In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

This poem was composed by the servant in need of his Lord’s mercy and forgiveness, Badr al-Din Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Naḥwī al-Mardānī (1), about the eminent, peerless scholar (2), Shaykh al-Islam and exemplar of humankind, Taqi al-Din Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyyah—may Allah envelop him in His mercy and be pleased with him—:

O heart that has lost all patience,
come to your senses; you have long drunk the draught of searing longing in silence.

And you, tears upon my eyelids—through sorrow you have set before us
lessons whose very lines are read in flowing tears (3).

Can anyone addressed by the calamities of night ever feel secure,
when night’s way with humankind is to lay bare treachery (4)?

Is there an Amr or a Khalid who endures for ever?—
by your life, no one remains, even were he to crave eternal years.

A noble man has passed away; today his like is nowhere to be found,
yet the beauty of his deeds has kept his memory alive.

Were the abandoned campsite and its relics to weep blood for him,
and were the blazing Sirius to pour down tears on his behalf,

or were the face of the meadow (5) to grow dusty on the day of his calamity,
it would still be little; the magnitude of his loss surpasses all measure.

A youth who made virtue and generosity his constant habit,
familiar with them since childhood and most worthy of them.

It is as though no one had ever spoken before him, so that
whenever he uttered a word, throngs of ears were compelled to bend toward his speech.

It is as though his learning had never shone forth among the people,
had never embroidered al-Shām nor adorned Egypt.