263 – Al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān related to us: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAjlī narrated that Ḥibbān ibn Wāṣil, the poetry transmitter, said to Ibn al-Jaṣṣāṣ, “Abū ʿAdād, a Bedouin of Banū ʿIjl, is an accomplished poet. I shall recite a line and you shall recite a line, and we will send them to him together with three coins.” Ḥibbān then said:
“If you do not yet know what death is, then look
At Hind’s monastery and see how its graves lie low.”
Ibn al-Jaṣṣāṣ replied:
“You will behold wonders in what God has decreed for them;
They dwell in houses to which destiny has consigned them.”
The two verses were dispatched to the Bedouin, and he responded:
“Houses whose roofs have closed upon the people inside,
And a visitor who asks no leave—Time will never drive him away.”