The dawn of fabric

Whatever myth of origins you believe, the world's first man was surely naked and unclothed when his Potter threw him, before his untimely and unlicensed grab at [the fruit of the Tree of] Knowledge. But enough of esoteric lore. Let's have one of yours instead - the Egyptian tale set down by Alexander for his mother to read about the age of Osiris, back when Ammon, rich in sheep, came out of Libya. It was in their company, the Egyptians declare, that Mercury chanced to brush his hand over a ram, and was so pleased by its softness that he separated a sheep from its fleece. The material's pliancy moved him to keep working it, and at his continued pinching a thread streamed forth. This he wove using a technique he had practiced on strips of linden-bark. Meanwhile, you give credit to Minerva for all wool-craft and construction of looms, even though the work at Arachne's shop was better done.

Tertullian, On the philosopher's cloak III.4-5

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)

High and low estate in the world to come

FRIEND. Tell me, Menippos: Those who lie in lofty above-ground tombs, replete with images and epitaphs and upright slabs - do they command more honor in the underworld relative to the common run of dead?

MENIPPOS. You've got it backwards, guy! Even Mausolus - the Carian made famous by his tomb - if you had seen him you would still be laughing, I am sure, so despicable was the cranny in which he was flung. Far from bringing him distinction among the rabble of the other dead, the extent of his monument's benefit was that a burden of equivalent weight pressed down on him. The tenant of any plot that Aiakos marks off must be content to lie wedged within its ambit, you see, be it no more than one foot square.
      Buddy, you'd get an even bigger laugh if you could see the kings and satraps over us reduced to beggary, salt-fishmongering and teaching the alphabet. By all who happen by they are abused and smacked about the head like no-account chattel. Philip of Macedon is given out as a cobbler-for-hire of rotten sandals, and when he was pointed out to me in his corner I could control myself no longer. And the Polycrateses, Xerxeses and Darii of the world could be seen panhandling at every fork in the road.

Lucian, Menippos 17

Pyroglossia

Brothers, don't let too many of you become teachers. Error is common to everyone, of course, but we who teach are subject to even sterner judgment. The consummate man is he whose discourse is free from error, because he maintains a hold on the bridle to his whole body. So do we steer whole horse's bodies, when we put bridle-bits in their mouths, in order that they obey. And behold the ships: big as they are and driven by the crashing winds, they are steered by a tiny rudder in whatever direction the pilot pleases. This is how the tongue works: a small appendage, it makes grandiose declarations. Behold the quantity of timber kindled by a tongue-sized fire!

The tongue is itself a fire. Among our appendages, the tongue was installed as an ornament of iniquity, defiling our whole body and setting alight the wheel of coming-into-being with a flame caught from Gehenna. Humankind is capable of enslaving every stripe of beast and bird, every reptile and creature of the sea, and has done so; but the tongue is something no human being has ever enslaved - an unsteady evil, swollen with deadly venom. We bless the Lord and Father with it, and with it we curse [our fellow] human beings, who were born into God's likeness. Brothers, it should not happen that curse and blessing issue from the same mouth. Do fresh and stagnant water bubble up from the same spring? My brothers: can fig trees put forth olives? or grapevines figs? No more than seawater can be made fresh to drink.

James 3:1-12

Madmen who were poets 2

[‘Abd al-Rahmān Muhammad ibn ‘Ubayd Allāh] al-‘Utbī said: Abū Wā’il said to my father, "Despite my dementia, if you ask me about poetry you'll find that I know a thing or two about it." My father said, "Do you compose any poetry yourself?" "Yes," said Abū Wā’il, "much better than yours. Here's one of mine:

   If, after my ribs lie buried, their weeping forgotten,
      Jawmal would only speak to me,
   I bet my bones would answer her.
      I bet my old carcass would spring back to life."

My father said to him, "Not bad, except that the woman's name is ill-chosen.' Abū Wā'il said: "In reality her name is Juml, but I improved it." My father said to him, "God save us from the dementia that makes you think so."
      My father also told me that Abū Wā’il recited to him:

   When it hurts this much to part from a stranger,
      how much more when from a lover's side [min habībi]?
   My heart is stupefied with longing
      when I remember he is dead [yamūtu].

"That doesn't even rhyme!" my father told him. "One verse ends with bā’ (ب), the other tā’ (ت)." "And you cannot supply the missing point?" said Abū Wā’il. "Furthermore," my father said, "the voweling is off. One verse has a genitive case ending where the other ends in an indicative verbal suffix." "I say," replied Abū Wā’il, "when faced with difficulty you supply no point."

When the mother of Sulaymān ibn Wahb al-Kātib passed away, a lunatic scribe named Sālih ibn Shīrzādh regaled him with an elegy, reciting:

   By what happened to Umm Sulaymān we are laid low
      as if at a blow from the amputator's sword.
   You were the reins of the house, Umm Sālim; now,
      the house's reins have wound up in the grave.

Ibn Wahb said, "When was one of God's creatures so mistreated? To lose one's mother and hear her mourned with such a [crappy] poem, in which my name is changed from Sulaymān to Sālim!"
      Another verse of Sālih ibn Shīrzādh's goes like this:

   Do not liken the silent fart to a curative;
      the audible fart is the true Ādharītūs [Adrestos?]

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

Names of the Rain

Al-dayima is "continuous" rain without thunder or lightning, lasting no less than one third of a day or night. Most rains do not last this long. Similar to al-dayima is al-tahtān ["The Trickle"]. A poet said:

   My beloved, the weeping of your nostrils
      is like the tahtān of a rainy day.

Two varieties of al-dayima are al-hadb ["The Hard Rain"] and al-hatl ["The Spattering"]. A poet said:

   At Dhu ’l-Radm the tended fires were overshadowed
      by summer rains hadb-down-coming.

Al-dhihāb are both weak and strong rains. Cloud cover that darkens the sky and brings no rain is called al-dujunna ["The Overshadow"]; such a cloud is called dājina or mudjina. Days and nights so affected are described as dajn and dujunna, both adjectivally ["the day was dujn"] and in the genitive ["a day of dujn"]. Al-dājina is also said for a raincloud that covers the sky, delivering rain continuously, and al-dajn is a plentiful rain. Another kind of continuous rain is al-rihma ["The Discharge"]. Of all the dayima rains, al-rihma falls hardest and is first to pass away. Al-hafā' ["The Flutters"] are similar to al-rihma and are called by al-'Anbarī al-afā'. Yet another kind of dayima is the light rain called al-daththa ["The Scotch Mist"], which is a light rain, and similar to it is al-hadma ["The Nebulous"]. Al-watfā' ["The Beetle-Brow"] is a cloud of rapid-flowing rain that is counted among the dayima rains whether it is of long or short shedding. Al-qatr ["The Drip"] is said for all rain, weak and strong, as is al-dhihab. A diffuse fall of light droplets is called al-rashsh ["The Spray"]. The most abundant rain with the biggest droplets is called al-wābil [“The Downpour"]. Al-jawd ["The Profusion"] is said generally for abundant rain falling at any time of year. A poet said:

   I am Jawād son of Jawād, and the grandson of Sabal:
      When we rain, we're a jawd; when we pour we're a wābil

Al-'Anbarī recited this verse with a slight variation.
      When part after part of something comes in succession, the whole is called al-midrār and al-dirra ["The Torrent"]. This may be said of all rains. Al-rikk ["The Lean"] is a weak rain of no benefit unless it is followed by al-tabi'a ["The Consequent"] which is one rain after another.       Al-sāhiya ["The Inundation"] is an epithet of al-wābil, and vice versa: both wābilun sāhiyatun and sāhiyatun wābilun are heard. It is an expression for the rain that scours all it touches and sweeps it away. When profuse rains grip the earth to the point that its depths are uprooted, its topsoil becomes its bottom, and its hidden and visible shares are inverted, it is said to be mashūra ["Ensorced"]. The rain called jārr al-dabu' ["The Hyena Driver"] never falls without setting the earth aflow, and is so called because it penetrates the hyena’s den and sends it fleeing.
      Al-muhtafal ["The Hugger-Mugger"] is a fast-falling, uninterrupted rain. Similar to it is al-sahh ["The Flow"], with the difference that in al-sahh individual droplets may not be observable. Al-munhamir ["The Fluent"] is like al-sahh, as is al-wadq ["The Bout"]. Al-darb ["The Stroke"] is used for light rain, as is al-qatr, and al-dihhān ["The Gentle Strokes"] are much the same. Al-murawwiya ["The Water-Bringer"] is a rain that quenches the earth, while al-mulabbid ["The Damper"] wets its surface and causes its dust to settle. Al-hayā ["The Life-Giver"] is abundant rain. Al-ahādīb (plural of the plural of al-hadb, q.v.) are hard rains consequent upon other rains. Al-halal ["The Incipient"] are the beginnings of rain. Al-muth'anjir ["The Plenishing"] and al-mushanfir ["The Fleet"] are plentiful in their flow. Al-waliyy ["The Boon Companion"] is said for rain that follows rain in any season. Al-'ahd ["The Pledge"] is a first rain; a land in which the rain is widespread is said to be ma'hūda ["fulfilled"], and when it is touched by a nufda of rain it is said to be mu'ahhada ["empledged."]. Al-nufda ["The Shiver"] is said of rain that falls on one region and passes over another, as are al-shu'būb ["The Cloudburst"] and al-najw ["The Wind-Breaker"]. And land that is mansūha ["satisfied"] has been blessed with abundant rain.
      Al-ghayth is a name for rain in general. Al-sabal ["The Trailing Garment"] is rain that hangs between cloud and earth, from the point of its leaving the cloud to its landing on the ground.

From Abū Zayd al-Ansārī's Book of Rain

Madmen who were poets

These include Abū Yāsīn the book-keeper, Ju‘ayfirān, Jaranfash, Abū Hayya al-Numayrī, Decimus [sc. Zosimus of Panopolis], and Sālih ibn Shīrzādh the scribe. 
        Abū Hayya was the maddest of his people, and also their greatest poet. His verses include:

    Ho, ruins! Your imprints have started to fade,
        and your mantle of nights is long tattered.
    When day and night team up to try a man,
        it is a trial without adjourning.

And [two verses better known as the work of al-Musayyab ibn ‘Alas]:

    May my poem be whirled with the wind
        that carries from here to al-Qa‘qā‘,
    and land by the waters as something still new
        to delight the ears of al-Qa‘qā‘'s people.

He also said:

    Hand and wrist—the most beautiful fetters—she hides,
        and never unveils to him her sun.

        The poet Ju‘ayfirān al-Muwaswas was one of the madmen of Kufa. Met by a man who gave him a dirham, saying: "Rhyme for me a poem," Ju‘ayfirān said:

    Heal me, Lord! May all my worry
        be cured and turned into relief.
    My cup of worries away be hurried,
        I'd like my cup of wine now, please.

He said also:

     Ja‘far's nothing to his father,
        and is unlike any other,
     sacrificial goat of a crowd of men
        who all lay claim to him.
    "My son!" one calls him, while another
        takes his case before a judge.
     And his mother laughs at all of them,
        knowing his true parentage.

        Abu 'l-Hasan [‘Alī ibn al-‘Abbās ibn Abī Talha?] said: Ju‘ayfirān paid a call upon a certain king, and was admitted to his dinner table. On the following day, he paid another call, and was made to eat behind a screen. On the third day he asked again, and was denied entry altogether. So he called out at the top of his lungs:

   Admission is yours to grant. Having dined,
        we will not return, since our return gives offense.
    Some feast that was! That its heat gave you
        heart-burn warms us our fast.

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

On Cynicism

A member of Epictetus's circle with an evident predilection for the Cynic's way of life asked what sort of person was right for it, and how that person should go about taking it up. Epictetus answered, "Your question calls for long contemplation. This much I can tell you, though:

"To embark on so great an undertaking without divine support is to invite divine wrath and public disgrace. When an estate is well run, none of its members fancy, 'I should be overseer here'; the owner would have the pompous malcontent taken out and flogged as soon as he caught him issuing orders behind his back. In the wider world it's no different, for here too a Head of Household puts each detail in its place. 'You are the sun,' he says to one. 'Yours is the power to bring forth seasons and rear up crops in your yearly orbit, to stir the winds and calm them, and to keep things warm enough for people's bodies. Up now, onto the curving path with you, to set in motion all things from the greatest to the least great.'

" 'You,' he tells another, 'are a cow. When a lion shows up, you either see yourself through the encounter or die bleating. And you,' he tells another, 'are a bull. Go forth into battle, for so it was lain unto you, as befits your place in the herd and your fighting power.'

" 'You who have what it takes to lead an army against Ilium, be Agamemnon. You who have what it takes to face Hector in single combat, be Achilles.' But if a Thersites were to pretend to wield command, his disgrace in everyone's eyes would be total.

"As for you, consider it long and hard. The Cynic's life is different from how you picture it."

Discourses III.22.1-9

Medieval cat poem

Abu ‘Amir al-Fadl ibn Isma‘il al-Tamimi al-Jurjani (mid-to-late 5th century A.H./11th c. CE) described his cat (meter: khafīf):

         I have a cat whose foot-pads I dye with henna
             before I put henna on my own newborns.
         Then I tie cowrie shells to her collar
             to repel the harm of evil eyes.
         Each day, before I feed my family, I see that she gets
             our choicest meats and purest waters.
         The playful thing. When she sees
             my face contorted in a frown,
         sometimes she sings, sometimes she dances,
             sparing no exertion for my diversion’s sake.
         I care nothing for the fire’s warmth when she lies with me
             in the chill of winter's longest nights.
         When I give her scratches, she gives me licks
             with a tongue toothed like the surface of a file.
         If I avoid her, she fawns on me,
             wheedling with her little high-pitched moans.
         If I give her trouble she will show me her claws,
             a sight that gives the eyes no pleasure.
         When she plays with a mouse, she is at her saltiest
             for she puts him through "humiliating punishment." *
         When he faints from terror, she busies herself
             in batting him awake with a left and a right.
         She teases him with feigned inattention, then
             swoops like a falcon when he tries to creep away.
         Just when he dares hope for peace from her,
             those hopes are dashed with a serpent’s liveliness.
         In this way do the decrees of fate ruin a man
             and finish him with a cut to the aorta,
         just when, amid the lively gathering,
             he takes the cup of destiny from a server.

*Qur'an 2:90, 3:178, 4:14 et passim.

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

Apologia pro libris suis

It has struck my ear from the mouths of those who were at Khwarazm, and from the tongues of those who were passing through, that our master - may God perpetuate his superiority over all who lack his richness of soul, and over the officers who give him counsel - invited a gathering of men to revile me, impelling them to extravagance in their censure and abuse, and that he was deliberate in tearing aside the veiling curtains of gentility, on the charge that my library was wrongly acquired. Does this seem worthy of his merits and his virtue? Is it congruent with his nobility and and gentlemanly character? I am vexed by his dishonesty and injurious slander, which is a calumny against his Muslim brother. By God, when the horn is sounded on the Day of Resurrection, and these worn-out bones are resurrected from their tombs, armored in the clothes of the life to come, and the worshipers of God are gathered in the open spaces, and the record of every deed flies in the face of its doer, and every soul is asked about its acquisitions - on that day, the evildoer will be dragged face-down to the Fire, and the good-doer will be escorted to Paradise at the side of angels. On that frightening occasion, no one will be tugging at the tail of my cloak, asking for the return of any properties which I appropriated, or any wealth I took by force, or any blood that I shed, or any curtain I have torn, or any person I have killed, or any right that I have trampled on. With God's help, I have acquired some 1,000 manuscript volumes of crucial texts and vital writings, and endowed them all to libraries whose construction was ordered by God for the benefit of Muslims in all the countries of Islam. How does a fellow believer allow himself to envy the books of one of knowledge's foremost teachers, who has striven his whole life to obtain some modest papers, when their market value is unequal to the cost of a single feast? By God beside Whom there is no god, I swear that our master - may God perpetuate his superiority – has committed a false calumny against the likes of me, and done a wrong which will tangle his train and cause him to stumble on the Day of Resurrection. Let him fear God, beside Whom there is no god, and let him remember the Day on which the truthful will be repaid for their truthfulness and liars will be punished for their lies, wa-salām.

A letter to al-Qattan al-Marwazi by Rashid al-Din Watwat
(d. 578/1182)

Bookmen of Baghdad and Cairo

"Bookmen" [al-kutubiyyūn] were those who specialized in the sale of books, some of whom also did their own copying by hand. Among those who gained fame in this type of work were Jamal al-Din ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Yahya, known as al-Watwat ["The Bat"], Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Dimashqi, and the poet Ibn Sham‘un al-Kutubi. In Damascus, Muhammad ibn Shakir al-Darani al-Dimashqi was renowned. And there were many other bookmen of this class.

By itself, "the bookmen" was generally used without the word sūq to designate the book market. We find this usage in [al-Dhahabi's] text describing the events of 279 A.H./892 CE when, on assuming the caliphate, Abu 'l-‘Abbas al-Mu‘tadid ibn al-Muwaffaq forbade the sale of philosophical texts: "In that year, Abu 'l-‘Abbas banned the story-tellers and astrologers, and ordered the bookmen to stop selling works of philosophy and dialectic."

With the invention of paper, the markets and shops of stationers and bookmen became conspicuous throughout the Islamic world, and those who practiced the stationer's trade became a prominent class in society. Ibn Khaldun described them as "those who busy themselves with copying and correcting and bookbinding and other matters relating to books," mainly their traffic and sale. Scores of shops began to sell not only books, but the materials necessary for their manufacture, such as paper, ink, and writing implements - the most decisive indicator of the book trade's prevalence. For these had become indispensable to students and the learned alike, who copied what they needed out of books in addition to buying them in great numbers from the stationers' markets.

These shops began to spread through the urban centers of Islam, taking hold to the point that some parts of Arab cities became known as "the district of the bookmen" (or "books" or "stationers"). In Baghdad, seat of the Abbasid caliphate, stationers' markets appeared all over, but only one was known as "the stationers' district." This was a large area containing a large number of shops specializing in the sale of books - one hundred of them in the vicinity of the Basra Gate alone. Ibn Nadim gives evidence of one such market in his remarks on Ahmad ibn Abi Tahir: "The son of Khorasani parents, he used to sit in the stationers' market in the southeastern part of Baghdad." Another booksellers' district of renown was in the area around the Archway of al-Harrani, on the western side of the new bridge. It is mentioned that on the death of Ja‘far ibn Ahmad al-Marwazi in 274/888, "his books were taken to Baghdad and sold by the Archway of al-Harrani." And Abu 'l-Qasim al-Harith ibn ‘Ali, a stationer of Baghdad, is said to have sold and copied books for people in the western neighborhood of Qasr Waddah.

The stationers and bookmen's markets of Cairo are known from the description of al-Maqrizi: "To the best of my knowledge, the market between El Sagha and the madrasa of al-Malik al-Salih emerged around the year 700/1300, in the neighborhood of the mosque-hospital of al-Mansur Qalawun.... For a time, the book market was moved from this location to a roofed esplanade between the poultry market and the market of the mat-weavers, by the anointed pillar of the Grey Mosque. A number of the district's inhabitants joined in the raising of the roof, but the dampness of their cellars proved detrimental to books and some were ruined. So the market was removed to its current location, which is still a habitual gathering place for scholarly types."

"There used to be a book market in Fustat, on the eastern side of the mosque of ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, next to ‘Amr's house in the chandlers' quarter. Its vestiges were still there when I visited in 780/1378, but have since been swept away, and its onetime location is no longer common knowledge."

From The Traffic in Manuscripts by Dr. Abed Suleiman al-Mashwakhi (Cairo: Institute of Arabic Manuscripts, 2011)

On the earthquake that struck Syria on the idesof Sha'bān 744/January 2, 1344

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