and I spar with terrors, shrinking from none of them save indifference and abandonment.
Three doll-like maidens have taken command of my soul—faces aglow, bodies delicate and fair—
like midnight stars (1) to the beholder, gleaming from their perches on boughs above the sand-dunes.
One is a crescent moon, another the daughter of Jupiter—Venus in her splendor—and the third a sister to the supple willow branch.
I summoned the morning breeze to arbitrate between them and my wish to forget (2); by its authority it overruled my own.
And when lovers race one another in passion, love itself dwells in bliss and safety (3).
- ʿAlī ibn Ḥammūd ibn Maymūn ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Idrīsī, son of ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿUmar ibn Idrīs ibn Idrīs ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Maḥḍ, son of al-Ḥasan al-Muthannā, grandson of the “sweet basil” of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib—known as al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh, the Hāshimī, the ʿAlawī, the Idrīsī.
He seized power in Córdoba at the beginning of 407 AH, as noted earlier, and his reign lasted twenty-two months (4). Then the clients who had supported him and given him the pledge of allegiance turned against him: they rebelled and put forward in his stead the emir ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn—