by Robert Irwin
Note the stock poetical figure of the upbraider or chider. The images of the twig on the sand-dune to describe a woman’s figure and the full moon her face are, if anything, even more conventional in Arabic love poetry. However, ‘the tales of the Beloved’ refer not to any woman, but to the Prophet Muhammad. The wine stands for spiritual drunkenness and so on throughout the poem.
When the infant moans
from the tight swaddling wrap,
and restlessly yearns
for relief from distress,
He is soothed by lullabies, and lays aside
the burden that covered him –
he listens silently
to one who soothes him.
The sweet speech makes him
forget his bitter state
and remember a secret whisper
of ancient ages.
His state makes clear
the state of audition
and confirms the dance
to be free of error.
For when he burns with desire
from lullabies,
anxious to fly
to his first abodes,
He is calmed
by his rocking cradle
as his nurse’s hands
gently sway it.
I have found in gripping rapture
when she is recalled
in the chanter’s tones
and the singer’s tunes –
What a suffering man feels
when he gives up his soul,
when death’s messengers
come to take him.
One finding pain
in being driven asunder
is like one pained in rapture
yearning for friends.
The soul pitied the body
where it first appeared,
and my spirit rose
to its high beginnings,
And my spirit soared past
the gate beyond my union
where there is no veil
of communion.
Th. Emil Homerin, From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint. Ibn al-Farid, His
Verse and His Shrine (Columbia, South Carolina, 1994), pp. 12–13
COMMENTARY
The call to remembrance was one of the most important features of the traditional qasida, for, as we have seen, contemplation of the deserted campsite regularly led the poet to recall a past love or loves. The theme of remembrance is crucial to these verses by Ibn al-Farid (extracted from a much longer poem by him, the Al-Ta’iyah al-Kubra, or ‘Great Poem Rhyming in Ta’). Remembrance was also a leading theme in the previous poem by him. However, dhikr, which means ‘remembrance’, also has a more specialist meaning in the vocabulary of the Sufis. In Sufism, dhikr refers to the incessant repetition of certain words or formulas in praise of God, often accompanied by music and dancing. A typical dhikr might consist of the repetition of such a phrase as Ya Latif, ‘Oh Kind One’ (that is, ‘O God’) thousands of times. In the poem above, Ibn al-Farid makes an extended comparison between the dhikr and the lullaby.
The controversy over the doubtful orthodoxy of Ibn al-Farid’s verses rumbled on through the centuries. Some critics even wrote their own poems rhyming in ta, in order to refute Ibn al-Farid’s ideas. However, Ibn al-Farid’s reputation was fiercely defended by Sufis who chanted his poems in their meetings and, by the late fifteenth century, his defenders could be seen to have triumphed over his critics.
Other poets besides Ibn al-Farid made use of the qasida form for devotional purposes. Together with Imru’ al-Qays’s Mu’allaqat, Busiri’s Burda is probably the most famous poem in the Arabic language. Sharaf al-Din Muhammad al-Busiri (1211–1294/6?), a mystic belonging to the Shadhili order of Sufis, earned a living in Alexandria as a manuscript copyist. It is said that the inspiration for the Qasidat al-Burda, ‘The Ode of the Mantle’, came to him as the result of a dream after he had suffered a paralysing stroke. The Prophet appeared in Busiri’s dream and put his mantle on the stricken poet, and at that instant he was cured. Busiri composed the qasida entitled ‘Luminous Stars in Praise of the Best of Mankind’, but more popularly known as the Burda, as an act of thanksgiving. The poem follows the conventional structure of the qasida and uses that structure to present a compendium of lore about the Prophet together with a call to repentance. The Burda, the product of a supernatural cure, itself acquired healing powers and its words were widely used as a kind of talisman against disease and misfortune.
‘Was it the memory of neighbours in Dhu Salam
That made you blend your flowing tears with blood?
Was it the wind that blows from Kazima?
Or did lightning flash in darkness over Idam?
Why are your eyes overflowing though you tell them to stop?
Why is your heart so frantic though you try to keep it calm?
How can a lover hope to hide his love
When his is both streaming and burning?
Without your passion you’d sprinkle no ruin with tears
Nor lie awake remembering ‘Alam and Ban.
Can you still deny your love when tears and illness,
Fair witnesses both, are speaking out against you,
And when passion has marked your cheeks with two deep lines
Of sickness like narcissus and tears like ‘anam fruits?’
Yes, I admit my beloved’s apparition has robbed me of my sleep.
Love will spoil all pleasure with pain.
O you who blame me over ‘Udhri love, take note
Of my excuse – were you but just, you would stop blaming me:
News of my state has spread far beyond you,
My secret to slander lies exposed and my disease is fatal.
Your advice is most sincere but what you say I cannot hear.
To the riling of his critics the lover is stone deaf.
Even the advice of age I spurned when it censured me.
Yet age is far above suspicion in its counsel.
But my hell-bent soul in its ignorance did not
Take heed of the warnings of hoariness and age,
Nor did I, unashamedly, prepare good deeds of welcome
For that guest who has descended now upon my head.
Had I known I would fail to pay him due respect
I would have concealed this secret for ever with katam dye.
Who can restrain my bolting soul from sin,
Like one restrains bolting steeds with bridles?
Do not try to cap its desire through transgression.
Food only strengthens the glutton’s lust.
The self is like an infant: given free rein, it craves to suckle
Until it is grown up; if weaned in time, it will abstain.
Curb its passions and beware of letting them take charge –
When passion rules, it kills or brings dishonour.
Be watchful when it forages in the field of deeds;
If the meadow pleases it, do not let it roam.
How many deadly delights has it not made enticing for those
Who never knew that the best cuts are most poisonous.
Beware of its hidden snares in hunger and satiety;
Some hunger is far worse then overeating.
And drain of tears an eye once filled
With forbidden sights, and stick to the diet of remorse.
Oppose the Self and Satan and rise up against them;
Treat their claim of good counsel with mistrust.
If they pretend to litigate or judge, do not obey!
You know the cunning of both litigant and judge.
May God forgive me for words without deeds;
Through which I have ascribed progeny to impotence.
I urge you to do good and myself had no such urge.
Not upright myself, how can I tell you ‘be upright’?
I did not prepare for death with supererogatory works.
Prayer and fasting for me were but an obligation.
I sinned
against the example of one whose dark nights spent in prayer
Made his feet complain of painful swelling,
Whose hunger made him squeeze his entrails and fold,
Despite its tender skin, his belly over stones.
To tempt him, high mountains turned to gold
Only to meet with his utmost disdain,
His needs but strengthening his restraint;
True resolution is not swayed by need.
How should his needs draw to the world one without whom
The world would not have been extracted from the void?
Muhammad, lord of both universes, lord of men and jinn,
Lord of the two peoples, Arabs and foreigners,
Our Prophet, source of all command and prohibition,
More truthful than the word of any other in his ‘yes’ or ‘no’,
The beloved in whose intercession all hope resides
In sudden terror and calamity of every kind.
He called us to God. Whoever holds on to him
Holds on to a rope that will not break.
The other prophets he outstripped in virtues physical and moral.
In generosity and knowledge they failed to approach him.
They all seek from the Prophet
A handful from his ocean or a draught from his rain,
Standing before him as befits their limits:
Dots as to knowledge, diacritical signs as to wisdom.
In him, form and essence reach perfection,
And mankind’s Creator chose him as beloved.
In virtues he is exalted above every peer,
And of his beauty’s core none can claim a share.
Forget all the Christians pretend about their prophet;
Devise and decree what you wish in his praise,
Attribute to him whatever honour you wish,
Ascribe to his rank any greatness you wish,
The merits of God’s Prophet are limitless;
No human speech can encompass them.
If his miracles in their greatness were equal to his rank
Dry bones would revive at the mention of his name.
Out of craving for us, he spared us trials that surpass our reason
And freed us from uncertainty and doubt.
Comprehension of his meaning confounds mankind;
All appear dumbstruck, be they distant or near,
Like the sun which appears small to the eye
From afar, and blinds when viewed from close at hand.
How in this world can his true nature be grasped
By a people of sleepers concerned only with their dreams?
The sum of our knowledge about him is that he is human
And that he is the best of God’s creation,
And that all noble messengers’ miracles before him
Became theirs only through his light.
He is the sun of excellence, they are its stars,
Reflecting its rays for people in the dark.
Marvel at the person of the Prophet, with virtues adorned,
In beauty clad, with a smile endowed,
Fresh as blossoms, grand as the full moon,
Generous as the sea, unflinching as Time.
He is one, but appears to you in his glory
As though in the midst of an army or retinue.
The pearl concealed in its shell seems as though
Made from the mine of his speech and smile.
No perfume can equal the dust on his bones;
Lucky is the one who smells its fragrance and kisses it.
Proof of his noble descent are the events at his birth;
How great a beginning, how great an end!
On that day the Persians perceived
Warnings of retribution and impending doom,
And Kisra’s Aiwan was cleft asunder,
To be rejoined no more, like Kisra’s royal house;
Bemoaning it, the fire’s flames died down
And the river’s source stopped flowing out of pain.
Sawa suffered when its lake ran dry,
And the thirsty returned in distress.
Fire flowed like water out of grief
And water flamed like fire,
The jinn screamed, the lights rose high
And Truth appeared in meaning and in word.
Yet they were blind and deaf; the message of good tidings
Was not heard, nor was the lightning’s warning seen
After the diviners had told their
peoples That their twisted faith would not stand up,
And meteors in the firmament had fallen down
Before their eyes like idols on this earth,
Until, swept from revelation’s path,
Droves of devils in rout followed each others’ tracks,
Like Abraha’s knights in their flight,
Or that army he pelted with pebbles,
Which praised him before they were thrown from his palms
As when Jonah was thrown from the swallower’s gut.
At his call the trees came prostrate
Walking on legs without feet,
As though drawing straight lines for those wondrous signs
Which their branches inscribed on the way,
Or like clouds that moved wherever he went
To shield him from the heat of fiery midday.
By the moon split in half, I swear that it shares
A resemblance with his heart that lends truth to my oath,
And by the greatness and goodness contained in that Cave
To which the eyes of all doubters were blind
For Truth and Truthful were in the cave unseen
Yet they said: ‘There is no one inside!’ –
Thinking the dove would not lend its wings,
Nor the spider weave its web to shield the Best of Mankind.
God’s protection dispenses with need
For double armour and ramparts high!
Whenever fate threatens harm and I seek his help
I am assured of a sanctuary beyond harm’s reach,
And when both worlds’ wealth I beg from his generous hand
I gain precious gifts from the best who ever gave.
Do not reject the Revelations that he dreamt;
His eyes may have slept but his heart never did.
They came to him at the onset of his prophethood
When his maturity of vision was beyond refute.
May God be praised! Revelation is no acquired skill,
Nor can prophets be faulted about the unseen.
How many sick he cured with his palm,
How many afflicted he freed from madness’s chains!
How often his call restored such life to the ashen year of drought
That its abundance outshone the seasons of plenty,
With clouds so generous the valleys seemed as though
Submerged by the sea or drowned in the Flood of the Dams.
Let me describe his miracles that shone
Like hospitality’s fire lit upon hills at night.
Pearls when strung together gain in beauty
Though unstrung their value does not sink;
Yet eulogy can never hope to fathom
The noble traits and virtues that were his:
Signs of truth from the All-merciful, both newly formed,
And, as attributes of the Eternal One, eternal,
Of timeless import, giving news of Judgement Day
And of the days of Iram and ‘Ad,
Remaining ours for ever and so surpassing
All former prophets’ wonders which came but lasted not,
Firmly cast, leaving no room
For doubters to sow dissent, nor needing arbitration,
Never yet opposed without the worst of enemies
Desisting from his pillage in surrender,
Their eloquence repelling all aggressors,
As honour jealously wards off the harem�
�s desecrators,
Containing meanings of expanse wider than the ocean
And greater in beauty and value than its pearls,
Their wonders uncountable and beyond number,
Never causing lassitude however much repeated,
Cooling the reciter’s eye until I said:
‘You have seized the rope of God. Now hold it tight.
If you utter them in fear of the Laza fire
Their cool springs will extinguish its flames.’
They are like the Pool that renders the sinners’ faces
White when they had come to it as black as coal,
Or like the Bridge and the Scale in equity;
Without them righteousness would not prevail among mankind.
Do not wonder at their rejection by the envious
Who feign ignorance when they understand full well;
Struck by disease, an eye may fail to see the sun,
And mouths may be too ill to know the water’s taste.
O best of all whose courtyard ever supplicants sought,
Running, or riding she-camels with sturdy hooves,
O greatest sign for all those who take heed,
Greatest boon for all who seek increase!
In one night you journeyed from sanctuary to sanctuary,
Passing, like the full moon, through bleakest darkness on the way,
Ascending all night till you came within Two Bow-lengths,
A point never attained, nor aspired to before.
There, all messengers and prophets gave you precedence,
Like servants who for their master happily make way.
When you marched through the seven heavens
In procession with them, you were their standard bearer,
Till, when you came so close that no goal was left for other runners,
And no summit for other climbers,
You lowered all ranks by comparison
Since you were summoned high as only overlord
To reap a union – how secluded from all eyes! –
And a secret – how totally concealed! –
And so gathered every unapportioned honour
And traversed every undiscovered place,
And achieved the most exalted rank
And obtained blessings beyond all comprehension.
Good tidings for us people of Islam, for in him we have
A pillar of kind care which none can overthrow.
When God called him – who calls us to obedience of Him –
His noblest messenger, we became the noblest of nations.
The news of his mission struck fear in the enemies’ hearts,
As the lion’s roar makes heedless herds stampede.