Would that when Khárijah was for Amru slain[1] ○ They had ransomed Ali with all men they own.
Then, with cheeks stained by tears down railing he recited also these verses:—
In sooth the Nights and Days are charactered ○ By traitor falsehood and as knaves they lie;
The Desert-reek [2] recalls their teeth that shine; ○ All horrid blackness is their K of eye:
My sin anent the world which I abhor ○ Is sin of sword when sworders fighting hie.
Then his sobs waxed louder and he said:—
O thou who woo'st a World [3] unworthy, learn ○ 'Tis house of evils, 'tis Perdition's net:
A house where whoso laughs this day shall weep ○ The next: then perish house of fume and fret!
Endless its frays and forays, and its thralls ○ Are ne'er redeemed, while endless risks beset.
How many gloried in its pomps and pride, ○ Till proud and pompous did all bounds forget,
Then showing back of shield she made them swill [4] ○ Full draught, and claimed all her vengeance debt.
For know her strokes fall swift and sure, altho' ○ Long bide she and forslow the course of Fate:
- ↑ These lines are part of an elegy on the downfall of one of the Moslem dynasties in Spain, composed in the twelfth century by Ibn Abdun al-Andalúsi. The allusion is to the famous conspiracy of the Khárijites (the first sectarians in Mohammedanism) to kill Ah, Mu'awiyah and Amru (so written but pronounced "Amr") al-As, in order to abate intestine feuds m Al-Islam. Ali was slain with a sword-cut by Ibn Muljam a name ever damnable amongst the Persians; Mu'awiyah escaped with a wound and Kharijah, the Chief of Police at Fustat or old Cairo was murdered by mistake for Amru. After this the sectarian wars began.
- ↑ Arab. "Saráb"= (Koran, chaps. xxiv.) the reek of the Desert, before explained. It is called "Lama," the shine, the loom, in Al-Hariri. The world is compared with the mirage, the painted eye and the sword that breaks in the sworder's hand.
- ↑ Arab. "Dunyá," with the common alliteration "dániyah" (=Pers. "dún"), in prose as well as poetry means the things or fortune of this life opp. to "Akhirah"=future life.
- ↑ Arab. "Walgh," a strong expression primarily denoting the lapping of dogs; here and elsewhere "to swill, saufen."
Meccah. He was afterwards killed (A.D. 692) by the famous or infamous Hajjáj general of Abd al-Malik bin Marwan, the fifth Ommiade, surnamed "Sweat of a stone" (skin-flint) and "Father of Flies," from his foul breath. See my Pilgrimage, etc. (iii. 192-194), where are explained the allusions to the Ka'abah and the holy Black Stone.
