and the mihrab—the prayer-niche—now stands vacant, bereft of the night-vigilant worshipper whose pre-dawn hours once rang with melodic remembrance.
Were all people set beside him, they would amount to a single man within a nation, while he alone would remain the unique, celebrated one (1).
The lines of excellence had grown hard to decipher, like handwriting whose most puzzling strokes are foreign and obscure;
yet he laid bare their ambiguities and clarified their symbols, so that, by the diacritical points of his own virtues, they became fully intelligible (2).
Though he now lies a captive, wrapped and confined in a narrow plot whose sides press in and whose rim is already crumbling (3),
he had aided many a prisoner and guided many a congenitally blind soul, never showing the slightest impatience.
His tomb exhales a scent like musk, perceived by anyone who approaches it—even one who had once been angered with him is moved to greet him with peace.
If this great calamity exalts his remembrance as an honour, spreading from Najd to Tihamah throughout the land,
then patience is the finest garment a free, insightful, chaste Muslim can choose (4).
And upon the Prophet be God’s blessings for as long as travellers from the highlands or the lowlands make their way to Taybah, the radiant city (5).
It is finished, and all praise belongs to Allah (6).
(1) MSS F, K, and T read: “al-aʿlam” (the most learned).
(2) MS F reads: “al-faḍl bal” (“rather, the merit …”).
(3) MS F has: “rahīn mudāʾ” [K: “mudāʾ”]; both F and K add: “jadruhu mutahaddim” (“its wall has collapsed”). Some copies read “zanaḥ”; the adopted reading seems preferable.
(4) MSS F, K, and T give the line as: “fa-l-ṣabr ʾakram … ḥurrun baṣīrun bi-l-ʿawāqib …” (“Therefore patience is nobler … a free man, clear-sighted about consequences …”).
(5) In MSS F and K the second hemistich reads: “mā sārati l-aẓʿān shawqan tarzim” (“never have the camel-litters moved, rumbling with longing”).
(6) This verse is missing in F and K. Instead, both manuscripts append the following note about the copy from which the poem was taken, who heard it, and the poet’s death:
“Shaykh Abū Bakr ibn Aḥmad al-Duraybī (may God have mercy on him) said: ‘The copy from which I transcribed my exemplar bore the following statement: I copied it from the autograph of its author, the shaykh, imām, and eminent scholar, the peerless of his age, Abū l-Thanāʾ Maḥmūd ibn ʿAlī ibn Maḥmūd al-Daqūqī al-Baghdādī—may God sanctify his soul.
He also said: I saw on the original from which it was taken the following endorsement: My fortunate son Abū l-Khayr Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Dhahlī al-Ḥarīrī listened to the whole of this poem, entitled Elegy for the God-fearing scholar Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Taymiyya al-Ḥarrānī, as recited by the unique, learned, and exacting shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn Abū Aḥmad Yūsuf ibn Muḥammad ibn Masʿūd ibn Muḥammad al-Samarī, on Tuesday, 16 Rabīʿ I 730 AH. The poet Maḥmūd ibn ʿAlī ibn Maḥmūd al-Daqūqī wrote this note, praising God and invoking blessings.’
‘The composer of this elegy, Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn al-Daqūqī, died on Monday, 20 Muḥarram 733 AH/1333 CE, was buried the next day in the cemetery of Imām Aḥmad, and his bier was carried shoulder-high (may God have mercy on him).’