What the parakeet said

The peacock minded the jasmine, lamenting the lengths his crime had driven him, when along came the parakeet, virginal and green, saying:
     "Fie on the peacock of the birds! The only good peacock is on a plate served. O fugitive peacock, outcast, reject! Your bad interior is betrayed by your conduct. But outer appearance is not that which God, Who sees into hearts, looks at.
     "How come you among us, the picture of a bride—when the meaning of the picture is a widow inside? Why not quit your parks and gardens and tend elsewhere to your distress, and shed your pride and fancy dress, that God might pardon your past offense? You were expelled from the Garden along with Adam, and shared his sorrow. So join him in repentance and the forgiveness that follows! You might make it back there. Adam will, in spite of his Antagonist's guile and envy and bile, return to the happy state he was forced out of, after reaping at the end of days what he sowed in their beginning.
     "Humanity, O peacock, is in my view the noblest of animate beings, on whom the Lord's honor and favor are impressed, and for whom He created everything in existence. And their talkative blue-eyed fellow am I! Fellowship with the blessed is no reason to cry.
     "Praise be to Him Whose hand holds the Good, for bringing together human and bird. I'm not a strong flyer, and I don't vie for power with humanity. But silence is praised in everyone but me."
     [Then the parakeet said (meter: majzū’ al-ramal):]

     Unseen, but Present in the secret.
          Breaker of the hard, and its Resetter.
     So great my dread of His reproach is
          that my heart is sent aflutter.
     What I boast of is the Beloved.
          You would out-boast me? Then step up.
     My quality is essential
          and a gemstone was my mold.
     I am the parakeet! I know how high
          my worth is when I'm sold.

From the Language of the Birds of Ibn al-Wardi

Another description of the locust

It is said [in al-Damiri's Life of Animals] that the locust unites the features of ten mighty creatures: the face of a stallion, the eye of an elephant, the neck of a bull, the horn of an oryx, the torso of a lion, the belly of a snake, the wings of the vulture, the forelegs of a camel, the feet of an ostrich and a scorpion's tail. Such was the theme of a poet who said (meter: ṭawīl):

   Thigh of a camel, shank of an ostrich,
      a vulture's paw and the breast of a biting lion.
   Its belly was a gift from the viper of the earth,
      and the noble horse gave up its face and nose.
   The elephant's eye is aped by its, and its
      horns are the wild cow's, do you follow?
   Its neck and its tail are a bull's and a scorpion's,
      and God is the One Who knows best.

Another poet has said (meter: kāmil):

   The times are rotten. The stench is general.
      Indeed, the majority of created beings are corrupt.
   Take the locust, which spares the money of the rich.
      All the wealth of the poor it can find, it engulfs.

From the Rare and Marvelous Tales of Devout Luminaries
of Times Gone By of Shihab al-Din Ahmad al-Qalyubi

Palms up ears down

                            A palm grove is slow
                                to give back to the planter.
                            But a happy return is assured
                                once the leaves start to show.
                            Time sustains the palm
                                when other stumps wither.
                            In a race against wheat,
                                the palm is the winner.

Ibn al-Rumi

Meter: majzu’ al-ramal

Sheep for sheep

Al-Asma‘i said: I was told by Khalaf al-Ahmar, who heard it from a man of the Banu Hirmaz, whose father told him:

       Al-‘Ajjaj came to me and asked, "Would you accept a ewe lamb in exchange for another sheep that answers my description?"
     "What is your description?" I said.
     "Not much hair in the front, but lots of hair in back. From the front, you'd think it was a goat, but from behind you can tell it's a sheep."
       I searched my flocks, and found one sheep answering his description, which I gave to him, and took his ewe lamb in exchange. I wouldn't have done this for just anyone - but this was al-‘Ajjaj, who might bring fame to my flocks!

From The Book of the Sheep by Al-Asma‘i

An imbecile from the Age of Ignorance

Another imbecile was ‘Ijl ibn Lujaym ibn Mus‘ab ibn ‘Ali ibn Bakr ibn Wa’il. One example of his idiocy is that when asked, "What do you call your horse?" he stood before it, put out one of its eyes and said, "I call him al-A‘war." And al-‘Anazi said (meter: tawil):

    The Banu ‘Ijl accuse me of their patriarch's malady.
        But what man was ever dumber than ‘Ijl?
    It was their patriarch who made his steed half-blind, when
        into a byword for idiocy he made their name.

From Reports of Imbeciles and Simpletons by Ibn al-Jawzi (Ibid).

A‘shā's pearl

 Sleep is for the untroubled. I lie awake all night, unable to sleep
     nor rise, shepherding the stars, my elbow for a pillow,
 my eyes propped open by anxiety, the malady that cancels slumber.
     She went off with my heart and won't set it free.
 If I don't see her then I won't get better. What healing
     is there for the lovesick if she won't come near?
 She ensnared my heart with the eyes of a doe that heeds
     the squeak of her helpless newborn on the ground,
 and the cool of her teeth in their orderly rows—as if
     twice rinsed with camphor is their flavor—
 and the untwitching neck of a white gazelle as it nibbles
     leaves and berries from the arāk-tree,
 and a haunch like a mound of sand, steep and curving.
     No slim-hipped, girdled thing is she [whom I describe].
 She's like the fair-hued pearl disembedded by a diver
     who braves the depths of Dārīn where it lay.
 From year to year he’s craved it, ever since his moustache sprouted.
     Yearning agitates the diver in old age.
 The desire of his soul is unremitting, and he flings [care for] it aside,
     and when he catches sight of his desire, he burns for it.
 The pearl is guarded by a jinn—a burly one who sets men amaze.
     His eyes are open and he is on it.
 Always mindful of the pearl, he circles it,
     vigilant for thieves who prowl the deep,
 coveting it. The pearl might surrender its enclosure
     to a diver who risks drowning to obtain it!
 Who craves the pearl in the whirl of the unfathomable is parted
     from his life, and perishes beneath its heaving surface.
 Who gains it gains eternity without end.
     His satisfaction is complete, and he is blessed and happy.
 That’s how she is. Your soul inflames your hope for her,
     and you are ruined, and burnt is what you get.

By al-A‘shā Maymūn ibn Qays

When the saints go marching out

By Abu Madyan Shu‘ayb al-Ghawth (meter: ṭawīl):

To you I surrendered my reason, my gaze, my hearing,
    my spirit, my insides, and all of me altogether.
By astonishment at your beauty I was waylaid
    and, at sea in love's distraction, knew not my place.
When you put me under orders to keep your secret hid,
    it came to light through the outpouring of my tears.
My endurance gave out. My resilience grew small.
    Sleep and I parted ways, and my couch was barred to me.
Then I came before the Judge of Love and said: My [fellow] lovers
    are harsh with me. "In love you are a vain pretender,"
        is what they say.
But I have witnesses! To my sorrow and my ardor they will attest,
    and you will hear the truth of what I pretend:
my sleeplessness, my suffering, my passion and dejection,
    my pining away, my jaundiced pallor, and my tears.
It is a wonder and a marvel how I pine for their company.
    Even in their company, my longing for them flares.
My eye weeps for them when they are at its black center,
    and my heart bewails their estrangement, even as they
        lodge between my ribs.
Whoever gives in to love's distraction and seeks me out
    will find me among the poor, with nothing on me.
And whoever clamps me in jail, indulging their harshness,
    will have me [nonetheless] for their intercessor.

Alternately attributed to Malik ibn al-Murahhal

Another cat poem

Abu 'l-Faraj al-Isbahani (d. 967 CE), author of The Book of Songs, complained of mice and described a cat (meter: khafīf):

    On deadly watchmen with arching backs I call for aid
        against a host with tiny teeth and whiplike tails.
    Created for malevolence, nastiness and ruin,
        their degradation dates back to Creation itself.
    The holes they bore in ceilings, walls and floors
        are as galling as bodily ulcers.
    Anything comestible, they consume it.
        Nothing drinkable is safe.
    And they know all about gnawing clothes.
        My heart is pitted by the holes they gnaw.
    What brings my anguish to a pause has Turkish whiskers
        and a blue coat with leopard spots.
    In make and manners he is a lion of the thicket.
        A lion of the thicket! think all who spy him.
    Into corners of the room and along the ceiling,
        his gaze is fixed on every [mouse’s] door.
    He keeps his claws in scabbards, up until
        the landing of his pounce upon the prey.
    When he voids himself, it is in private.
        None know where it happens but the dirt.
    Some folks play dress-up games with him, put jewelry
        on him, and with henna dye him first and last.
    Sometimes he struts in bridegroom’s finery,
        other times they doll him like a bride.
    Such a lovable companion! and worthy as a friend
        above the common run of friendship, and beyond it.

From The Merits of the Housecat by Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti

In praise of the cat poet

The finesse of Abū ‘Āmir al-Jurjānī is of a kind recognized by nomads and settled folk alike. How truly did the imam ‘Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī put it into words when he described him (meter: hazaj):

       If serious brilliance of appearance is what you wish for,
       and you complain your access to joy is barred,
       when desolation won't release you from its shadows,
       and you would clear the torpor from your inner eyes,
       confer with him whose flint throws inspiration,
       and in the keenness of his discernment you'll find the spark
       and all the perspicacity that you sought.
       His [guidance] suffices, and you won't reject it,
             nor complain of his answer.
       On the contrary! Betake yourself to him and you'll find success
       in al-Faḍl ibn Ismā‘īl, and be left wishing for no other man.

From The Statue of the Palace of al-Bākharzī

Disambiguation of the Banū Kawjak

‘Alī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Alī al-‘Absī, known as IBN KAWJAK AL-WARRĀQ, was a gifted literary man who practiced the stationer's trade. In Egypt he studied under Abū Muslim Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad, secretary to the vizier Abū 'l-Faḍl ibn Ḥinzāba. His writings include The Book of Tambur-Players and The Book of Noblest Aspirations to the Highest Class, a book on asceticism addressed to al-Shābushtī, author of The Book of Monasteries. He died in Syria during the reign of al-Ḥākim, around the year 394 A.H. (= 1004 CE).
       After the recapture of al-Ḥadath (in 953 CE) he said in praise of Sayf al-Dawla: (meter: khafīf):

He intended the destruction of Islam, but got his ears boxed
    at al-Ḥadath. Its walls were the destruction of his error.
Since his powers were stripped from him at spear-point,
    his soul shrinks from you. The weakling!
Fearing the ruin of his own life and property,
    he traded his stay for a departure.
And now, up in those foothills, the birds and beasts
    [of carrion] go hungry in their haunts.
How many times did you throw the birds a feast
    on the skulls of his champions?

His father al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Alī IBN KAWJAK was a poet and a literary man, of whom Abu 'l-Qāsim [Ibn ‘Asākir] al-Dimashqī says: Al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Alī ibn Kawjak lectured in Tripoli in the year 359 (= 970), narrating hadith on the authority of his father ‘Alī, as well as Abū Mas‘ūd (secretary to [Ibn?] Ḥasnūn al-Maṣrī) and Abu 'l-Qāsim ibn al-Muntāb of Iraq, and some of the scholars kept a transcript of it. These verses are attributed to him (meter: ṭawīl):

Just after her husband's unexpected death
    it turned out that his wife was pregnant.
Her family of origin was in a distant land,
    and his would-be inheritors were at her on all sides.
But when the pregnancy came to light, they eased up
    grudgingly, and crawled away like scorpions.
She came out with a newborn boy, and won the inheritance
    of the dead father. And his relatives got no share.
When of age he came into the wealth, and the eyes
    of buxom girls competed for their pleasure in him,
and he had gained the experience that leads to intelligence,
    and his body had almost attained its full stature,
and he was desired and feared, and was desirous
    of a beautiful life, and grew a beard and mustache,
[the embrace of] a chubby pair of arms behind a curtain
    was predestined for him. He is bold and never timid against the foe.
[When he eats,] butcher-bones are all he leaves behind.
    The locks of his noble dome are kept nice and short.
The most painful thing for me was the day
    their saddled camels turned away,
        their drivers taking them to Wādī Ghabā'ib.

♦         

Al-Muḥassin ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Alī IBN KAWJAK AL-ADĪB was a man of refinement. Best known as a stationer, he was also a poet. His handwriting, which resembles al-Ṭabarī's, was well known and much in demand. Al-Rūdhabārī says in the history he wrote in Egypt: "The scholar and stationer al-Muḥassin ibn al-Ḥusayn al-‘Absī died in the month of Shawwāl of the year 416 (= December 1025). He studied under Abū Muslim Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad, secretary to Ibn Ḥinzāba, together with his brother ‘Alī ibn al-Ḥusayn." Their aforementioned father was also a man of refinement.
       I read in Ibn ‘Asākir's History of Damascus that "The scholar Abū ‘Abd Allāh al-Muḥassin ibn ‘Alī [sic] ibn Kawjak dictated short, aphoristic lectures in Sidon, some on the authority of Ibn Khalawayh. These teachings were memorized and transmitted by Abū Naṣr ibn Ṭallāb."
       Ibn ‘Asākir said: I was told by ‘Abd Allāh ibn Aḥmad ibn ‘Umar that Ibn Ṭallāb said: "Our teacher al-Muḥassin ibn Kawjak dictated his teachings to us in Sidon, where I studied under him in the year 394 (= 1003-4). One of the poems he taught us was this" (meter: munsariḥ):

Your good looks are leaving you. They're on their way out,
    when eyes roll and turn away from your [onetime] beauty.
You who used to slay others are now the slain.
    You come back to life and find that it's moved on.
How many have noticed my affection for you, and my passion,
    and had a talk with me, and called me a middle-aged [fool]?
May God have mercy on you, young man,
    when young romantics start to call you "Sir."

Yāqūt, Dictionary of the Scholars IV.1733-4 and V.2278-9

Adventures in Guest-Blogging

Three versions of a poem by Abū Ṣakhr al-Hudhalī (d. ca. 700 CE),
translated with introductions by me.

♦   ♦   ♦     

As in the Collected Poems of the Tribe of Hudhayl by Abū Sa‘īd al-Sukkarī
(d. 888), hosted on Pierre Joris's blog at Jacket2

As in the Dictations of Abū ‘Alī al-Qālī (d. 966), hosted on Pierre's
blog Nomadics

As in the Book of Songs of Abu 'l-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī (d. 967),
hosted on the tumblr Lyric Poets

Plus a fourth variant attributed to Majnun Layla, hosted right here

ETA: My article gathering all these versions with a new introduction came out in Cambridge Literary Review 10 (2017) and is viewable here.

♦   ♦   ♦     

As recited by Adel Bin Hazman Al-Azimi (al-Sukkarī's version):

As attributed to Majnun

       O departure of Layla! You have spared me nothing.
            To the anguish of abandonment, you added more.
       The lengths that time went through to come between us
            were amazing. Done with what was between us, time stood still.
       O love! Let nothing halt the nightly increase
            of my ardor for her. Let the Day of Resurrection be my relief.
       To all love but ‘Āmirī love, my heart is resistant.
          "Abū ‘Amr without the ‘amr," you could call it. 
       My hands are at the verge of dampness, touching her.
            She is [like a pool] ringed with plants of leafy green.
       And the way her face's beauty lifts my trial and brings down rain!
            It is a marvel worthy of the Prophet's tribe.
       Below her robes, the motion of her frame shows through
            quite like the motion of a willow branch in flower.
       Beloved are all living things, as long as you may live,
            and when a grave contain you, beloved be the dead!
       At the mention of her name, my heart quickens 
            like a rain-drenched sparrow shaking off [its wings].
       If I were to make the major and minor pilgrimages, and renounce
            my visits to Layla, would I then perchance be recompensed?
       No sooner do I see her than I am struck dumb,
            abandoned by all cleverness and all reserve.
       If a pebble came under what I undergo, it would split the pebble.
            If a giant boulder underwent it, that boulder would crack.
       Wild animals would not put up with it, if it happened to them.
            Life-sustaining waters would not swallow it, nor would a flower.
       If the seas went through what I went through, [they would all fall still;]
           no more would swelling seas be crossed by waves.

Dīwān Majnūn Laylā 102-3

Choral fun in old Medina

Abu ‘Abd Allah [al-Hishami?] said: One day, Jamila convened a gathering to which she wore a long burnoose, and dressed her companions in burnooses of lesser make. Among the group was Ibn Surayj, who compensated for his baldness with a hairy wig he used to put on his head. But Jamila liked the sight of his baldness, and when Ibn Surayj was given his burnoose, he uncovered his pate and said, "By the Lord of the Ka‘ba, you've pulled one over on me!" And he fitted the cowl of his burnoose over his head while the rest of the group laughed at his baldness.

Jamila then stood up and began to dance while strumming a lute, in her long burnoose with a Yemeni mantle about her shoulders. Ibn Surayj too stood up to dance, along with Ma‘bad, Ghariḍ, Ibn ‘A’isha and Malik, all of them costumed like Jamila, with lutes in their hands which they played in time with her strumming and dancing, and joined their voices with hers in song [meter: kāmil]:

   Youth has gone - if only it had not! -
      when a bright gray touch surmounts the hair's parting.
   Pretty women want companions who are other than you.
      Your intimates once, now all they do is leave.
   What I say is informed by experience truly.
      You have not heard from one so experienced before:
   Treat the noble with unmixed good, and uphold your honor.
      and from the blameworthy and his like just step aside.

Jamila then called for a dyed robe and a wig of hair like Ibn Surayj's, which she fitted to her head. The rest of the group called for similar outfits, which they all put on. Jamila began to promenade while playing the lute, and the rest of the group walked behind her, as in unison they sang [verses 3, 5 and 7 of a qaṣīda by al-Kumayt al-Asadi, meter: ṭawīl]:

   Slender of waist, they walk with stately buttocks,
     bent over like sand-grouses of al-Biṭaḥ.
   She is one of those women - shy but friendly,
      no shameless flirt but neither unperfumed.
   It's like a musk-and-wine concoction,
      the bouquet of her mouth when you get her aroused.

Jamila then gave an indelicate cry, which was echoed musically by the group. When she sat down, the others did likewise, stripping off their costumes and resuming their everyday clothes. A group of callers was at Jamila's door, and when she let them in, the male singers all departed, leaving her in conversation with her hetairai.

From the Book of Songs of Abu 'l-Faraj al-Iṣbahani

Written on silk

No mortal [eye] ever beheld a letter like the one that came to me

      full of camphor, musk and ambergris.

Candied in black and yellow, the letter was redolent

      with blond-red musk imbued by a [smoky] censer.

It was written on a sheet of Quhistani [silk], and its tie-cord
     was bedolled with a limpid ruby. The seal upon it
was pressed in gold dust instead of clay, and the embossment 
     read: "I pledge to you my life and the lives of my whole family."
Inside, the greeting [said]: "To you from me,
     the long-distracted by my memory and pining for you."
And the address: "To one who is [no less] love-crazed,
     The heart of an infatuate [is here enclosed]."

A poem of ‘Umar ibn Abī Rabī‘a

Al-Jahiz on pre-Islamic prayer for rain

In time of severe drought, the early pagan Arabs used fire to beg for for rain. When their tribulations multiplied without abating, and they were obliged to resort to rain-supplication, they would get together and round up as many cattle as they could. To their tails and between their hamstrings, they lashed [sticks of] sala' and 'ushar, and then drove them up to the mountain wastes, where they set fire to them, raising a din with their prayers and entreaties. Their belief was that rain would be induced by this procedure. This is what the poem by Umayya [ibn Abi 'l-Ṣalt, fl. early 7th c.] is about (meter: khafīf):

   Out in the thorn-trees, the folk you see, they of the droning clamor,
         have suffered visitation by a year of biting [drought].
   They who, in times gone by, did not [condescend to] eat
         unleavened things now gobble dry flour.
   Out of the flatlands and up the mountain's side they drive
         emaciated cattle, harrying them with fear of their demise,
   with burning torches tight in the short hairs of their tails,
         tied there so that “seas” be stirred [out of the skies]
   - until they are roasted through, and a cloud rears up above them,
         and another upward-rearing cloud is driven to its side,
   and the divinity sees it mark [the earth] with precipitation
         when a rain-bringing South wind finally blows up for [the tribe].
   The lofty cloud pours down its water – a rain to put
         an end to great [suffering], now averted
   by a quantity of sala'-wood, and 'ushar-wood to match it:
         no easy burden for the cattle burdened with it.

The Book of Animals IV.466-7.

A Bacchic scene

      A flute pours out its woes with a plaintive sob, to the
            tumult of the bows and strings. And the rose is laughing.
      It is a breezy day's debut into the bloom of spring,
            highlit like a bride's outfit in pearls and gold.
      The revels of night become day-drinks. Frivolity keeps
            [the cup] going round in the same order, whether
                willed [by the drinker]
      or pressed upon him. Were we heated! I swear, it was
            the sun's own beams that swirled in our cup and
                heated us.
      The people were a brotherhood of truth. The tie uniting
            them was a love surpassing kinship by descent.
      Nursed together on the squirting stream of a pale pink
            [quantity of wine], each gave his fellow nursling
                his due,
      and the drunken man's offense was not held against him.
            No doubt about their character need trouble you.
      The best teachers are the days themselves, and time's
           long stretches, and those moments when
                defects of fortune are overturned.

By ‘Ali ibn al-Jahm

Madmen who were poets 6

The poet Abu 'l-Bakhtarī said: The tales I used to hear of Abū Fahma, a madman of Baghdad with a gift for poetic improvisation, led me to seek him out. Our meeting came about in a lane of the city, where I said to him, "How are you today, Abū Fahma?" He replied in verse:

   I have reached the edge of my precipice. Through you
      the way lies open to the wellsprings of my ruin.
   I see you turning, but not toward me.
      Whose heart is least corrupt you least attend.
   O you whose estrangement prolongs my pining:
      may you be struck with pining worse than mine!

Abu 'l-Bakhtarī said: At this, I withdrew a bouquet of narcissus from my sleeve, and pressed it on him with my wishes that God prolong his life. He stood smelling them for a time, then delivered these verses:

   On my wedding day, there came from the South hard-spattering,
      black and brilliant [clouds] wreathed with rain.
   Then kicked in the East Wind with its fecundating showers,
      and the curtailment of our nuptials was hard to bear.
   Our babe was born still. Labor pains came on,
      and there was parturition, and that was the issue.
   Springtime wove a shroud, and as one hand
      the dew and breeze gave color to its fabric.
   It was this flower's composite yellow, white petals
      cupping ornaments of unsmithed gold 
   on emerald columns raised aloft with the morning,
      like unto the sun in eye-like splendor.

Al-Hasan ibn Hāni' [better known as Abū Nuwās] said: I paid a call on Mānī al-Muwaswas, who delivered these verses:

   A live man's poem is uttered to you by a dead man.
      Stuck between death and life, he stands [right here].
   Vicissitudes have whittled his frame, and at his end
      he stays in hiding from the rest of creation.
   To look me over, inspecting my persona,
      is to find not one iota of my former charm.

I then went on [continued Abū Nuwās] until I met Ju'ayfirān al-Muwaswas, an elder of the Banū Hāshim with a speech impediment. Around his neck he wore a golden collar with a silver chain. He asked me, "Where did you crawl out of, Hasan?" "Mānī's house," I answered. "Here's one for Mānī's mother," he said and, calling for pen and paper, told me to write this down:

   Under cover of the night, the rooster makes no sound
      - except on nights I strive along the pathway to your door.
   Not every eyeful leads the peeper to delight! 
      At night, the joys of bed-rest are what's best,
   - except on nights I mount the dark,
      desiring you. Braving a pair of linked shackles,
   I am playing with my life when I come to you. 'Sweet Hope!'
      I am calling out, amid the night's black suit,
   to the stoker of the flames licking [this] wretch's heart,
      taking no care for his welfare nor his reputation.
   For treachery and fickleness your nature is unsurpassed
      by all the djinn and mortal men living put together now.

With that [continued Abū Nuwās], he told me to tear up what I had from Mānī, which I did.
      I went on until I encountered ‘Adrad the Afflicted. Ringed by a crowd of boys, he was slapping his face and weeping as he wailed aloud, "O people! Bitter is the taste of separation!" So I asked him, "Abū Muhammad [which was ‘Adrad's byname], where are you coming from?" "Seeing off the pilgrims bound for Mecca," he said. "What makes it so hard to bear?" I asked. "Some of my kinsmen travel with them," he said. "Did you deliver a poem on the occasion?" I asked. He responded that he had done so, and recited:

   They departed Thursday morning, and I bid them farewell
      when, taking up their burdens, they took their leave.
   As they turned to go, my soul turned with them.
     'Come back!' I said. 'Come back to where?' said she.
   To a rattling skeleton empty of blood,
     and bare of flesh but for a pair of eyes
   washed by grief, and the shell of an ear
     defiant in its deafness to all blame."

Continued from The Necklace Without Peer of Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih

For the conclusion to Madmen Who Were Poets, see the (St. Mark's) Poetry Project Newsletter no. 250 (Feb/March 2017), 8-12, where the whole of Ibn Abd Rabbihi's chapter appears with an introduction by the translator. Many thanks to Betsy Fagin

Madmen who were poets 5

Abu 'l-‘Abbās [al-Mubarrad] attributes these verses to al-Mānī al-Muwaswas:

   The cheeks on him are white and red:
      red in their middles and white at the rim.
   Thin but dewy, like a cup's glass walls
      streaked by swirling wine within.

Al-Mubarrad also said: Once, I got caught in a rainstorm, which quickly abated, and along came Mānī al-Muwaswas, saying:

   Don't mistake for real rain
      the rain that fell just now.
   A single tear from my eye
      flows more copiously, when
   assailed by the gloom
      of my worried thoughts.
   This is what it's like to watch
      the change of heart inside a friend's bosom.

Mānī al-Muwaswas went up to Abū Dulaf [al-'Ijlī] and said:

   The look in your eye 'mid the enemy host
      saves you the trouble of taking out swords.

"By God!" said Abū Dulaf, "no poet has ever praised me so well," and ordered ten thousand dirhams be given to him. But Mānī declined to take them. "It's all the same to me as half a dirham's worth of harisa," he said.

Also by Mānī al-Muwaswas:

   Grazing on hearts, some gazelles are intent
      on necklaces. But in my heart there is just grass.
   My life is forfeit to gazelles. Instead of antlers
      they are rubied and empearled with bangles of gold.
   O beauty who stole mine eye unwittingly,
      seldom though the stolen glance unwitting be!
   The beauty of her eyes elicited my heart from me,
      and I gave it over, little heeding its worth.
   If they do not look my way, the attraction's finished.
      What good are eyes to me if she declines?
   A thief and his hand are soon separated,
      but hearts are for stealing at no such penalty.

‘Alī ibn al-Jahm rode up on a man in the grip of a brain-fever who was encircled by a hostile crowd. On spotting him, the man took hold of his horse's bridle and said:

   Do not join the company of
      wastrels before me. I swear by the prerogative
   of the One Who aggrieves my life with them,
      and the One Whose forgiveness I beg for them:
   compared to the fallen of their own number,
      these are fallen further still.

His rolling gaze then fixed on a shapely boy with a handsome face, and he rent his tunic, saying:

  "And this one, their most nobly favored,
      now treats me with surpassing baseness!

From The Necklace Without Peer of Ibn 'Abd Rabbih (continued)

Madmen who were poets 4

The grammarian Muhammad ibn Yazīd al-Mubarrad said: En route to Wāsit from Baghdad, we took a detour to the Monastery of Ezekiel [at al-Nu'māniyya] to see the madmen there. Their madnesses were all of kinds known to us, or so we thought until we spied a well-kept youth in laundered clothes sitting apart from the others. "If any," we said, "then this one." So we approached him with a pious greeting, which he did not return. "What's the matter with you?" we asked him. He said:

   God knows how sad I am.
      To none other can it be described.
   My soul is two, one in this land
      while another land keeps the other.
   The one stuck here can endure no more.
      The hide around it is about to give out.
   I believe the other soul to be in the same state.
      By my troth, hers is the present soul's matter.

"Well done, by God!" I said to him. At this, he flailed as if throwing something at us, saying, "Who says 'Well done' to the likes of me?"
      Al-Mubarrad said: We were making haste to get away from him, when the young man said, "Come back, by God, I beseech you, until I recite for you another poem. Then you can say whether it's well or poorly done." So we went back to him and said, "Recite." He began:

   Just before dawn, when the palomino camels were knelt
      for their saddles and a shapely cargo to trudge away with,
   when, face to face through a gap in the curtain [of her howdah]
      she looked out at me through eyes engorged with tears,
   at the wave of her hand [henna-stanched] like a bough of ‘anam,
      I called out to the camel, 'Let your hind legs not bear [her] away!'
   I wail for the split that undid what she and I had,
      the split that came down, that undoing split when they moved off.
   Palomino driver! Stay their steps, that we may lengthen our farewell.
      Palomino driver! Your haste speeds my ending.
   Never to renounce my desire to be with them, for the rest of my life,
      I wish I knew: what did they with the rest of theirs?

We said to him, "They must have died." At this, he cried out, "Then I, by God, die also!" and fell to all fours, stretched out and died. And we did not leave the place until we had seen to his burial.

[A shorter variant of the same report.]  Al-Mubarrad said: On entering the Monastery of Ezekiel, we were met by a madman with a rock in his hand. "O assembly of my brethren, harken unto me!" he said as the people scattered. Then he began to recite:

   Many's the soul of an eminent man
      reduced to moaning without remit,
   who wheels to face the host in battle
      but shrinks from single combat.

From The Necklace Without Peer of Ibn ‘Abd Rabbihi (continued)

Recounted also in the Thousand and One Nights, the Meadows of Gold of al-Mas‘ūdī, the Letting People Know of al-Itlīdī, et alibi.

Madmen who were poets 3

Abu 'l-Wāsi‘ [a companion of the poet Abū ‘Īsā Sālih al-Rashīd] was in the company of his sons when a poet of the madmen called and asked permission to perform an ode. Abu 'l-Wāsi‘ declined, but the poet importuned until his resistance fell. After the final verse:

       Irrefutable man, on this day you are their head,
          and around you the cream of your eminent sons!

Abu 'l-Wāsi‘ said to him: "If you would only leave us en masse" (lit. "head by head").
      It is said that a mad poet of the Bedouin visited Nasr ibn Sayyār and declaimed a poem composed of one hundred amatory verses and only two lines of praise. "By God," said Nasr to him, "the words of your poem are as graceless as their meaning. All your effort was spent on amatory prelude, with nothing left over for panegyric!" The poet said, "I can fix that." So he came back the next morning with a poem that began:

       Can you make out the house of Umm al-Ghamr?
         —Leave that! and let's have a poem in praise of Nasr.

"Neither one of these [is any good]," said Nasr.
      One of the scholars said: "For sheer hermeneutic depravity, the only thing I have heard to rival the Rāfida was something a madman of Mecca said about a poem [by al-Farazdaq]. This man said, 'The Banū Tamīm are the biggest liars I have ever heard. In the poem:

      [He Who hung the sky has built for us
          a house whose columns soar above all others.
       The house the Sovereign built is ours, and what
          Heaven's Arbitrator builds cannot be shaken.]
       The house in whose courtyard Zurāra sits arrayed,
          and Mujāshi‘ and Nahshal, father to horsemen...

The Banū Tamīm claim these names belong to their own!' " [As is the case, Mujāshi‘ and Nahshal being direct ancestors of the poet himself.]
      The scholar said: "I asked him, 'In your view, what do they mean?' He said, 'The "house" is the house of God, and Zurāra is the stone that is "buttoned" [zurrirat] around it. Mujāshi‘ is the well of Zamzam, whose water is "coveted" [jushi‘at], and "Father to Horsemen" is the mountain of Abū Qubays in Mecca.' I said to him, 'And Nahshal?' For a whole hour he thought it over, then said, 'It is the tall black lampstand of the Ka‘ba. That is what Nahshal is.' "

From The Necklace Without Peer of Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih (continued)