I have indeed undone the riddle in outline, and its detailed exposition is as variegated as a meadow in full spring.
So unveil a maiden still untouched, adorned with jewels, a gift befitting the peer of excellence amid her dwellings.

Then the poor servant in need of his Lord, Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm ibn ʿAbd al-Salām Ibn Taymiyyah, responded—loosening what was knotted, expanding what was concise, unlocking what was shut, and clarifying what was obscure:

O scholar who has outstripped the people of his age
in the breadth of his disciplines, the clarity of his speech, and the brilliance of his invention;
who has become a lighthouse for the banners of learning,
guiding even the guides to the beacon of its quarters;
who fashioned verse that forms a necklace round a noble maiden,
setting in it pearls drawn from the ocean of knowledge;
who unveiled the branches of learning in the beneficent breezes of his diction, (1)
drawing the sweet fragrance (2) of scholarship from its very spring; (3)
who disclosed all that it contains of every art,
embracing both its root and its branches;
with an eloquence that is lawful enchantment, a diction as sweet and limpid as flowing water, and phrases that display the beauty of his workmanship; (4)

With copious learning and wide-ranging ingenuity
you cloaked knowledge itself in riddles across its spacious fields;
you decked it with subtle description and protected it
with lofty language far removed from the commonplace;
you portrayed it with the finery of the sciences and their devotees,
assigning to it their manifold kinds and varieties; (5)
you gathered within its portraits even opposing qualities,
until seekers despaired of catching up with it.

And when the servant reflected upon your composition, in all its order,
there was cast into his heart