!
Without you, my heart burns up.
Hashish slayers, ready me
the vagabond gift that slays its slayer.
It'll revive you, if you let it.
And don't hold back. A small dose is wasted.
Life is sweet when you get high.
So many stoners are happy in life!
Hear me out, brothers. Its virtues are serious.
Take it from one with loads of experience.
Al-Asma‘i transmitted this long poem rhymed in rā’, in sarī‘ meter [scanned more helpfully as rajaz by Badr al-Din al-‘Ayni], where each line is rhymed in the diminutive ending, signifying in most cases what is paltry and small in quantity:
At Dhu Sudayr, the misery
of all who stay at al-Ghumayr
oppresses Layla in her robe,
curled like a hedgehog in its hole.
Shivers break out on my spine
and my chest is quivering
like a cat who warns her kitten.
Parched out in the wind and rain
and frigid cold that's no mere chill,
from midday to the wee small hours,
lit barely by a slip of moon
(the month is only four days in),
I fret and toss until the dawn,
drizzle-damp to my short hairs.
From road to road I'm kicked along
until, when my poor prick juts out,
in all its girth down to its trunk,
she sees the sad state of my putz.
Her grub is stashed in a dust-brown rag,
the nun who goes by Umm al-Khayr.
Disorderly her headwrap's wound.
The waist-sash round her smock is bound.
She sends her warp through heddle-eyes,
and in the convent clangs her bell
before cock-crow, when hens arise.
"I pity you!" she wails at me.
"A fugitive from the regime
you seem," to which I said, "That's me!
Without pause, I range and rove
so kids can get a meal to eat,
little ones, as bald as chicks,
and widows waiting on some food."
"I rejoice in every good!"
she said, and oiled and combed my locks
and served me bread with salted fish
pulled from the sea, or Egypt's docks,
with oil that was sour and rancid
drizzled over hulled lentils,
and some dates well desiccated.
She fixed me then with a lusty eye,
and pelted me with pebbles flung,
aimed at my bits and wayward one.
And when my little feast was through,
she joined my side and stroked my dong.
My ostrich flew! The bird had run.
"You'll need to find another one,"
I said. "Back when my strap was cut,
and I was like an ass in rut
I used to rebound like an eagle.
But now I perch beside my grave,
do I wait on my fate's direction?
Nay! by Him Who aideth me
from birth up to my resurrection!"
A man described as ‘abāmā’ is a doltish simpleton. Jamīl said (meter: ṭawīl):
This dolt has never joined a fight, or knelt a camel
for its saddle as it strains against a tether.
Herds are what he's busy at, pasture
his eternal quest. His thoughts are of his nanny goats
sired by a dusky buck, with horns that poke up
from their skulls like pods of carob.
His gut is big, and though his mind's a muddle,
his eye is ever on the smallest kid, and long his rod.
Al-Aṣma‘ī said: A man who is ṭabāqā’ is without insight into what concerns him, as in the verse by Jamīl:
This dullard's never joined a fight, or knelt a camel
for its saddle as it strains against a tether.
This is the Basran recension of the verse as al-Aṣma‘ī recited it, and Abū ‘Ubayd reported that he said: "‘Ayāyā’ has the same meaning as ṭabāqā’, and is said of the male camel that won't mount a female." In his Book of Uncommon Words, Abū ‘Ubayd says: "A ṭabāqā’ is an impotent dullard."
From The Curtailed and the Prolonged by Abū ‘Alī al-Qālī
Who shuns the mob lives on. Beware of mixing with the throng! Just look at what it did for Ham. For all Ham's milling about the enclosure, Shem was the elect of God, the Apportioner.
A creature of seclusion, whose realm is the night, I am puny, but [unstoppable in flight] "like a boulder the flood washes down from a height." By day, I hide from others' view. Isolation is necessary, in my view. Night is when I unwrap myself, for "The rising of night is when impressions are strongest." The sun, when she rises, sentences my eyes to blindness, and I covet the sight of anything else. Against the sun's eye, I close my own, and where she is present, I make myself gone. Why should my heart placate what's subservient to my Lord? Fie on irreligious leanings toward what's transient and remiss: the sun who hauls her fire just to warm the solar disk!
[The bat went on to say (meter: mutaqārib): ]
How long you've been her prisoner! How much longer will you be?
Now, by God, the time has come to set the prisoner free.
She showers you with affection, makes her visits known to all,
but any circumspection on her part is hard to see.
If you were serious about your feelings
you would flee her when she flees,
and turn your love to Him Whose love
is glory, and rejoice.
The way of faith and purity
mends the heart and leads aright.
To make your home inside the Garden of Eternity,
God's love is where to put your eyes.
While those who work away the day will find reward tomorrow,
sleep all day rewards the wakers of the night.
I have seen these verses in the handwriting of Ibrahim ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Su’alati, who acknowledged them as his (meter: kāmil):
Lithe as a shoot, my tormentor in blue
passes by, exulting in his pride.
Tobacco smoke envelops his face, going up
from inside him like mist on a winter's day,
as if screening his beauty—like the full moon's
when it rises, and dazzles in the paleness of its sky—
as if screening it from people's eyes
lest they fall slain by him [as have I!]
These anonymous verses are quite similar (meter: ṭawīl):
When he comes into view, in his caftan of blue,
swaggering with pride in outrageous beauty,
I cannot suppress my cry of "Stop!" at all who blame me,
"And behold my full moon in his dark sky!"
Poets and writers choose from a range of hues to describe the sky, which changes under different conditions and forms of expression. Some describe it in terms of zurqa "blueness," as in the verses above, whose authors follow this description of a girl in blue by Abu ‘Uthman al-Najim (meter: khafīf):
Qabul surpasses the occasion when she arrays
herself in raiment as brilliant as herself,
dressed in blue and topped with a face
like the full moon in the paleness of the sky.
Thus did the ancients describe it. When the sun is shining, the sky's blueness is an azure hue produced by the mixture of blue and white, the color of blood flowing in a vein.
The sky is called akhdar "blue-green" in hadith: "No one more truthful than Abu Dharr ever went beneath the blue-green [sky] or trod the dust-brown [earth]."
And it is called lazawardi "azure," as where Abu Hafs ibn Burd described a boy dressed in that color (meter: majzū’ al-kāmil):
In azure silk, the sight of him
blotted out everything else.
"What mortal is this?" I exclaimed
at his exorbitant beauty.
"Let no one deny the moon," he answered
the right to go robed in the sky!"
Some call the sky banafsaji "violet," as where Ibn al-Mu‘tazz described a boy in opulent brocade (meter: majzū’ al-kāmil):
I marvel at a violet robe.
To see it is to die a lover's death.
Dressed in it now, you are become
a full moon in the hue of its sky.
Abu ‘Ubayd Allah al-Marzubani reported that Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Jawhari informed him that Muhammad ibn ‘Ali al-Sulami said: It was reported to me by ‘Abd Allah ibn Abi Sa‘d that ‘Umar ibn Shabba al-Numayri said: Muhammad ibn al-Hasan told me: Muzahim ibn Zafar informed me that his uncle said:
In the land of the Banu ‘Udhra, I saw an aged man whose body was drawn in on itself like a bird's. I asked the woman attending him who this was. "It's ‘Urwa," she told me. So I bent down close and asked him, "Does your love affect you still?" He said (meter: ṭawīl):
My gut is like a wingèd grouse of the sands,
so very sharply does it flutter.
I went round to his left side, and he repeated the verse until I'd heard it from him four times.
I was sent as tax collector to the Banu ‘Udhra, and went about collecting their taxes until, when I thought I had passed beyond their territory, a threadbare tent came into view. Lying in front of it was a young man reduced to skin and bones. On hearing my tread, he began to chant in a weak and mournful voice (meter: ṭawīl):
To the healer of al-Yamama I'll pay what's due,
and to the healer of Hajr—but first they must heal me.
Just then, a rustling came from the tent, and inside it I beheld an old woman. "Old woman," I said, "come out, for this young man has passed the point of death, in my estimation." "Mine too," she said. "I haven't heard so much as a whimper from him in over a year, except these verses lamenting his departed soul" (meter: basīṭ):
Mothers weep forever. Who weeps for me
today? Now I am the one being subtracted.
Today they let me hear it, but when I uplifted
the people that I met, I heard nothing.
She came out and lo, the man had died. So I wrapped him in a shroud and prayed over him. I asked, "Who was he?" She said, "This is ‘Urwa ibn Hizam, the man slain by love."
