you have pursued the world and its delights
with contrivances that squander your religion.
You became obsessed with it—driven to distraction—
though once you were a remedy for the distracted.
Where now are your carefully-chained narrations
from Ibn ʿAwn and Ibn Sīrīn?
Where are those bygone reports of yours
that told us to keep away from the doors of kings?
If you say, “I was forced,” then what of it?
The donkey of knowledge has slipped into the mud.

ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad, the judge of Nisibis, transmitted to us: Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Abī Sukaynah told us, saying,

“In the year 177 AH Ibn al-Mubārak dictated the following to me and sent it from Tarsus to al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ:

O worshipper of the Two Sanctuaries, were you to see us,
you would know that your devotion is but child’s play.
If one stains his neck with tears,
our throats are dyed with blood.
If another wears out his mount in frivolity,
our horses grow weary on the dawn of battle.
Sweet perfume is yours, while our fragrance
is the thunder of hooves and the finest dust (1).
A sound, truthful word has reached us
from the saying of our Prophet—never to be denied:
‘The dust raised by the horses of Allah’s cause
in a man’s nose is not equal to the smoke of a blazing fire’ (2).
Here is the Book of Allah speaking among us:
‘The martyr is not dead’—a truth none can belie.