and sent run-off streaming across the hard ground, turned the ridges slippery (1), split open the truffle beds and laid them bare. Another cloud also overtook me: the springs gushed after the earth had drunk its fill, the hollows brimmed over (2), the valleys were swollen (3), and I reached you as though coming out of a hyena’s burrow (4).
He then said, “Let him in.”
A man from Banū Asad entered. Al-Ḥajjāj asked, “Was there any rain behind you?”
“No,” he replied. “Whirlwinds have multiplied, the land is veiled in dust, and all the tall browse has been eaten off (5). We are certain it will be a year of drought.”
“What a wretched reporter you are,” he said.
He then added, “Admit the next one.”
A man from al-Yamāmah came in, and he asked him, “Was there any rain behind you?”
He answered, “The scouting parties have pulled their cloaks about them (6), calling for yet more of it (7). I heard someone cry, ‘Come, let me take you to a settlement where the fires are extinguished, where the women voice their complaints, and where rivalry breaks out…’”
Wasawa, al-Qaryatan, and Ayn al-Tamr—an inhospitable pass in which even a camel grows exhausted.
Al-Qaryatan is a large village in the Homs district, situated two days’ journey from Tadmor (Palmyra).
(1) al-dimath are level plains; “I have packed down the dimath” means: I have made them so firm that the feet no longer sink. al-ʿizzaz denotes hard ground or a stony spot where torrents run swiftly. “I have adhdathtu the tilāʿ” means: I have turned the ravines into slippery slopes.
(2) “The earth qayat the truffles” means: it has brought them forth and exposed them. ʿAʾisha, describing ʿUmar, said: “He split the soil so that it qayat its produce,” i.e., it revealed its vegetation and hidden stores. al-ikhādh is a pool where water gathers, similar to a small pond.
(3) The autograph manuscript reads “anʿamta,” a corruption; the correct wording is taken from al-Maʿrifa wa-l-taʾrīkh, Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ, and Ibn ʿAsākir.
(4) al-wujār is the hyena’s burrow when it has been dug deeply. Ibn al-Athīr reports that al-Khaṭṭābī judged the word incorrect and that the expression should be “in mithl jār al-ḍabʿ,” i.e., “rain that jār-al-ḍabʿ,” meaning: it enters the hyena’s den and drives her out. This is confirmed by another recension: “I came to you in water that yujīr the hyena and pulls her from her burrow”; see Lisān al-ʿarab (root w-j-r).
(5) The manuscript has al-jabbaba; we follow Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ, Ibn ʿAsākir, and Lisān al-ʿarab: al-jannaba, the fresh shoots of the salyān plant. Some say al-jannaba is vegetation higher than herbs yet lower than trees. al-salyān is a plant with a large hump like the head of a reed; the Arabs call it “camel bread.”
(6) In the hadith: “taqnaʿ your hands in supplication,” i.e., raise them.
(7) So in the base manuscript; Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ reads it with the dotted zāʾ, and the recension of al-Maʿrifa wa-l-taʾrīkh and Ibn ʿAsākir …