Alexander the Sleepless II

The blessed Alexander was an Asiatic Greek from a noble family of the Aegean Islands. He studied the full course of literary sciences at Constantinople, and this was a complement to his moral education, which had developed his Christian piety and honest virtues to their full extent. His training complete, he entered government service, where he soon discovered how corruptible and fickle life is, and that "like a flower of grass" earthly glory too is fleeting. He came to despise his mundane existence and resolved upon a better way of way of life. He put the Old and New Testaments through rigorous philological inquiry, finding in the Gospels a treasure beyond assail for those who go forth trusting in the one who said: "If you want to be perfect, sell everything you have and give it to the poor, and your treasure will be laid up in heaven. Then come follow me."

When Alexander heard this, his conviction was total, and straightaway he took his share of inherited capital along with his earnings as prefect (an office he had discharged with fairness and nobility), a substantial sum, and gave it all to the poor and needy. His hope was then to isolate himself from friends, family and fatherland, and for Christ alone to be his intimate and lord. And he heard that communities of holy men were reverently pursuing this way of life in certain parts of Syria.

From The Life of Alexander the Sleepless (I.5-6)

Alexander the Sleepless

Due to the utter insufficiency of words for this narration, all historians have kept their silence, which has been detrimental for those who wish to rise to his example. It is for their purposes that I—like traders who cheat death as they rove this world in quest of elusive gains—commit the rashness of setting down this account, seizing the present moment to give his would-be emulators the benefit of a partial description. For a fully proportionate description of this noble athlete's virtues is beyond human telling.

From The Life of Alexander the Sleepless (I.4) by Anonymous

Let's have a Qalandar poem

The Muwashshaha Qalandariyya of
Taqi al-Din ibn al-Maghribi (d. 1285)
appears in this month's Brooklyn Rail.
Thanks, Anselm

Detail of a folio from the Divan of Hafez
illuminated by Sultan Muhammad Nur and workshop (ca. 1531-1533),

a joint holding of the Met and Sackler.
Dimensions: Astoundingly small

Twilight of the early Abbasids

I was told by Abu 'l-Qasim al-Juhani:

The caliph al-Muqtadir bi-'llah wanted to drink wine amid a bed of narcissus, in a small courtyard of the palace where there was a well-kept garden. One of the gardeners told him, "With narcissus, the trick is to fertilize them several days before your party, so they'll be nice and strong."
    "Don't you dare!" the caliph said. "You would use manure on what I want to sit among and savor the smell of?"
    "That's ordinarily how it's done with plantings, to strengthen them," the gardener said.
    "But what is the rationale?" the caliph asked.
    "Manure protects the plant," the gardener said, "and helps it grow and send out shoots."
    "Then we will protect it with another substance," the caliph said, and gave the order for musk to be pulverized in a sufficient qualntity to manure the whole garden, and this was carried out.
     For one day and one night, the caliph sat there drinking, and when the sun came up he greeted it with another drink. Then he got up and ordered that the garden be sacked, and the gardeners and the eunuchs pillaged the musk from the narcissus bed, leaving the bulbs uprooted from from the soil, until the musk was gone and the garden was a barren waste. The cost of this quantity of musk was enormous.

I was informed by Abu Ishaq al-Tabari, who was the amanuensis of Abu ‘Umar al-Zahid (himself the amanuensis of the grammarian Tha‘lab) and an intimate of the Hamdunid family of caliphal courtiers, that he was told by Ja‘far ibn Hamdun: 

One day, we were drinking with the caliph al-Radi bi-'llah in a courtyard that was shaded by a canopy of choice fruits, until he tired of sitting there and commanded that another seating area be prepared. "Scatter the carpets with fragrant herbs and lotus flowers, without the salvers and the usual arrangements for a smelling party. Do it quickly, now, so we can move our party over there."
    In the blink of an eye, they told him it was done. "Stand up!" the caliph told us, and we followed him. But when he saw the room, it was not to his liking, and he instructed his sommeliers to sprinkle the herbs with powdered camphor to change their color. In they came with golden caskets full of powdered Rubahi camphor, and scattered it over the herbs by the scoopful. The caliph ordered them to add still more camphor, until the herbs were coated white, and looked like a green robe with downy cotton carded over it, or a garden struck by hoarfrost. "That's enough," the caliph said. I estimate the amount of camphor they used at over one thousand dry-weight measures, which is a lot.
    So we sat and drank there with him. Then when the party was over he ordered the room to be sacked. and my servants gathered up many measures of camphor, along with the eunuchs and decorators and servants of the palace who did the same.

From Leavings of the Learned Gathering by al-Tanukhi
a.k.a. Table-Talk of a Mesopotamian Judge

Let's have a cat poem

Concerning mice and cats, Abu 'l-Shamaqmaq said (meter: khafīf):

    On the emptiness of my home, and empty
         sacks and jars where meal should be, this is my poem.
    Formerly, it was not desolate but guest-friendly,
        prosperous, and in a flourishing state.
    But now it seems that mice avoid my house
        to refuge in a nobler steading.
    The flies of my house and the crawling bugs
        all beg to hit the road, away from where
    the cat abides, and looks from side to side,
        and no mouse does it spy the whole year through.
    Its head swims up and down from extremity of hunger,
        and a life of bitterness and vexation.
    I said to the cat, when I saw its head hanging,
        downcast with its gut aflame,
  "Hang in there, kitty! best cat by far
        my eyes have ever seen!"
  "How can I hang on?" said the cat. "I cannot stay
        in a house that's empty as a wild ass's belly."
    I said, "Go on to the neighbor’s house,
        the one who brings home the fruits of commerce."
    Meanwhile, spiders fill my pots and pans
        and all my vessels with their spinning,
    and off with the dogs, in the grip of dog-fever, 
        my dog runs mad astray.

From the Book of Animals of al-Jahiz

From The Book of Verses with Unclear Meanings

We are informed by Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-ʿArudi that Ahmad ibn Yahya attested these verses on the authority of al-Bahili (meter: kāmil):

خِدْنَانِ لَمْ يُرَيَا مَعًا في مَنْزِلٍ         وَكِـلاهُما يَسْــرِي بِهِ المِقْدَارُ          

‘Abīd 1:21-26

    Live by what you will. Weakness does not preclude success.
        A man of expertise can still be duped.
    A man who cannot learn from fate cannot be taught by people,
        not even if they take him by the scruff.
    What are hearts but inborn tempers?
        How many hate their former friends?
    Lend a hand in any land while you sojourn there.
        Never say: "But I am alien to this place."
    In favor of alliance with a stranger from afar,
        nearby relations are sometimes severed.
    And as long as a man may live, he is in denial.
        Long life is his punishment.

From the Mu‘allaqa of ‘Abīd ibn al-Abraṣ

A floating bridge of Baghdad

A Bedouin passed by a pontoon bridge, then gave a versified description of it unlike anything by anyone I know (meter: basīṭ):

    Along the corniche, friends linger and disperse
        by the Tigris post where the flood is spanned by a bridge of boats.
    Viewed from one side, it's like a string of Bactrian camels
        flanking each other crosswise in their tethers,
    some followed by their young, some adolescents
        treading dung, and some that are fair old milchers.
    No coming home from travels for these camels.
        Any time they move, their steps are short,
    bound by ropes of palm dyed different colors
        and fixed with pegs of iron in their sides.

One of the Unparalleled Poems from the Book of Prose and Poetry by
Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur (d. 893 CE)

Origins of the fold-in

On the poet Abu 'l-‘Ibar al-Hashimi (d. 866 CE), by Sinan Antoon,
The Poetics of the Obscene in Premodern Arabic Poetry: Ibn al-Hajjaj
and Sukhf (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 40:

¹⁸⁹  From the Book of Songs

From the Epistle of the Two Luminaries

In his Epistle of the Two Luminaries, which is [subtitled] "From a dejected lover, to one whose love is reciprocated by another," and begins with the words: "The earth lies before the merciful king, the sultan of beauty, the lion of combat...." ‘Ala’ al-Din [Taqi al-Din] ibn al-Maghribi said (meter: majzū’ al-ramal):

   The Nile comes and goes.
       My love goes on and on.
   Nothing I say tomorrow will be enough.
       Sometimes love is too much.
   Every heart but mine
       gets the love it wants.
   I am the lone unfortunate
       going steady with rejection.

Then ‘Ala’ al-Din [Taqi al-Din] said: I am the lone unfortunate who pissed on a plate of fried doughnuts, dribbling out a vinegar stream. I crucified Iblis with his own hammer, and left him sagging and singing "Tra-la-la-la!" as he flapped his wings like a chicken (meter: majzū’ al-ramal):

   Tra-la-la-la, tra-la-la!
       You, with the eyes of a little gazelle!
   God have mercy on my slayer.
       Me it is no boast to kill.

From The Register of Ardent Love by Ibn Abi Hajala

Thieves who were poets

‘Arqal was a famous thief of the Banu Sa‘d. Along with Abu Hardaba and Mālik ibn al-Rayb, he was a thief who was a poet. His name comes from the verb ta‘arqala, which means "to be thrown into chaos," and in vulgar speech it is much in use; ‘irqāla is "one who sows chaos."

In the early Islamic period, there was an Arab highwayman of the desert called ‘Ujayl ("Speedy"), for his callousness. By my estimation, he was active when Ziyad was governor.

From The Book of Name Derivations by Ibn Durayd

       

Pussy Galore, "Dick Johnson" (1987)

The strongman and the felt

Zaveh, a village in Khorasan, was home to the famous Qotb al-Din Heydar, a most remarkable man. In summertime he would walk through fire, and in winter plunge himself in ice, and throughout the surrounding territories people came to observe these marvels. All who beheld him in the act were struck by a compulsion to renounce the world, and adopted felt clothes and went barefoot. It often happened, I have heard, that lords and princes would come, and hurl themselves from their horses at the sight of him, and put on felts. And I have seen Turkish soldiers in the flower of their fighting strength who wore the felt and went barefoot, and called themselves companions of Heydar.

Some Sufis say the shaykh was seen one day atop a high dome, too high to be scaled, and how he had climbed it was baffling to everyone. Then, on making his descent, he simply walked down as if treading level ground.

At the time the Tatars came to Zaveh, in the year 618 (= 1221 CE), the shaykh was still alive.

From The Monuments of Inhabited Lands of al-Qazwini

San Diego memories

Photo by Stephen Beachy

The asceticism of Dawud al-Ta’i

We are informed by ‘Abd Allah ibn Muhammad [ibn Ja‘far?] that ‘Abd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn al-‘Abbas was informed by Salama ibn Shabib that Sahl ibn ‘Asim reported that ‘Uthman ibn Zufar said:

I was told by a cousin of Dawud al-Ta’i that he inherited twenty dinars from his father, which he spent on food and almsgiving at the rate of one dinar per year for twenty years. And he inherited a house, whose maintenance he disregarded. When one part of it fell in, he would move to another, until a corner of the house was all that remained.

We are informed by Abu Muhammad ibn Hayyan that Ishaq ibn Abi Hassan reported on the authority of Ahmad ibn Abi 'l-Hawari that Abu Sulayman al-Darani said:

Dawud al-Ta’i inherited from his mother a sum of money and a house, and he moved from room to room inside it as they fell apart around him, paying no heed to their maintenance, until every room in the house was used up. Of the money he inherited from his father, he spent all but one dinar, which paid for his winding sheet.

We are informed by Ibrahim ibn ‘Abd Allah that Muhammad ibn Ishaq said: I heard Muhammad ibn Zakariya say: I have heard it said by one of our companions that

Dawud al-Ta’i inherited twenty dinars from a patroness of his, which sufficed him until his death twenty years later.

We are informed by Ahmad ibn Ishaq that Muhammad ibn Yahya ibn Mandah reported that

‘Abd al-Rahman ibn ‘Amr said: I was asked by Muhammad ibn ‘Amir whether he ought to abandon the merchant's trade. Muhammad ibn Nu‘man and I advised that it would be better for him not to. He then wrote to his brother in Baghdad, telling him of our advice. His brother wrote back, saying:
      "Your confrères have advised you poorly. When Dawud al-Ta’i sold a piece of property that belonged to him, he was told: 'If you invested the proceeds in commerce, then something would accrue to you.' Dawud declined, saying: 'The income would run out before I do, or my life would run out before it.' So he spent the money dinar by dinar, and at his death just one dinar was left, which paid for his winding sheet."

We are informed by ‘Abd Allah ibn Muhammad that Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Hadhdha’ was informed by Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Dawraqi that 

‘Abd Allah ibn Salih ibn Muslim al-‘Ijli said: I paid a call on Dāwūd al-Ta’i as he was suffering from the illness he died of, and in his house was nothing but an earthenware crock lined with pitch, containing some dry bread. He had another vessel for his ablutions, and lying in the dust was a large brick of Shahanjani mud. This was his cushion and his pillow, and in his house was not one woven mat of any size.

From the Ornament of God's Friends of Abu Nu‘aym al-Isbahani