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

Another ars

‘Umar b. Laja’ said (meter: ṭawīl):

   Some poetry is like sheep manure, strewn disjointedly
        by the tongue of a poseur whose verse is meager.

because sheep's dung falls in unconnected pellets. Al-Mubarrad said: "I am informed that ‘Umar b. Laja’ said to a cousin of his: 'Between the two of us, I am the better poet.' 
     "'How so?' his cousin asked.
     "'Whereas I follow one verse with its brother, you say a verse and then its cousin.'"

      Someone asked Jarir about the poetry of Dhu 'l-Rumma, and he said: "It is like gazelle's dung, and the dottings of [henna on the hands of] a bride," meaning that it is oddly formed and comes out unevenly.
     [By way of another interpretation of this remark,] al-Asma‘i said: "'The poetry of Dhu 'l-Rumma is sweet when you first hear it, but gets weaker the more it is recited, and loses its beauty.' This is because when you first smell gazelle's dung, [freshly laid,] it is redolent of the aromatic plants on which the animal feeds. But as time goes by, it loses that fragrance, the way the 'dottings of a bride' are washed off."

From A Selection of Figurative and Allegorical Expressions of the Scholars and Rhetoricians by Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Jurjani

Alexander the Sleepless VI

For two days, he journeyed off into the desert until he reached a bandits' refuge, where thirty pernicious characters came under the authority of an arch-bandit, and not one city or country district was left unspattered by iniquity at their hands. The blessed Alexander had heard this from many people, and called on God's aid in presenting Him with the souls of these villainous men as tribute.

God knew how good Alexander's intentions were, and granted his request. For when he got together with the arch-bandit, and made known to him the word of faith, the bandit was moved to astonishment and sincere belief, and he accepted and was honored with the grace of holy baptism.
       After had risen from the sacred font, the blessed Alexander said to him, "Did you ask for anything, as you went before the sacred font?"
     "Yes," he said.
     "What did you ask for?" responded Alexander.
      To which the bandit: "I asked the Lord to take my life quickly." And he lived for one week longer, repenting of the deeds he had committed, and on the eighth day his Lord took him.

The bandit's thirty men were witness to this incredible marvel, and begged the blessed Alexander that they too might be honored with the gift of Christ. So they went through holy baptism, believing sincerely in our lord Jesus Christ. They were so hot to enter the faith that they converted their robbers' den into a monastery, wherein to stay and serve the Lord with all their hearts. It was not long before God deemed them worthy men, and the blessed Alexander saw their potential in the faith, and their power to build it up in others. He appointed one to serve as abbot (having made sure of the man's amplitude of faith), and bid them farewell, rejoicing and praying for them as he went back on the road. 

For two days he journeyed, up to the Euphrates River and across it, a Jacob in spirit. And he found a large storage jar sunk in the earth, and spent his days praying in the wilderness, and by night he would stay in this jar.

From The Life of Alexander the Sleepless (III.24-6)

By goats are tents unmade

The verb bahiya yabhā, verbal noun bahā’, is said of a tent when it rips and become useless. Active participle bāhin describes a tent that is ill furnished. The transitive verb abhā, formed on the same root, means to rip something up—as heard in the saying: Al-mi‘zā tubhī wa-lā tubnī (Tents are unmade by goats, not made). This is because goats climb on top of tents, and rip their fabrics, and as the rents in them grow wider,  the tent becomes unfit for habitation.
     Conveyed along with this is the idea that goat hair is not suitable for spinning, and this is why tents are not made of their hairs, but from camel hair and sheep's wool. Abū Zayd said: "The meaning of lā tubnī in the saying is that tents are not fabricated from goat's wool. If this were possible, then tents would [in a metonymical sense] be 'made by' goats."
     In Rectifying the Errors of Abū ‘Ubayd, Ibn Qutayba says: "In many places I have seen well-pitched Arab tents of goat hair." And then he said: "The meaning of lā tubnī in the saying is that goats are no good for a tent's roof (binā’)."
     Al-Azharī says: "The Bedouin have two kinds of goat. One is hairless, like the goats of the Hijaz and the lowlands [of the Tihama region], and goats such as are pastured in the uplands [of Central Arabia], far from arable terrain. The other kind of goat has long hair [suitable for spinning and weaving], and arable lands are its terrain, as it roams the outskirts of settled areas where water-sources are plentiful, like the goatkind of the Kurds in the mountains, and in the territories of Khorasan.
     "The saying 'Tents are unmade by goats, not made' would seem to be local to nomads of West Arabia and the Central Arabian plateau. Abū Zayd is correct in what he said." 

Ibn Manẓūr, The Tongue of the Arabs, art. √bhw

Alexander the Sleepless V

Rabbula spent a whole week with the blessed Alexander after witnessing this miracle, receiving instruction in the word of truth in strictest terms. Being convinced of all these matters, he begged for enlightenment about everything else. [....] The men of the city were also witnesses to the miracle, and on seeing the totality of Rabbula's conversion, they came with their wives and children to believe in our lord Jesus Christ—so hot to enter upon the faith that before they had even heard the word of God, they raced to receive the seal of holy baptism.

But the blessed Alexander, desirous of ascertaining the rigor of their belief, told them, "To receive the seal of baptism, first you must demonstrate your faith through works. Therefore if idols are being kept in anyone's house, let them be brought into the open and liquidated by their keepers' hands." Hearing this, everyone hastened to be the first to demonstrate their zeal by pulverizing their own idols. The mysterious ways of God were evident on that day, in that no one wishing to hide their idols under a false show of faith was able to do so, for everyone in the city knew each others' secrets, and so they raced to bring them out under threat of denunciation. In this way, the people were purified together with their homes, and in short order their faith was reinforced, and they proved themselves worthy of the grace of holy baptism.

[....] Alexander was himself the father of a rational flock, and seeing Rabbula well established in his post, and knowing him to be capable of leading others to God, such that all would come to follow him in due time, he exulted in his heart, fully satisfied by these accomplishments that "for one who believeth, all things are possible," and that Master God is disposed to give the right things to those who ask Him. And he considered what else he might request of the complaisant Christ.
     The people of the city loved Alexander so exceedingly, desiring him to be their pastor, that they set in motion every tactic of keeping him with them. Knowing this, he made plans to leave the city in secret. But the people found this out, and so as not to lose their true father, they surveilled him night and day and posted guards at the city gate. So the blessed one, being unable to talk his way out of the city, had his disciples lower him from the wall in a wicker basket, just like the blessed Paul who exited the city [of Damascus] in the same way. 

From The Life of Alexander the Sleepless (II.14, 16-7, 23)

Ars poetica

A wide array of poetry is esteemed by those who speak it.
    Some is garbage. Some is soundly proverbial,
and some is lunatic discourse coating its reciter in a pall.
    Some is easy-going, and some is bombast. There are quiescent endings
        and there are lines that ramble on and on.
In poetry, there are refuse-flingers, plagiarists
    and imitators, and there are some who make it new.
Leave that! and tend the verses of your own weaving.
    Some are bound to be noble, after you have journeyed through.

Lines 55-58 of a 97-line poem by Nabighat Bani Shayban (meter: basīṭ)

Two new articles

1. "Night and Day in Islamicate Literary Dispute" appears in Disputation Literature in the Near East and Beyond, ed. Enrique Jiménez and Catherine Mittermayer (de Gruyter, 2020), 191-213. Thanks to Enrique, and to Geert Jan for the connect.

2. "Towards a Reconstruction of Abū Naṣr al-Bāhilī’s Kitāb Abyāt al-ma‘ānī" appears in Approaches to the Study of Pre-modern Arabic Anthologies, ed. Bilal Orfali and Nadia Maria El Cheikh (Brill, 2021), 37-83. (This is the forthcoming article mentioned in Larsen 2018, p. 210, note 78.) Thank you to the editors, especially Bilal who put me on the path to abyāt al-ma‘ānī in 2015.