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 (meter: ṭawīl):

      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 bordered edged of a mantle, but this is not the case. In reality, washa’i‘ [sg. washī‘] are coils of thread that a weaver draws between the fibers of a warp in the act of weaving, as in the verse by Dhu 'l-Rumma (meter: ṭawīl):

      [The sands] are played by forceful winds that weave it
         like a Yemeni whose washa’i‘ weave a mantle.

As for the verse of Kuthayyir (meter: ṭawīl),

      The washī‘ on the homes of ‘Azza's tribe is renewed in script-like
      patterns [sic]
         before all trace of them is wiped away in summer.

He uses washī‘ to mean "stuffing" in an interstice between two things. But washī‘ is thread. [...] What this means is that their homes—specifically, their khiyām [sg. khayma]—were renewed by stuffing [the gaps in their walls with fresh panic grass]. His mistake is due to 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 a separate poem where he describes his own poetic work (meter: basīṭ):

     Jest and earnest are combined in the enmeshment 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