A short treatise on isolation

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

God's prayers be upon our master, His Prophet Muhammad, and upon his family and companions, and upon them be peace.

It is narrated from ‘Umar ibn Jabir al-Lakhmi that Abu Umayya said:
     I asked Abu Tha‘laba al-Khushani about the Qur’anic verse: "O you who believe! You are responsible for your own souls." He said, "You're asking someone well-informed in the matter, for I asked God's Prophet, God's blessings and peace be upon him, about this same verse. He said, 'Abu Tha‘laba, command each other to do what's right, and forbid each other from doing what's wrong. But if you see that this world below is being preferred [to the world to come], and that avarice has taken over, and that everyone glories in their own opinion, then you are responsible for your own soul.'"
     Shaykh Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti said: "Rightly it is said that the commentary in this hadith has come to pass in the present time, and that we are in Doomsday's courtyard, and the very staging-ground of Resurrection.

It is the year 1349 after the Prophet's Emigration, prayers and peace be upon him, (=1930 or 1931 CE) and O brother! Take care not to despise those who isolate from people in these times, for it is now necessary. Even in early times, there were people who isolated themselves in dread of wicked new practices that became prevalent in their day.
     In his book Jurisprudence of Essential Entities according to the True Meanings of the Qur’an, Shaykh Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti, may God have mercy on him, says [quoting al-Ghazali's The Way for Worshipers to Make it into the Garden of the Lord of the Two Worlds]: "When one has ascertained that the harm that comes from socializing with people as religious duty stipulates is greater than the harm of abandoning that duty, then in that case one is excused from it. I saw in Mecca, may God protect it"—this is in one of al-Suyuti's books, may God have mercy on him—"I saw in Mecca, may God protect it, one of the senior religious scholars who practiced seclusion. He did not attend congregational prayers at the Holy Mosque, even though it was right nearby, and there was nothing wrong with his health. One day, I asked him about the infrequency of his attendance, and he gave the same excuse that I have indicated here, which is that being in the presence of the Curtain [covering the Ka‘aba] was not worth all the vices he had to come into contact with, and the negative consequences arising from going to the mosque and meeting people.
    "In summary, for one thus excused, there is no reproach. And excuses are up to God, be He Exalted, for he knows what is contained in every breast."

I say: Take care, O brother, not to despise those who take their faith and flee, and pray in seclusion in their homes, leaving the mass of humanity behind, since this is necessary practice of the end times. Prayer in isolation is now made licit, given the deficiency of prayer-leaders in our time, and this is according to requisites laid down by scholars.
     In the commentary by Muhammad Mayyara on The Helpful Guide of Ibn ‘Ashir, which is entitled The Pearl of Great Price, he says regarding the necessary education of the prayer-leader: "Fourthly, he must know the fundamentals of prayer, which are the necessary recitations and other regulations whose inobservance makes prayer go wrong. On the subject of recitation, Ibn al-Qasim says in the Compilation of Imam Malik: 'If one with correct knowledge of the Qur’an is led in prayer by one without correct knowledge, they must never allow it to happen again.'" The end.

Ahmed Baba Institute (Timbuktu) MS 17632 (fol. 1r, 1v-2r, 2v).
Author unknown.

Enslaved men and blacksmiths in the poems of Jarīr

         al-Bayzār "Plowman" : The name of a slave
         Baghthar "Not Too Bright" : The name of a slave
         Thu‘āla "The Fox" : A slave of Mujāshi‘
         al-Jaythalūṭ [Unspecific term of abuse] : A slave
         Dāsim "Mindful Worker" : The name of a blacksmith
         Za‘‘āb "Bearer of Heavy Loads" : A blacksmith belonging to Ṣa‘ṣa‘a
         al-Zubbayyān (sic) [al-Waqbān?] :
               A slave belonging to [Ṣa‘ṣa‘a's mother] Qufayra
         Shuqār "Red" : The name of a slave
         Ibn Ṣam‘ā’ "Son of the Woman with Dainty Ears" : A freedman
         Ḍāṭir "Big Guy" : A slave
         Qunābir (sic) : A slave
         Masrūḥ "Easy-going" : A blacksmith belonging to
               Ṣa‘ṣa‘a and Qufayra
         Makḥūl "Sooty" : A slave belonging to Taym
         Hurmuz [A royal name of Persia deriving from Ahura Mazda]:
               A slave belonging to Qufayra

A prosopography by Dr. Nu‘mān Muḥammad Amīn Ṭāhā, editor of
Muḥammad ibn Ḥabīb's Commentary on the Collected Poems of Jarīr

 HANDS AT WORK 

The Poison Shirt 

 

Resist-dyed textile fragment; cotton (detail).
Yemen, 10th century CE. Metropolitan Museum of Art

Anyone who reads Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber will be struck by chapter 10's surmise that the deadly poison robes of Greek mythology had a basis in chemical fact. Tetraarsenic tetrasulfide is a soft red mineral called realgar (> Arabic rahj al-ghār "powder of the mine," being the sandarakē of the ancient Greeks), which like other compounds of arsenic would be excellent dyestuff if it weren't lethal to the touch. Not right away (as in the story of Medea's rampage at Corinth), but over time: Barber estimates it would take a month of wearing realgar next to the skin to kill a person, and this might be reflected in the protracted throes of Heracles, which went on long enough for him to avenge himself while still alive.

Francisco de Zurbarán, The Death of Hercules (1634)
Oil on canvas, 136 x 167cm (53½" x 65¾"), Museo del Prado

A recent article by Teddy Fassberg on the "The Greek Death of Imru’ al-Qays" confirms that the poet's legendary assassination by poison robe (al-Jahiz calls it a shirt) derives from the death of Heracles. But other iterations of the motif in Arabic are independent of this tradition, e.g., the punitive "robes of fire" tailored in the Islamic afterlife for unbelievers to wear. Here I would like to share an original, unconventional example of poisoned cloth in Arabic poetry—the poetry of Jarir (d. ca. 110 A.H./728 CE), which is basically a 40-year torrent of invective against his contemporary poets. And invective is the main type of poetry that textile metaphor was used to describe.

Metaphors of weaponry would seem more appropriate to the purpose, and sure enough, spearheads, arrows, and flung stones—missiles that inflict damage from a distance—are common figures for the social injuries that abusive verse can do. For Jarir, these were either too tame or old hat; in any case, his metaphors draw on more intimate forms of harm, two in particular. One is poison, and the other is amputation of the nose (jad‘), brought together in these verses (meter: kāmil):

      I prepared for the poets a fatal poison,
         serving the last of them with the first draught,
      laying my branding-iron on al-Farazdaq,
         and docking al-Akhtal's nose while al-Ba‘ith yelps out loud. 

On the subject of facial mutilation, Hands at Work has a lot to say. It was characteristically an enslaved person's ordeal, and a slave's marking in the ancient Near East, including Greece which is how we got the word stigma. But poison is what's at issue here. Again and again, Jarir brags of forcing his rivals to drain cups of it. Exactly what kind of poison, I wish I knew, though it has little bearing on the metaphor. Poison is Jarir's figure for the efficacy of his poetry, i.e., its power to diminish the social capital of his rivals through abuse and taunting, and this metaphor is easy to understand. That weaving should be a figure for the same thing, indeed a traditional, conventional figure, is relatively counter-intuitive, and that is why Hands at Work had to be written.

The poison cloth of Jarir is woven from these two metaphors. Small wonder that it comes with facial mutilation bundled in, along with casual prejudice against metalworkers (so typical of nomadic societies of the Near East), making these verses a "quadfecta" of Arabic invective poetry (meter: kāmil):

      O son of blacksmiths, long have you tested me,
         and long have I pulled free where thongs are tied.
      What comes of my eternal return to al-Farazdaq? Be it known
         that what Mujashi‘ gets is nothing to celebrate.
      Mujashi‘'s nose has been docked by poems
         of poison whose weft was woven on the beam of a loom.

Does Jarir's toxic weave allude to the death of Imru’ al-Qays? If so, he doesn't make it obvious. It seems to result inadvertently from the cramming of three metapoetic images into a single line. But I'm not one to insist. The important thing here is that textile craft is very far from signifying pro-social artistry or aesthetic beauty. For Jarir, it is an instrument of deadly abuse, more like Clytemnestra's "net of Hades" than the fancy carpet Agamemnon walks in on. What makes a net admirable is its efficacy, and this is what Jarir boasts of in his poetry: its power to incapacitate the foe, leaving them unable to answer (meter: basīṭ):

      I repaired to the grave heaped over Marran
         when a delusional poet confronted me in anger.
      His hauteur had gone unchallenged, and amid his sons
         who were likewise haughty, he embroiled us in unrest.
      By us was the oppressor beat back and refuted, and led away
         in cuffs of leather that were stoutly plaited.

  

Now for three notes to the above. (1) I have a new book of poems out, and on pages 12-13 there is one called "The Poison Shirt" whose inspiration by Jarir is unmistakable.

  

(2) As someone who always credits my secondary sources, I am pleased to acknowledge a valuable article by Abdulkarim Yakoub and Samar Eskander, "al-Ṣinā‘a al-shi‘riyya fī mafhūm al-shu‘arā’ al-Umawiyyīn" (Poetic Craft as Understood by Poets of the Umayyad Era), appearing in Majallat Dirāsāt al-Lugha wa-Ādābihā (Syria) 12 (2014), 139-62, where the first two passages from Jarir are cited. The third is in Ibn Qutayba's Big Book of [Verses with Obscure] Meanings, where last installment's verse by Aws ibn Hajar also appears.

   

(3) Previewing unpublished research like this is not without risk. An unethical competitor might follow the leads I have indicated, and steal into print with them before I'm through. But anyone tempted to make uncredited use of the material in these date-stamped blog posts may be assured that, like a second Jarir, I will dump poison all over you, and your career will be finished, and that will be that ©

Alexander the Sleepless XVI

The blessed one reflected on the zeal and faith he observed in the brothers and the magnitude of their devotion. What could this mean? Through the Holy Spirit, it dawned on him that even in these quarters he was being called to wage the struggle. Energized by this conclusion, he made himself ready, and prayed for Christ's will to be done swiftly. And God, Who loves humanity, was swift to answer his prayer. 

Alexander took up residence near the shrine of the sainted martyr Menas, and within a few days there flocked to him noble athletes of Christ out of every monastery in the area—three hundred of them, all sound of mind, belonging to three races: Romans, Greeks, and Syrians. To fulfill his mission of hymn-singing without pause, Alexander separated them into six groups, and schooled them in monastic poverty, molding everything after the pattern of his old rule. Within a matter of days, the hierarchy he laid out was ordered as to every virtue, and the basis for their struggle was made plain to all. For he grouped them in tens and fifties, ordaining decarchs and penetecontarchs to lead them, and hourly they poured their strength into singing the praises of God.

On beholding their systemized struggle, their ceaseless hymn-singing, their immaculate poverty, and the incredible mysteries made no less wondrous by the evident truth of their accomplishment, the commonfolk of the city came devoutly to Alexander as a benefactor and teacher, and inhaled his teachings about hope and the life to come. Before long, he had become the harbor of salvation and educator of justice for all. When he was silent, his life gave continual voice, crying its admonishments aloud against the adulterators of God's commandments, while his free and unrestrained speech excoriated the unrepentant. Above all, though, it was seeing the extremities of poverty the brothers took on, and the severity of their discipline, and the fact that their possessions were limited to parchments containing the holy scriptures, and their capacity for singing hymns without pause, and the bodiless way they inhabited their bodies—it was seeing all these things that roused the people's astonishment and praise of God, Who had revealed His incredible mysteries even in those quarters.

The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.43-4

 HANDS AT WORK 

A Poem Is a Mantle  
of Resist-Dyed Weave  

Resist-dyed textile fragment; cotton; with pseudo-Kufic script in gold leaf (detail).
Yemen, 9th-10th centuries CE. Cooper Hewitt Museum

In how many ways is a poem like a robe? Don't make me count them. Whatever answer works for you intuitively is probably fine. For instance, texts and woven things are alike the products of cumulative effort—a likeness with no basis in etymology, history of technology, or any domain but practical experience to prove that it is so. You could call it a truism, or an apothegm, or (why not) a universal truth.

In early Arabic poetry, the analogy is not so multivalent. It is under specific circumstances that Arab poets of the 6th-8th centuries CE compare their work to textile craft, and to a specific textile form. Let me tell you about it, after answering one "so what" question that makes this more than a matter of antiquarian curiosity.

Since the 9th century, Arabic prose writers have been eloquent about the ways in which poetry is a craft like weaving (nasj) or the ordering of pearls on a string (naẓm), to the point that nasj and naẓm became synonymous with poetry itself (shi‘r). I don't like to say this is "well known," but it is comparatively well studied since Abdelfattah Kilito's 1979 article. Meanwhile, what the poets actually said about their poetry, in their poetry—the boasts they made of it and the similes they coined for it—is mostly ignored, and a lot of important social information along with it. What effects did the
poets think they were accomplishing through their work? That information is available, if you read what they say about their poetry, and what they compare their poetry to.

Take fabrics. Early Arab poets mention different types of cloth imported from different places (Egypt, Syria, Persia), and very rarely Arabian homespun. But when they say their poem is like a robe, it is a specific type of weaving that they reference: a striped cotton mantle made in Yemen of resist-dyed weave (a forerunner of Indonesian ikat). In collections in the US and Canada there are examples dating to the 9th and 10th centuries, many with bands of pseudo-Kufic writing in gold leaf (as pictured here).

This style of weaving is mentioned in an enigmatic verse by Aws ibn Ḥajar, a poet of the sixth and early seventh century (meter: ṭawīl):

               When people rush at me in angry temper
                   I deck them out, marking them with fine, striped raiment
                       (kasawtuhumu min ḥabri bazzin mutaḥḥami).

I say the verse is "enigmatic" because it appeared in an anthology of enigmatic verses by Ibn Qutayba, who glossed it like this:
    "Mutaḥḥam (striped) is an epithet of the garment he makes out to be al-atḥamī, which is a variety of Yemeni mantle. 'I deck them out in the very best of that type of garment,' he says. But this is a similitude, meaning 'I besmirch them in verse, and [the effect] is as evident as if they went dressed in these garments.'"
      In other words, Aws is not talking about donations of fine clothes (as Geyer thought). He is saying that the object of his invective versecraft is marked out and made conspicuous, as if by an attention-getting robe. The atḥamī robe is defined by al-Aṣma‘ī as "a resist-dyed mantle of Yemen without embroidery," looking maybe like the ikat fragment pictured here.

The true keyword of Aws's verse is ḥabr. Dedicated readers of early Arabic poetry are well acquainted with cognates of this word, which name the genre of Yemeni mantle that atḥamī weave belongs to. Historians of Islamic art know the stuff too (see Vera-Simone Schulz, "Crossroads of Cloth," for references), but between resist-dye weave as material artifact and poetic signifier the correlation has been made by exactly no one until this blog post. When it is laid out in Hands at Work, the reader will gain access to something rare, and that is the chance to envision early Arabic poetry as it was conceived and represented by the poets themselves.

Fabrics

If a robe is woven on a loom of two heddle rods, it is called munayyar. If it has little quadrangular shapes on it resembling a wild ass's eyes, it is called mu‘ayyan. If it has stripes, it is called mu‘aḍḍad and mushaṭṭab. If it has long trailing forms on it, then it is musayyar. If it has white stripes, or other designs in white, it is mufawwaf. If it has a chevroned pattern it is called musahham. If it has columnar forms, it is called mu‘ammad. If it has a zigzag pattern, it is called mu‘arraj. If it has crescent-shaped figures, it is called muhallal. If it is embroidered with cubical forms, it is called muka‘‘ab. According to Abu ‘Amr, if it flashes [with metal coins?] it is called mufallas, if it has birdlike forms, it is called muṭayyar, and if it has horse designs it is called mukhayyal.
     Abu 'l-Ḥasan al-Salami gave an excellent description of a battlefield (meter: kāmil):

      The sky was a patterned robe, muṭayyar with its vultures.
          The earth was a patterned bed spread, mukhayyal with fine horses.

From The Statutes of Lexicography by Abu Mansur al-Tha‘alibi

More special feelings

Malik ibn Dinar, may God be pleased with him, said:

I set out as a pilgrim to the holy House of God, when I saw a young man walking on the road without food, water, or a mount. I greeted him, and my greeting was returned. "Young man, where are you from?" I asked him. He said, "From Him."
      "And where are you going?" I said. "To Him," he said. "And where are your provisions?" He said, "They're up to Him."
      "But you can't travel this road without carrying water," I told him. "Do you really have nothing on you?" "That's right," he said. "except five letters I brought with me when I set out." I asked him what these letters were, and he said, "God's word:"

كهيعص

(Kāf–hā–yā–‘ayn–ṣād)

"And what does it mean?" I asked.
      "Kāf is for the All-Sufficing (al-Kāfī)," he said, "and hā is for the Guide (al-Hādī). Yā is for the Refuge (al-Ma’wā), and ‘ayn is for the All-Knowing (al-‘Ālim). And ṣād is for the Keeper of Promises (al-Ṣādiq). Whoever keeps company with the All-Sufficient Guide, the Refuge, and the All-Knowing Keeper of Promises is not ruined, has nothing to fear, and has no need to carry food and water."
      Malik said: When I heard the young man's words, I stripped off my overshirt to dress him, which he declined. "Old man," he said, "it is better to go naked than wear the shirt of this world, whose lawful deeds are numbered, and whose unlawful ones will be punished. When the naked man is covered by the night, he can raise his face to heaven and say, 'O You, Who are gladdened by our obedient actions and unharmed by our disobedient ones, grant that I may always gladden You, and forgive my actions that do You no harm.'"
      When [we arrived at Mecca, and] the people readied themselves for purification and shouted Labbayka! I asked the young man, "Why do you not perform the ritual greeting?" He said, "I fear that if I say Labbayka, He will say, 'There is no labbayka, and no sa‘dayka, and I do not hear your words or look upon you.'" And with that, he departed. I did not see him again, except at Mina, where he was saying (meter: basīṭ):

My friends are pleased for my blood to be spilt.
    For them it's licit, in sacred months as in profane.
Just who is my spirit attached to? If she knew, by God
    she would stand on her head, and not her feet.
I say to my faultfinder: Leave my love for Him out.
    If you saw what I see in Him, you would not find fault.
There are some who circumambulate the House without moving a muscle,
    and they need no sacred precinct to do it in, by God.
When others celebrate Eid al-Adha, sacrificing things
    like sheep and goats, [God's true] lover sacrifices the lower self.
People have one pilgrimage, and I've got another, toward stillness.
    I lead forth my blood, my vital being, when sacrificial animals are led.

From The Garden of Aromatic Herbs of ‘Afif al-Din al-Yafi‘i.
(The poem is elsewhere ascribed to al-Hallaj)

Special feelings

Maymun al-Hadrami [legendary digger of a namesake well] said: I was about to make the pilgrimage when a woman I was chatting with told me:
     "Come and circumambulate my house seven times, the way they do the holy House. Run your camel there, and shave your head as pilgrims do. Fling stones at my nosy neighbor, the way they stone the Devil [at Mina], and then kiss me as they kiss the cornerstone."
      Maymun said: I did everything she told me. This is my poem about it (meter: basīṭ):

       I resolved to make the pilgrimage, but my heart
           had other plans. Beside the holy House I was intending,
       there was a woman's house, the house of Juml,
           and to her undraped house my steps conveyed me.
       My circumambulations lacked for nothing,
           all seven of them, as they do for God.
       And just as pilgrims vie to throw their pebbles,
           I threw mine at her neighbor with all my might.
       I was to shave my head
           and be made hairless,
       and run my camel as they do
          ’til his sores go down.
       Another of their rites is the kissing of the stone,
           but kissing you is nothing like a stone.
       If ‘Umar or ‘Uthman had been to your house
           their pilgrimage would be to you alone.

Maymun said: Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad ibn Musa ibn ‘Imran al-Bakri said to me, "What induced you—God have mercy on you!—to leave out [the first caliph,] Abu Bakr, when you put ‘Umar and ‘Uthman in your poem?"
     "Because people have special feelings about Abu Bakr," I said. "May God have mercy on you as well."

From Reports that Are Agreed Upon by al-Zubayr ibn Bakkar

Two biters busted

Yunus the grammarian said: Ibn Abi Ishaq (d. 117/735) declared Islam's greatest poet to be Kuthayyir (d. 105/723), whose prestige and worth were conceded by the Quraysh. But Talha ibn ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Awf (d. 97 or 99/between 715 and 718) said:

I was with al-Farazdaq when he met Kuthayyir. He said, "O Abu Sakhr! [That is, Kuthayyir.] Of all the love poetry of the Arabs, yours is the best where you say" (meter: ṭawīl):

      I wish I could forget her. But everywhere
          I look, it's like Layla's there.

Kuthayyir responded, "O Abu Firas! [That is, al-Farazdaq.] Of all the Arabs' tribal boasting, yours is the best where you say" (meter: ṭawīl):

      We walk before other people, and they behind us.
          All we have to do is gesture, and they halt.

Talha said: Both verses are by Jamil. The first was ripped off by Kuthayyir, and the other by al-Farazdaq.
      Then al-Farazdaq said to Kuthayyir, "O Abu Sakhr! Did your mother used to come to Basra?" "No," said Kuthayyir, "but my father sure did."
      Talha said: Kuthayyir's comeback cracked me up. I never met anyone crazier than him. I was with a Qurashi group one time when we found him unwell. "How are you getting on?" we asked him. "Fine," he said. "Have you heard otherwise?" (Now Kuthayyir had Shi‘ite leanings.)
     "Yes," we said. "They say you're the Antichrist."
      Kuthayyir said, "By God, now that you mention it, I have been losing sight in one eye for the past few days!"

From the Commentary on the verses cited in the Summa of Ibn Hisham
by Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti; cf. the Book of Songs (1, 2)

If in Abu Dhabi

 For captioned video, follow this link.

Alexander the Sleepless XV

The clergy, seeing every day how things were going, professed their admiration but were privately consumed by envy. [....] Taking counsel together, they went and entreated the military commander, asking him one favor: that he banish the holy one and his brothers to the city of Chalcis in Syria. But God, Who loves humankind, made their knavery a benefit, since the blessed one's Syrian retreat would expedite his reunion with spiritual children he had not laid eyes on after twenty years.

The faith of everyone [in Chalcis] was strengthened upon Alexander's entry into the city. The rulers' fear of him was such that he spent some time as a ward of the public guards, only for the citizens to take over his protection, such was their desire to be with him. And he marveled at God's forbearance, and how He had frustrated the subterfuge of [Antioch's] wicked people, of which Alexander was well aware.

After some time, he resolved to withdraw and move on someplace else, as he had done six times in the past. He could not take leave openly, due to the military commander's orders, so he changed clothes with a beggar, and in this dress made his departure by night. 

Many days on the road later, he came to a place where he discovered a monastery called "Barleycorn," whose men were distinguished for their piety. He went in and greeted them all, and was struck by the order and consistency of the holy brothers' life, and the greatness of the love they shared. "I recognize this way of life," he said to himself, "as if it bore the stamp of my old precepts. I wonder how they were spread into this region, for their leaders are new to me. Never on all the roads I've traveled have I seen anything like it." Then, on learning who had instituted the monastery and its principles, he discovered that it was founded by one of his own flock! And he gave glory to God, Who showed him that his labors had borne fruit, even in that [unknown, but seemingly westward-lying] place. 

The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.40-2

Oil in classical Arabic tradition

Although there is no historical evidence by which a first discoverer of oil and its properties might be singled out, classical Arabic tradition can be identified as the premodern linguistic culture most permeated by words for oil, in its onomastics, proverbs, and poetry going back to pre-Islamic times. Occurrences of the word nafṭ in classical verse have modern political implications, highlighting the historical priority of the Arabs where oil is concerned, and the falsehood of Western claims to it. On this point, it should not go without saying that Western notice of oil in the region began with an Arab merchant from Bahrain, who mentioned it to a quartermaster of the British army while at Addis Ababa. That officer resigned his post forthwith and transferred to the Gulf in search of oil.

The word nafṭ calls attention for its antiquity and its particularity, indicating that Arabs have understood oil's nature for over 2,000 years. It denotes the reality of oil better than terms in use by the Europeans who, judging from basic appearances, called it petroleum, that is, "rock oil," as if it were a culinary oil pressed from rock. The Arabic designation of nafṭ is less naïve, designating a rare substance with distinct properties [from those of botanic oils, which are called in Arabic by a different word]. But those who hypothesize a relation between nafṭ and nabt "vegetation" [best defended through a shared connection to nabṭ, which is "the issue of water from the ground"] hit on the fact that geological oil is an organic substance. This would not preclude the possibility that nafṭ entered Arabic from another cultural domain, or that it derives from more ancient languages.

Nafṭ has an array of meanings in Arabic. As a substantive noun, it refers to petroleum. As an epithet, it conveys the sense of boiling, sneezing, or furious anger; correspondingly, the verb nafaṭa yanfiṭu is said of a pot [when it boils], a goat [when it sneezes], and a man [suffused by anger]. Nafṭ also signifies a blister filled with fluid that appears on the hand after manual labor. There is clear affinity among these meanings, in that they all have to do with the emergence of something with force and violence. And although this similitude was incomprehensible until modern times, the topology of an oil deposit resembles that of a blister on the skin.

Nafṭ also carries the meaning of tar (qār), which is properly speaking a category of nafṭ. Ibn Manẓūr in Lisān al-‘arab (art. √qwr) states that "Qār is a black substance that camels are smeared with [to treat their mange], and also boats, in order to prevent water from seeping in." The Arabs were well acquainted with the fundamental properties of tar, in particular the intensity of its blackness and the impossibility of its taking on other colors. There are many proverbs to this effect, such as "I'll do that when tar turns white" [i.e., never]. In Averroes's commentary on the Posterior Analytics (I.6), he mentions [tar, saying: "Whereas predication of essential attributes is possible when these are substances, it is necessary when they are accidents, in] the way that white is predicated of snow, and black is predicated of qār." [....] And Mu‘āwiya al-Ḍabbī said (meter: ṭawīl):

     Until I see tar gleaming like the dawn [mughraban],
         or I see the mute stones speaking, I am stuck here.

The word mughrab is glossed as "white" in Lisān al-‘arab (art. √ghrb), where the verse is explained: "The poet wound up in a spot that was disagreeable to him, from which rescue was impossible unless tar should turn white, or stones begin speaking—things that do not and should not happen in the normal course of events." These proverbial expressions are sufficient to indicate that petroleum was a familiar, everyday part of early Arab life. 

After the entry of the Mongols into Baghdad at the end of the Abbasid Dynasty, the scientific heritage of the Arabs suffered major losses, especially in the discipline of chemistry. However, the poems and stories that remain have a lot to tell us. Poetry has many functions, one of the most important being the witness it bears to matters that are not otherwise recorded, thereby preserving the history of the nation. Even low forms of verse spoken hundreds of years ago have important political and sociohistorical implications for our time. Among these is the fact that the Muslims of Baghdad were familiar with petroleum. Nor were they the only ones, but—as indicated in books of Islamic law and history, as well as poetry [of the 9th century CE]—Muslims were the first to establish a legal and administrative framework for the utilization of oil, which they extracted from deposits called nafāṭāt. The city of al-Qayyāra outside Baghdad was so named precisely for the number of nafāṭāt in that region. And Dhū Qār [site of the famous battle] was nothing but a boggy area where oil rose to the earth's surface.

To oversee the qayyārāt and nafāṭāt and regulate their exploitation by the oil sector, the Abbasid caliph appointed an "oil czar" (wālī al-nafāṭāt), whose office resembled present-day ministries of oil. This is attested in verses [by ‘Abd al-Ṣamad ibn al-Mu‘adhdhal] appearing in al-Zamakhsarī's Campsite of the Righteous, later quoted in the chapter "On vices of governorship" in Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad al-Bayhaqī's Virtues and Vices [and, before either of these, in the Virtues and Their Opposites of al-Jāḥiẓ] (meter: ṭawīl):

     By my life! You put on such pompous airs,
         as if ministering from the dais of al-Faḍl ibn Marwān. 
     And if, Abū 'l-‘Abbās, you governed in his stead
         as my superior, I would not expect your character to change.
     How proud would you be of musk and ambergris,
         if you're this proud to oversee pools of nafṭ?
     Brook your hauteur. Don't lose your humility.
         A governor of nafṭ ought not be haughty.

One of the topmost authorities of energy law in our time—a British legal counselor to the World Bank and a number of oil-rich countries—was reduced to amazement when I recited these verses and explained them to him, for Westerners think they were first to bring oil extraction within the domain of law in the late nineteenth century. And these verses highlight the fact that the Abbasids were the first to do this. 

From "Political Implications of the Word Nafṭ in Classical Arabic Tradition" (2018), a blog post by Anas Alhajji

Alexander the Sleepless XIV

Theodotus, bishop of Antioch, was in thrall to a party of wretched hypocrites (called periodeutae). On learning that the blessed Alexander had entered the city with a mob of monks singing psalms without pause, he gave orders for their abuse and expulsion with blows, and this warrant to injure the servants of God was carried out unsparingly as they were driven away. But the holy one saw through the Devil's trappings and, in the middle of the night, together with his brethren, he re-entered the city unseen, and found an old bathhouse in which to resume their continuous singing of hymns. [The acoustics were probably amazing.] Their audacity sparked the bishop's wrath, which he dared not take out on them again for fear of the people of his city. For the Antiochenes, having heard of Alexander's incredible feats and seen them for themselves, revered the blessed one as a prophet, wherefore they abandoned the church to attend to him and his wondrous teachings.

Finding that honor, glory, and the license to speak universally without restraint were now his, and that his preaching was enjoyed by all, and that they were ready to do anything he called them to, he saw it was time for action, and turned straightaway to caring for the city's poor. Here too, the holy one's majesty of soul is cause for wonder. Hounded from place to place, this man without possessions focused his zeal on the construction of a hospice. He gathered the city's wealthy before him, and lectured them as the divine presence dictated, and that is how the necessities of the hospice were furnished. Even with the bishop and the military commander, he was conspicuously unrestrained in his complaints about many things they had left undone. In short, he made himself the teacher and the trainer of all and sundry.

The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.38-9

Aubade

          (On ½ a line of Suhrawardi)

                    Why did papyrus have to go away
                    Why not come in sheets to write on
                    or else forget it as it’s happening
                    and forever wonder why
                    It takes a lot of time to turn aside
                    from all I thought I saw along the way
                    Bright planet, form a sign for me
                    because don’t you know the
                    stars that wander are the noble ones
                    Hasty are we, in harness pressing on
                    The nearest place to where we are
                    is miles away
                    Some thing to travel on
                    as high as it is wide
                    the next to go will be the ultimate
                    Read it to me softly, now
                    from papers on the floor
                    printed lightly with two feet to fly on

          By David Larsen (2022)