Alexander the Sleepless XII

In the company of his brethren, whose hymn-singing continued without interruption, the blessed Alexander went all the way across the desert to arrive at Solomon's city—the city he built "in the wilderness," as it says in the Book of Kings, now called Palmyra. But when, from far away, the people of the city caught sight of the brethren drawing nearer in their numbers [....], they closed the gates. "Who could possibly feed all those men?" they said to one another. "If they come into our city, then all of us will starve."

At this, the holy man gave praise to God. "Trust in the Lord is better than trust in men," he said. "Take courage, brothers, for the Lord watches over us in unsuspected ways." And [sure enough,] the barbarians of those parts showed a humanitarian concern that was unparalleled. The brethren had abided in the desert for three days when, from a distance of four days' travel, there arrived a group of camel-riders sent to them by the Lord with supplies, in accordance with what the holy one had said. To God the brethren gave praise and thanks, and let others share in the bounty. It was so much more than they needed that they found themselves distributing the goods sent to them among the poor of that city.

Some eager members of the brethren formed a plan. As consolation for their recent sufferings, they wished to bring refreshment to the brethren in their great numbers, and so they disobeyed the holy one by preparing a mixed grill for the brethren's gustatory delight. But Alexander decided to give them a lesson in sublimating their woes. As soon as the feast was all prepared, he took up the parchments of the Holy Gospel as was his custom, saying "Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will toward men," which was his habitual way of taking leave. With that, he gave word that the feast be left untouched, and went back on the road. And the brethren held back from all that was laid out for them, and got back on the road. 

From The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.35-6

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 muwashshaḥa of spring

                       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

By Ibn al-Maghribi
Selected by Ibn Shakir al-Kutubi
in Choice Notices of the Historical Record

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, which is either a craftsman's tool or the blade of a plow. In any case, it is not a purely Arabic word.

From Attainment of the Aspiration to Knowledge 
of the Circumstances of the Arabs by Mahmud Shukri
al-Alusi al-Baghdadi

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