Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded, with Risible Rhymes. Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī

      My father before me was shaykh over you,

      So let me be, and be on your way!

      And we close our words with praise of Muḥammad

      And his dandy companions, the people of generosity!

      10.13

      At this the shaykhs and the brave lads envied him the shaykhdom of the hamlet, to which he had succeeded after his father’s death, and they incited the authorities against him, and the latter sent for him and deprived him of a part or, as some say, of all of it, and he had nothing to fall back on but the binful of droppings, which he had kept out of sight and which had been the source of his prosperity after his father’s death, or so they say. However, he set about sucking up to people and flattering them, until the matter was forgotten and the winter came and he opened the bin one night and sold the droppings and made a good living, according to this version of events. Others, however, say that he borrowed twenty silver pieces and bought eggs with them and went to Cairo, where he happened to arrive on the feast of the Christians,²² so he sold the eggs for more than they were worth, and this was the source of his prosperity. The two versions may be reconciled by saying that he sold the droppings and bought eggs with the proceeds, so that his prosperity was the sum of the price of the droppings and the price of the eggs, and from this perspective there is no contradiction. And he took to handing out money and dispensing hospitality, and poets and men of letters from the farthest hamlets sought him out. One poet he rewarded with fifty eggs and a measure of barley, and to another he gave a hundred dung cakes, and yet another brought him a sack, which he filled with droppings from top to bottom and gave him in payment. He became even richer than his father, for he had two geese, twenty roosters, a chicken hutch made out of palm ribs, a crooked staff, a felt cap, a tattered blue shift, a basket full of bran, ten bunches of dry carrots, and other stuff too, and he continued thus, with the Lord blessing his prosperity—for prosperity comes from the Almighty alone.

      10.14

      In illustration of which, we might mention that it happened that a certain righteous man was very poor. Once, while asleep, he heard a voice say to him of a sudden, “You! Go to such-and-such a place and take from there a thousand dinars!” “Has the Lord blessed them?” he asked. “No,” said the voice. “Leave me!” said the man. Then the voice came to him again and said, “Go to such-and-such a place and take from there five hundred dinars!” “Has the Lord blessed them?” he asked. “No,” said the voice. “Leave me!” said the man. The voice kept coming to him again and again, until it said to him, “Go to such-and-such a place and take from there one dinar!” “Has the Lord blessed it?” he asked. “Yes,” said the voice. “Then I will take it,” said the man, and he went and he took the dinar and was blessed in it and obtained great ease and abundant riches, for if a man is content with what he has he will not suffer want, and the little he has will be blessed. As says the Righteous Saint and Initiate of the Almighty, My Master Yaḥyā al-Buhlūl,²³ may the Almighty be pleased with him and benefit us and all Muslims through him, amen:

      Be content with the little you have

      And God will give you much!

      And he says:

      How many a cloud after sprinkling

      Lets fall a heavy shower!

      10.15

      And al-Shāfiʿī,²⁴ may God be pleased with him, has said:

      I found acceptance of my lot a treasure house of riches,

      And to its skirts began to cling.

      Now no man finds me at his door

      Or chasing him for anything.

      I move among mankind without a single cent

      And have no wants, just like a king.

      10.16

      Thus it was till fate and fortune against him turned, and he was by relatives and boon companions spurned, and all that he had owned was spent, and he found himself in the greatest woe and severest predicament, of all friends and helpers bereft, no wealth remaining but what his father’d left, and those who were once his servants took over the shaykhdom of the hamlet, while he could find neither helper nor friend—for such is the way of Fate: it raises up the lowly, and brings down the noble and exemplary, it being like a balance in its action, or like a sieve in its working and extraction—as the poet²⁵ says in the following verses:

      I see Fate lifts every scoundrel high

      And humbles those with noble traits—

      Just like the sea, which drowns all living things

      While every stinking carcass to its surface levitates,

      Or like the scale, which raises all that’s light

      But sinks with weights.

      10.17

      And another has said:

      Fate’s like a sieve in how it works,

      So wonder at what the sieve achieves—

      The densest grains it puts below,

      And on the top the husks and chaff it leaves

      —for the accidents of Fate may be cause for alarm, and drive a man into the way of harm.

      10.18

      In the opening lines of an ode of mine on the same theme I say:

      The accidents of Fate may be to your peril—

      So beware their outcome and escape any harm that might transpire.

      Prepare against them an ample coat of mail from patience,

      To protect you from their fierceness when showered with their fire

      And leave behind the time of youth—its boughs have dried

      That in the verdant nursery once were full of juice.

      They were nights bowed down with pleasures

      From which, when young, I gathered glory’s fruits

      —and so on to the end of these verses.

      10.19

      Nothing but “patience fair”²⁶ against the accidents of Fate can remedy afford—that, and submission to the Majestic Lord; and apropos of those caught unawares by fate’s blows and abandoned by kin and fellows, is the story that is told of how a certain envious person slandered the vizier and calligrapher Ibn Muqlah—who was unique in his age for the sublime beauty of his hand—claiming that he had cheated the king in some matter. The king, in consequence, ordered Ibn Muqlah’s hand cut off. After the command had been carried out, Ibn Muqlah kept to his house, while his friends and dear ones abandoned him and up to the middle of the day no one came to see him. Then the king discovered that the accusation against him was false, ordered that the man who had slandered him be killed, and restored Ibn Muqlah to his previous position, repenting that he had had his hand cut off. When Ibn Muqlah’s brethren saw that he was returned to favor, they came back to him and visited him to make their excuses, at which he recited the following verses:²⁷

      Man and time succeed each other in reciprocity,

      So, as time is, man must too be.

      Fate savaged me for half a day,

      And man’s nature was thus revealed and made clear to me.

      O you who turned away,

      Return, for time itself’s turned back to me.

      It is said that he continued to write with his left hand for the rest of his life, and his writing did not change to the day he died.

      10.20

      A curious anecdote attesting to Ibn Muqlah’s mastery of the language relates that a man once wrote something on a scrap of paper and tossed it to him in the presence of the king for him to read to him,