A child of lofty rank, fresh in liberality and generous rain; a youth of knowledge, an elder of forbearance, a shaykh of cultivated manners.
He unpacks the compact maxims of wisdom, and his elucidation reaches the mind without a trace of oversimplification (1).
He spreads expansive meanings in the briefest phrase; by his refinement he leaves every refined author at a loss.
In asceticism and in learning he has no equal save al-Hasan al-Basri and Ibn al-Musayyab (2).
Whoever today seeks a scholar other than him (3) is like one who chases the far-flung ʿAnqāʾ, that unattainable bird.
Is he not the champion whose victory so enriched the religion that it was even graced with the mantle of imamate (4)?
He strove in Allah’s cause with his very self, with wealth, with family, with mother and with father alike.
Standing at his side in every circumstance was his mother’s son—ʿAbd Allah, an excellent and high-minded youth.
An eagle of lofty resolve, a forest lion who shredded every obstinate foe with tooth and claw.
The two of them are defenders of Allah’s faith, guardians of the sanctuary of the best of Allah’s creation among the progeny of Yaʿrub.
They remain, like Islam itself, strangers in a foreign land; how sweet, for Allah’s sake, is the beauty of such exile.
I have served them with a necklace, carefully strung, of balanced thought whose pearls no hand has yet pierced (5).
It adorns the ear of time with beauty whenever its composer—the Turk, the most eloquent Arabizer (6)—sets it forth at dawn.