If in Boston

After an 18th-century MS of al-Qazwīnī’s ‘Ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt 

(The Wonders of Creation) illustrated in a workshop of Palestine. 

Bavarian State Library, Cod. arab. 463, fol. 181v

Mālik and the wolf

They say that one night, while Mālik ibn al-Rayb was out on a raid, a wolf attacked him in his sleep. He drove it off, but without success, for the wolf returned and would not give ground. So Mālik fell upon it with his sword, and slew it, and this is his poem about the incident (meter: ṭawīl):

  Hey wolf of the scrub, now the stock of human laughter:
      From east to west, report of you will spread from rider to rider.
  Bold-hearted though you were, you met the lion
      whose neck is strong, whose bite is stronger, 
  who never sleeps at night without the sword
      that's quick to violence in defense of people.
  Hey wolf, my stealthy nighttime caller:
      Did you take me for a dull-witted person?
  Several times I drove you off, and when you wore me down
      and would not be shooed away, I curbed your nuisance.
  And now, at the feet of the son of a noble dame, you are made carrion
      by a bright cutter that delivers from oppression.
  Many's the dubious battle where, had you been present,
      the memory of me amid the fray would scare you still,
  and the sight of my fallen foe in armor
      with his hands fixed in the earth [that he died clawing],
  worsted by the brave-hearted fighter whose
      opponents wish their hearts could flutter back to them,
          would be haunting you.
  With a sword of two sharp edges I leap, and toward death
      I walk proudly, where my peers dawdle like mangy camels.
  When I see death. I don't shrink from it in a deferential way.
      When I ride into narrow straits, it is by choice.
  But when my soul will tolerate no more, steer clear
      and back off, lest your entire community be scattered in terror. 

From the Book of Songs

When you remarry

    I wish no trace were left of their encampment.
        I would not then be saddened at the sight.
    When their camels stepped away, aboard their litters went
        gentlewomen like does of Urāq with wide eyes.
    Stopped at Dhū 'l-Jadāh, apart from menfolk,
        they cast off overclothes to play at leapfrog.
    [They travel in summer.] The sun rises on them
        almost as soon as it sets, but it's no affront to them.
    I wish the winds my message to their people would convey
        at Murj Ṣurā‘ or al-Andarīn.
    White cumuli that echo one another’s peal,
        with lightning bolting at us from cloudy banks,
    their mounded forms lit up by rearing ones,
        now in darkest night and now again—
    what are they, compared to beautiful Ghaniyya with her neighbor
        on the day of their departure, and beautiful Umm al-Banīn?
    And what are the eggs of the [ostrich,] bushy and confrontational,
        nursed on albumen until they hatch?
    Laid in one shape, all of them,
        white in color, with prenatal chicks contained inside,
    sheltered by a wing and brooded over,
        shielded underneath its plumage,
    in a safe spot on a high place fed by sweet breezes,
        where the north wind’s moan is sometimes heard,
    and the wadi of Na‘mān empties out
        into the graveled clay of al-Adyathīn.
    That is where yon citadel of wandering cloud unleashes,
        and the buzz [of flies around the ponds it fills] erupts like crazy.
    And what is the shine of the jeweler’s pearl,
        pried from its covering by the strong-willed [diver]?
    He keeps it wrapped in silks,
        and when he takes it out, eyes sparkle.
    Between the diver and the pearl come frightful sights:
        great fish and whales and other marine giants.*
    Avidly, he risks his life (nafs) for it.
        The desire in his soul (nafs) is strong and grasping.
    And noble mares are continually saddled
        for riding off to look at pearls in the [cool of] morn and evening.
    [I say to my beloved spouse:] After the saddle quits the withers
        of my mount, and events befall me as I deserve,
    stay clear of the wandering lowlife
        who calls on people after dark.
    He slurps a skin of cultured milk, then stoppers it
        and says, "It’s your turn to pour. I already shared mine."
    Beneath reproach, he reproaches others. Whether
        your flesh is lean or fatty, he chews it [behind your back].
    Constantly he lollygags around your door,
        as if tethered with a strap there.
    When times are hard, he’s useless.
        He has no camels fit for milking, nor any unfit ones.
    When I die? Get yourself the miser’s opposite,
        a young fighter with a lean midriff,
    one whose eyes dart like a falcon’s
        when he finds that all is not as it should be.
    Night for him is without darkness. He trusts
        in a fearless camel and races her [as if by day].
    His people are in debt to his brave actions.
        The women wish to have no other man.
    This is [my advice,] not some occult destiny I foretell
        to you who think that everything’s an omen.
    Let the outcry cease! My accuser makes a case
        out of whatever I just did, forgetting my prior exploits.
    [In youth], I wore a mantle of prestige, and then it was
        required of me to toil and soon be judged.
    Now my death is nearer than a phantom.
        Between my life and me it totters nigh.
    Many a day ends in disaster. And then
        sometimes those days are far between,
    [as on the night] I crept up and whispered to her: "Pay
        your uncle's son no mind [and come with me]."

A qasida by Ibn Ahmar al-Bahili (meter: wāfir)

*Two verses interpolated from Uncommon Words in Prophetic Hadith
  by Ibrahim al-Harbi

Adventures in Guest-Blogging II

I don't mean to brag, but a number of my friends have been featured bloggers on Harriet for the Poetry Foundation. Cedar, Rodney, Kasey, Alli, Brandon, Brandon, Matvei, Garrett, Thom, Marie, Asiya, Silvina, Sara, Patrick, Stephanie, Dana, Eddie, Hoa, Rodrigo, Joshua, and if I keep clicking back I'll be reminded of more.

This is all to say I'm glad to be blogging for Harriet finally, on the theme of Poetry and Translation. Thanks, Shoshana! My first post is up today. 

A muwashshaha of spring

                             By Taqī al-Dīn ibn al-Maghribī

                       Narcissus loves the rose so much
                   its eyes don't close in sleep
                       You see its raiment on a stem
                   haggard from passion

                       Have pity on the grief of one
                          whose love was so ordained!
                       But it's curtains for narcissus
                          because rose refuses
                       If you took pity on its state
                          you would pay a visit  

                     May God arrange reunion
                 where you sit down with me
                     to recreation of our souls, ¡ay!
                 Fine steerage that would be!

                     And trim the herbs with dainty seed
                          and dress them up in sweetness
                     like mulberries discovered 
                          at the peak of ripeness
                     Let waters flow once more through the canal,
                          burbling like nightingales

                     When Spring puts out the call:                 
               "Be clothed, ye stems and branches!"
                     you see green outfits of the silk
                promised in eternity

                     It's hard, in Spring, to find
                          in favor of the abstainer from the cup.
                     Festive get-togethers are Springtime's gift
                          and none but the boor oppose them.
                     Give us drink! The only tavern-goer
                          to be on guard against
                              is the one who's not wasted

                     But a well-aged daughter of the vine
               can be rough on the insolvent man
                     with a buzz already on him, when he 
               spies a cup of it, and guzzles it

From Choice Notices of the Historical Record by Ibn Shākir al-Kutubī

The locust's tomb

      Passerby, the slab piled over me is low
      to the ground, nor much to see. Be that as it is,
      good man, hail Philaenis! Her singing locust
      was I, who used to crawl from thorn to thorn,
      the reedy bug she fussed over and loved
      for two whole years of my anthemic racket.
      At my death, her care lived on, and over me she reared
      this little monument to resourcefulness in song.

Leonidas of Tarentum (Greek Anthology 7.198)

Down With Adam Were Sent Five Things of Iron

Ironworking is one of the oldest crafts in the world. On the authority of Ibn ‘Abbas, may God be pleased with him, it is reported that a hammer, an anvil, and a set of tongs are what Adam was sent down with, peace be upon him. It is also narrated that he was sent down with myrrh, and with a shovel. 

According to another report, five things of iron were sent down with Adam: an anvil, tongs, a needle, a hammer, and a mīqa‘a, which is glossed as either a whetstone, a mallet, a sledgehammer, or a tool for roughing up a millstone's grinding edge.

Another report of of Ibn ‘Abbas has it that Adam, peace be upon him, was sent down from Paradise with a bāsina. This designates a craftsman's tool or the blade of a plow; in either case, the word is not Arabic in origin.

From Fulfilment of the Aspiration to Knowledge of the Fortunes
and Lifeways of the Arabs by Mahmud Shukri al-Alusi

John Bonham, isolated drum track from "Fool In the Rain" (1979)

If in Brooklyn

Glad to be reading this Thursday at the launch of Aditya Bahl's chapbook MUKT (Organism for Poetic Research, 2021). 

Shuttles

Another verse where Abu Tammam goes wrong is the following:

     The places where your tribe once stayed are vacant, I attest,
           [their traces] worn away like the washa’i‘ of a mantle.

He treats washa’i‘ as if they were the mantle's bordered edges, but this is not the case. In reality, washa’i‘ are a weaver's "shuttles," which carry the coiled thread of the weft between the fibers of the warp. Dhu 'l-Rumma says [correctly]:

     [The sands] are played by strenuous winds
           like the weaving of a Yemeni whose washa’i‘ weave a mantle.

As for the verse of Kuthayyir,

     In summer, the huts of ‘Azza's tribe were wiped away,
           whose washī‘ had been renewed in a scrawling pattern [sic].

He uses washī‘ here to mean the stuffing in a gap between two things. But shuttles are for thread... and what Kuthayyir means is that [the sides and ceilings of] the huts had been re-stuffed [with grass]. This mistake is due to his inexperience of the trappings of settled life. When a Bedouin uses the wrong word for something, having never seen it first-hand, it is excusable.
     For Abu Tammam, on the other hand, there is no excuse, because he belonged to sedentary civilization, and was hardly ignorant of it. But he grants himself license, [and is flagrant about it,] as you can see in another poem where he describes his own poetic work:

     Jest and earnest are combined in the shuttling of its weft,
            as are nobility and scurrility with grief and ecstasy.

From The Weigh-in Between the Poetry of Abu Tammam and al-Buhturi by Abu 'l-Qasim al-Amidi

Scary story

I am informed by Isma‘il b. Muhammad, who said that it was reported to him by Muhammad b. Hibat Allah al-‘Ukbari, that Abu 'l-Husayn b. Bashran was told by Ibn Safwan of what Abu Bakr al-Qurashi had said. He said: My father narrated to me, on the authority of Hisham b. Muhammad, that Yahya b. Tha‘lab was told by his mother, ‘A’isha, that his grandfather ‘Abd al-Rahman b. al-Sa’ib al-Ansari said that

Ziyad assembled the people of Kufa in order to subject them to anti-‘Alid propaganda. [This was during the month of Ramadan in the year 53 A.H./August 673 CE]. The mosque was filled, and the courtyard, and the fortified castle. ‘Abd al-Rahman said:
          "I was with a group of my fellow Ansaris when, amid the tumult, I fell asleep. And in my sleep I saw something with a long neck coming toward me. It had long lashes and pendulous lips like a camel's. 'What are you?!' I said.
          "It said, 'I am al-Nufād Dhu 'l-Ruqba (The Die-Off With a Neck), and I was sent to the occupant of this castle.' I awoke with a jolt, and asked my fellows, 'Did you see what I just saw?'
          "'No,' they said, so I told them. [Just then,] a representative of the palace came out and said to us, 'The commander says: "Please take your leave of me. I am indisposed and cannot see you."' For the plague had struck him." And ‘Abd al-Rahman declaimed these verses (meter: basīṭ):

         His plans for us were not yet complete
             when the Long-Necked Die-Off came for him:
         the demonic counterpart of the courtyard's master
              whose blow was equal to the master's oppression.

[...]

I am informed by al-Jariri on the authority of al-‘Ukbari that ‘Ali b. Husayn said: It was reported to me by Muhammad b. al-Qasim b. Mahdi that he was informed by ‘Ali b. Ahmad b. Abi Qays of what Abu Bakr al-Qurashi had said. He said: It was told to me by Sa‘id b. Yahya, on the authority of his uncle ‘Abd Allah b. Sa‘id, that Ziyad b. ‘Abd Allah was told by [Abu] ‘Awana: I am informed by ‘Abd al-Rahman b. al-Husayn that al-Qasim b. Sulayman said:

When plague first came to Kufa, Ziyad left town. Then, when it lifted, he returned. And that is when the plague presented in [the blackening of] one of his fingers.
        Sulaym said: "At his summons I went to him. He said to me, 'Oh, Sulaym, do you feel the heat that I am feeling?' 'No,' I said. He said, 'By God, the heat I feel in my body is like fire.'"
        One hundred and fifty doctors were assembled around him, including three from Chosroes's court. Sulaym drew one of Chosroes's doctors aside and asked for his prognosis, The doctor told him what Ziyad had, and that he was dying. And the plague took him just as the doctor had advised.

From the Well-ordered History of Kings and Nations of Ibn al-Jawzi

Watch Another Wander

   Collage, 2002

Mystic riddle

      How many times have I said, while drinking wine at dawn:
          Who am I to blame others, who am drunkenness's plaything,
      all alone, seconded by no one to support me,
          even as the cosmos and its beings sing my praise?
      This is the onset of the Beauty-Marked, is it not? Watch out
          for me! Our get-together is a lofty connection.
      When I am visible, the Beauty-Marked One is in view,
          and when she is concealed, I'm still exposed.
      When you want to see her, look at me,
          and buddy, when you're with her, be on guard.
      Her every meaning is my meaning, and in form
          she's like me too, and my daughter and my father she is called.

By Shaykh ‘Adi ibn Musafir (meter: basīṭ)

A weaver's song

I am informed by al-Husayn ibn Yahya, on the authority of Hammad, that Hammad's father said:

Malik ibn Abi al-Samh was staying in Mecca, at the home of a man of the Banu Makhzum who had a weaver for his slave. Someone came along and asked: "Have you heard your weaver's song?"
       "No!" the man said. "Does he sing?"
       "Yes," he was told, "with lyrics by Abu Dahbal al-Jumahi."
        The man sent for the weaver and told him to sing it. "It's no good unless I'm at my loom," the weaver said. So his master brought Malik to the weaver's room, where the weaver sat at his loom and sang (meter: ṭawīl): 

   This night goes on too long. It is not lifting.
      [I am harried and dragged down by worry with no relief.
   All night long, angst rides me. It's like 
       being stubbed in the ribs with a glowing coal.]

Malik learned the song, and when he sang it, everyone took it for his composition. "By God," he would say, "it was not I. It was none but a weaver who came up with this song."

From the Book of Songs

Alexander the Sleepless XI

All along the the Roman frontier, the blessed Alexander went strengthening everybody in their faith. He fed the poor as if they were his children, and taught the rich to do good works. His words struck them with such compunction that they brought forth the documents of their claims against their debtors, and burned them up before him. But some pestilent types, whose wealth was their plumage, rose up with their minds full of darkness and said to him, "Have you come to us to make us poor?" On these men who were so ungrateful for the gifts of God, the blessed one pronounced a curse, and at that fortified camp there was no rain for three years. 

When the cause for Alexander's anger became known to all, they went in a single-minded body to extirpate the guilty from the camp. In terror these men took refuge in the church, and tearfully begged forgiveness for their wrongs. At this, the rest of the mob were struck with fear of winding up in the same position. It was said that the blessed Alexander had shown up in Antioch, and they agonized over this, conjecturing that he had gone there to denounce them to military high command. So they went to the bishops of the Romans, that they might intervene with the blessed Alexander through letters on their behalf. And the bishops sped their letters to the blessed one, entreating him to take pity on the residents of the camp, and to plead with God on their behalf. 

The holy one cried aloud when he received their letters and learned of the community's anguish, and he spoke sorrowfully to the Lord. "Who am I, my Lord, that at my word You have visited evil on guiltless people? I shall always be grateful to You, Master, for listening to me who am a sinner. And now I beg for your compassion. Take pity on the poor, and restore their lost fruits of the past three years, that I may know Whose servant I am." [....] And it happened that in the fourth year, that camp took in a harvest like none before, just as Alexander had enjoined.

But the Lord's wrath against those pestilential men was unabated. In a matter of days, their children all died, and their herds and homes were raided by barbarians and thieves, leaving no doubt in anyone's mind that it was on account of the grief they had caused the holy man.

From The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.33-4

Alexander the Sleepless X

The blessed Alexander brought his picked disciples across the Euphrates River, and off they went into the Persian Desert. With no garments to change into, nor any provision but the parchments of the holy Scriptures, they kept up their rule of singing hymns night and day without pause, and their stay in the desert went on and on.

At this time began a trial of the disciples' fleshly needs, that the worthiest among them might be revealed. They went for many days with nothing to eat but tree-nuts, and did not break ranks until some thirty of them began to mutter against the blessed one. Just as happened to Moses, they said to Alexander, "Have you led us into this desert to die of hunger?" This was premeditated, for their secret desire was to return to the monastery—as the blessed one well knew. Thanks to the intervention of the Holy Spirit, their desire could not be dissimulated from him, who was in truth a second Moses, faithful to God in all His house. Calling them to account, and addressing them like the faithless reprobates they were, he gave them leave to return to the monastery he had left behind, saying in a great voice: "Trust me, brothers, that the Lord watches over us, and will refute your lack of faith this very day."

They had gone but a short way when the holy man's words were fulfilled by God. For it was then that He caused a detachment of Roman tribunes and soldiers to come forth, loaded with goods on God's behalf, to summon the brothers to bless their fortifications. (Between the Roman and Persian terrirories there are fortifications set to hold off the barbarians, at a distance of ten or twenty mile-markers apart from each other.) Seeing them from afar, the deserting brothers realized that it was just as the divine father had spoken, and their faith was reinforced. Some of them fell on their faces in repentance, and rejoined the brothers. The rest went away to the inner desert, where they dwelled until the end of their lives.

From The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.32-3

The palm tree sings

By Tahar Hammami (1947-2009)

               I see the palm tree walking in the streets
                           A lofty one, with head held high
                                            The overthrower and defier

               Did you see, on that brave day,
                               the leaves of the palm
                                              as it made its way?

               Did you see the palm of the oasis
                              towering above the square
                      or the wounded, picking shot from their chest
                                      and binding up the tear?

★   ★   ★                                 

               The necks of castor plants bow low
               The squill bulb's leaves are folded

★   ★   ★                                 

               I see the palm tree walking
                      in the thick of traffic walking
                      in the thick of night it's walking

               In the thick of an attack it walks
                      into the sun with eyes lashed shut
                      onto a promising harvest

               The palm is right. You who forget!
               Cast off delusion and wear its dress
                       The palm tree does not cry

               The palm tree sings
                           with sparrows and children
                           with the waters of the sea
                           with mountain wheatfields 
                           with the lightning
                           with the ferment of autumn
                           and winter rains

               I see the palm tree walking in the streets
                              with the iron of the factories
                              and the produce of the fields

                                    Long nights and painful incidents
                                    notwithstanding
                              I see the palm tree standing tall
                                    I see it's not receding

               (1981)

Mohamed Bhar, "Ara al-nakhla yamshi"
(I see the palm tree walking).
Lyrics by Tahar Hammami

Alexander the Sleepless IX

Alexander made another search for what to request of God, and found in Gospel that the disciples appointed to proclaim the kingdom of our lord Jesus Christ had numbered seventy. And he asked of God that this same number of faithful zealots, capable of broadcasting the word of God to the heathen Gentiles, be appointed from his own disciples. And this too God gave him, appointing out of Alexander's disciples seventy who were powerful in faith just as the holy man had asked. 

I will tell the true story of how this came about. When his eight squadrons, arrayed in perfect faith, had with joy and gladness in their hearts been sending prayers and hymns up to God for quite some time, Alexander thought to himself and said, "Let no complacency infect this mighty suspension of earthly cares." And he returned to imposing harsh asperities upon his person, as was his way. And he convened a hundred and fifty noble soldiers of Christ who were truly armored with the breastplate of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Holy Spirit. He called each of them by name and said, "Brothers, let us test ourselves and the perfection of our faith. Let us cross that fearsome desert of the faithless, and show through our works that we believe in God with all our hearts, and not just in His word." 

The original plan was to go to Egypt, and school the faithless of that place whose trust was in [the idols of] their own handwork. And his true disciples committed wholeheartedly to following him as soon as they heard the plan. But the Holy Spirit prevented this venture, and the blessed Alexander resolved to quit the monastery without telling anyone. "I am going to look in on our brothers in the desert," he told them instead, and assigned one Trophimus, a calm and gentle holy man of God, to be their abbot. And with his usual exhortations and a prayer, he bid them all farewell and left. And then he took back off across the Euphrates River.

From The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.31-2

Alexander the Sleepless VIII

Things went on this way for seven years. Then Alexander made another inquiry into what else to ask from God, and found the prophetic words: "On the law of the Lord he will meditate day and night." He thought to himself and said, "How is that even possible?" Reason furnished the reply: "The Holy Spirit would not send us an impossible command through the oracle by any means." [....] And he devoted three years to preyer and fasting day and night, and beseeching God that this command, albeit a job for heavenly powers, might yet be fulfilled through him upon the earth. 

God was well aware of His servant's reverence and goodwill, and the burning heat of his zeal, and in His complaisance and philanthropy granted Alexander's wish, disclosing Himself visibly and saying to him: "Be the founder of what you wish for, and at your word it will stand on earth until this age comes to its end." (Alexander conveyed this to us as if it had happened to someone else, and in this he was a disciple of the blessed apostle Paul, who narrated his visionary rapture as something that befell another person.)

After this mystery was revealed to him, he sought some standard for fulfilling the command, but on seeing the weakness of human nature, he was disappointed. For he ransacked both Testaments, and scanned the greatest men of every era for someone to emulate, in order that he might fulfill his good intentions and save many souls—and found that no one on earth had ever accomplished this prodigious feat. So Alexander took the universe's Maker as his guru.

From The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.29-30

Alexander the Sleepless VII

To stand revealed as a second Jacob! He prayed to God that this would be allowed him, and God in His love for humanity allowed it. 

Adding up the parallels between them, the blessed Alexander said to himself: "Jacob was the shepherd of unreasoning flocks, and my goal is to be the shepherd of reasoning ones. He demanded to receive a just wage from Laban at the end of seven years, and when my seven years are up I will win my Master's grace. At the end of twenty years of service, he had four wives and was the father of assemblies, and in twenty years of service to my Master I will dedicate four choruses to Him, each one singing in a different language. Jacob, in fear for his life, appeased his brother with eight herds of livestock, but I will win salvation with eight choruses singing hymns to God. And whereas he had twelve sons of flesh and blood, I have twelve readings from divine Scripture." For twenty years these thoughts were his occupation, and the jar was his second home. 

During this time, there formed around him a group of four hundred aspirants who, believing that through Alexander the Kingdom of Heaven could be earned, adopted his excellent and blameless way of life, so that they too might be intimates of Christ. Romans, Greeks, Syrians, Copts—altogether these men were speakers of four languages, and he organized them into eight choruses, singing and psalmodizing to God with articulate fervor. And this is how his monastery was founded. [....] In fulfillment of holy Gospel, he gave no thought to any provision for the brothers' needs beyond the day at hand. All else went to the poor. They kept no change of clothes. And they were content in the words of God through all these austerities, and thrived on the hope of things to come.

From The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.26-7