Reports from every quarter of Syria arrived in agreement, bearing an account whose soundness is beyond reproach. Those who attended the funeral prayer and escorted the bier—by Allah, no pen could ever number them. Upon him be the choicest mercy that may be bestowed, and from the Almighty greeting and peace, for as long as the celestial spheres revolve or a dove laments from the branches above.
The poem is now complete; it consists of (1) sixty-six couplets.
***
Among the elegies is a poem by Shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn al-Khalīl al-Baghdādī, the Ḥanbalī jurist better known as Ibn al-Khuḍarī—may Allah have mercy on him (2):
Live as you please, yet the end of it is extinction; death is inescapable, and there is no alternative (3).
If Time should aid you for a day, how often has it aided with evil—its very help is hardship itself.
A day must surely come when death sets out for you, inevitably, whether the appointed term seems far away or draws near.
Every soul has a share of the arrows of calamity: they fly, striking unerringly from every direction (4).