{"collection":"Islam","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/isl/mhm/mhm45.htm","path":"isl/mhm/mhm45.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/isl/mhm/mhm45.htm","text":"The Maq\u00e1m\u00e1t of Bad\u00ed\u2018 al-Zam\u00e1n al-Hamadh\u00e1n\u00ed, tr. W.J. Prendergast [1915]\n\u2018\u00cdS\u00c1 IBN HISH\u00c1M related to us and said: I passed a night with a company 4 of clever men of my friends. We discussed chaste speech, and we had not bidden farewell to the conversation when our door was knocked at. So I asked: 'Who is the nocturnal visitor?' He answered: 'The envoy of night and its messenger.\n[paragraph continues] The defeated of hunger and its outcast, and an exile whose beast is lean and fatigued, whose life is hardship, and between whom and his two chicks are vast deserts. A guest whose shadow is light, 1 and whose stray is a loaf. Is there, therefore, among you a host?' So we hastened to open the door, we made his camel kneel down, concentrated his purpose, and said to him: 'To thine own house hast thou come, and thine own people hast thou reached, and come into the house.' We smiled upon him, welcomed him, and showed him his stray. We helped him till he was sated, and we talked to him until he became friendly, and then we asked: 'Who is this star rising from his orient, the bewitcher with his diction?' He answered, 'None knows the wood like the biter. 2 I am popularly known as the N\u00e1jim. 3 I have associated with Time that I might test it. I have extracted its essences, and milked all its teats. 4 I have tried the people that I might know them--and I know the lean and the fat among them--and exile that I might taste it. No country has looked at me whose eye I have not plucked out 5, and there is no gathering together of friends that I have not entered. Therefore I am talked of in the east and I am not repudiated in the west. There is not a king whose carpet I have not trodden upon, no serious situation whose flank 6 I have not penetrated, and no war has ceased in which I have not been an envoy. Time has tried me in its two phases, ease and distress, and it has met me with its two faces, the smiling and the frowning, but I exposed not myself to its hardship save in its own garb. 7\nWe said: 'May thy teeth not be broken! 2 How excellent art thou and thy father! Silence is not unlawful except to thee, and speech is not lawful save to thee. Whence hast thou risen and where dost thou set? What is that which impels thy desire before thee and drives thy object in front of thee?' He said: 'As for the native land, it is Yemen as regards the need it is the rain, and as for the motive it is distress and the bitter life.' Said we: 'If thou wouldst but stay in this place we would share our life with thee and all else. Thou wouldst get rain with which to cultivate, and heavy downpours from the rain-stars 3 deep enough to drink from, without using hand or vessel.' He said: 'I will not prefer any companions to you, for I have found your court spacious, but your rain is water and water quencheth not the thirsty.' So we asked: 'What rains will satisfy thee?' He answered: 'The rain of Khalaf.' And he indited saying:--\nSaid \u2018\u00cds\u00e1 ibn Hish\u00e1m: Then he went forth and we bade him farewell. After he had gone we continued a long while wishing for him, while his absence pained us. Now one cloudy day we were seated together like the string of the Pleiades, when suddenly mounts were driven, led horses were brought up, and lo! a man ran in upon us. We asked: 'Who is the intruder?' and behold it was our Shaikh, the N\u00e1jim, walking proudly in the guise of realized desires and in the skirts of wealth. We arose, and, embracing him, asked: 'What is behind thee, O \u2018I\u1e63\u00e1m?' 4 He answered: 'Laden camels, loaded mules and locked bags.' And he indited saying:--\nSaid \u2018\u00cds\u00e1 ibn Hish\u00e1m: We asked God to spare him and to bless us with his company. And the N\u00e1jim stayed for days restricting his tongue to expressing gratitude for his 1 kindness, and employing not his speech save in praising his days and talking of his gifts.'\n144:4 \u2026 A company: Literally, a military force, a troop.\n145:1 \u2026 Whose shadow is light: Contrast this with \u2026 of oppressive shade, i.e. disagreeable, or inconvenient. Cf. \u1e24ar\u00edr\u00ed, i. 250.\n145:2 \u2026 The biter: An Arab bites a piece of wood to test its soundness for making an arrow or a lance.\n145:3 \u2026 The N\u00e1jim: Literally, the Rising Star.\n145:4 \u2026 I have milked all its teats: Freytag, Arab Proverbs, i, 346. A figure for having experienced varieties of fortune, its straitness and its ampleness, as compared to one who has milked all the teats of the camel, that which yields plenty and that which does not.\n145:5 \u2026 Plucked out its eye: That is, trod its surface.\n145:6 \u2026 Its flank: Literally, its rank.\n145:7 \u2026 In its garb: Cf. the saying of Baihas. \u2026 'Wear for every condition its proper dress,' also, Hamasa (edited by Freytag), p, 510.\n146:1 And if the changing of Time: Metre, taw\u00edl.\n146:2 May thy teeth (literally mouth) not be broken: The phrase as used by the Prophet, is: \u2026 May God not break thy mouth.\n146:3 \u2026 The rain-stars: pl. of \u2026 The literal meaning of \u2026 is the setting in the early morning of one of the twenty-eight mansions of the moon, or \u2026 while the opposite constellation, called its \u2026 or watcher, was rising. The auroral settings of these constellations served among the Arabs to denote the seasons of rain, wind, or heat. Just as among the Greeks and Latins the setting of the Hyads or the rising of Sirius indicated particular states of the weather. As the Arabs in their observations of the seasons thought chiefly of rain, which was to moisten their parched fields, the word \u2026 became equivalent with rain. \u1e24ar\u00edr\u00ed, i, 215. The belief of the Arabs of the Ignorance that the rain was produced by the settings of the stars was discouraged by Muslim teachers; and from an anecdote related of \u2018Umar (See Lane, Article \u2026) the Khal\u00edfa seems to have considered that the supply of rain was a sign that sins were pardoned, basing his opinion on Qur\u2019\u00e1n, lxxi, 10. Chenery's Translation of \u1e24ar\u00edr\u00ed, i, 443-5.\n146:4 O fleet camel! To Sijistan: Metre, mutaq\u00e1rib.\n146:5 Arjan and Arrajan: a large town in Seistan, sixty parasangs from Shir\u00e1z, famous for its palm-trees, olive groves and fruits.\n147:1 Ibn al-\u2018Am\u00edd (ob. A.H. 359 or 360).\n147:2 Is like that of the Quraish over B\u00e1hila. This was praise indeed. Ab\u00fa\u2019l-Fa\u1e0dl Mu\u1e25ammad Ibn al-\u2018Am\u00edd, Waz\u00edr of Rukn Al-Daula, the Buwayhid prince, was one of the great men of the fourth century of the Hijra. He was a versatile and an accomplished scholar and was called a second J\u00e1\u1e25iz. Tha\u2018\u00e1lib\u00ed says (Yat\u00edma, iii, 3) that epistolary writing began with \u2018Abd al-\u1e24amid (d. A.H. 133) K\u00e1tib, or secretary, to Marw\u00e1n the last of the Umayyad Khal\u00edfas, and ended with Ibn al-'Am\u00edd. Among those who studied the epistolary art under him was the \u1e62\u00e1\u1e25ib Ibn \u2018Abb\u00e1d. As Waz\u00edr, his authority and influence were unbounded. (Ibn Khallikan, iii, 256; also Der Isl\u00e1m, iii, 323-5, were a full notice of the Waz\u00edr by H. F. Ahmedroz will be found.)\n147:3 B\u00e1hila: The meanest of the Arab tribes. The Arabs who were members of this tribe had an extreme repugnance to bearing this surname. A poet has said: 'If the words, \"thou Bahilite\" were addressed to a dog he would howl from the ignominy of such an appellation.' (Ibn Khallikan, ii, 518.) For a further example of this repugnance, see Agh\u00e1n\u00ed, vii, 12.\n147:4 \u2026. What is behind thee, \u2018I\u1e63\u00e1m: Freytag, Arab Proverbs, ii, 589. Said to have been first used by \u1e24\u00e1rith ibn \u2018Amr king of Kindeh and addressed to \u2018I\u1e63\u00e1m, a clever Kindite woman, whom he had sent to bring a description of the beautiful and gifted daughter of 'Owf ibn Muhallam, Al-Shaib\u00e1n\u00ed whom he wished to marry. This proverb is said to have another origin, see Chenery's Translation of \u1e24ar\u00edr\u00ed, i, 519.\n147:5 O my master: Metre, k\u00e1mil.\n147:6 Doth not disapprove of: Page 195, line 7 of Text, for \u2026 read \u2026.\n148:1 His, i.e. Khalaf's, kindness. The part of this Maq\u00e1ma where the N\u00e1jim describes himself has much in common with the fourth Maq\u00e1ma, pp. 16, 17.","title":"The Maqamat of al-Hamadhani: The Maq\u00e1m\u00e1t: XXXVII. The Maqama of the N\u00e1jim","type":"page"}