“Don’t worship Allah so He may give you. Rather, worship Him so He may be pleased. For when He is pleased, He will astonish you with His Gifts.”
By the dawn
And the ten nights
And the even and the odd
O you tranquil soul!
Return to your Lord, well-pleased and pleasing
[al-Fajr: 1-3; 27-28]
Loftiness is attained in accordance to one’s struggles,
And whoever seeks nobility, remains vigilant by night.
Whoever wishes to achieve without due effort,
Will waste their life seeking what’s impossible.
You search for glory and yet you sleep at night,
It’s only the seeker of pearls who dives deep into the sea.
– Imam al-Shafi’i, al-Diwan
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A pain in the… tongue!
One of al-Mutanabbi’s most peculiar lines of poetry is the one below:
ألمٌ ألَمَّ ألمْ أُلِمْ بِدَائِهِ *** إنْ انَّ آنٌ آنَ آنُ أَوَانه
If you look at it closely, you’ll see that each partial bayt is almost entirely composed of a single word… or so it seems!
This is what we get if we break it down for explanation:
ألمٌ – Pain
ألَمَّ – to hurt or surround in pain
ألمْ – not
أُلِمَّ – to know
بِدَائِهِ – its (cause of) illness
إنْ – If
انَّ – to cry or complain (of pain)
آنٌ – one who is in pain
آنَ – to arrive
آنُ – time
أَوَانه – its cure
So we get the following:
ألمٌ ألَمَّ ألمْ أُلِمَّ بِدَائِهِ *** إنْ انَّ آنٌ آنَ آنُ أَوَانه
“I have come to be surrounded by pain, the cause of which I do not know
If the one in pain cries out in agony, then the time for its cure has surely arrived.”
Phew! That was a bit of tongue-twister wasn’t it? A better suggestion of a translation is more than welcome; please write below in the comments section!