—broken; the night has fled, and the hunter (1) is here, so make for your refuge.
He (2) answered, “Eat, and do not be alarmed.”
They called out, “Abū Muḥammad!” At that he bolted. His face looked like a man’s, with a few white hairs sprouting from his chin; something resembling a hand jutted from his chest, and something like a leg hung between his thighs. Two dogs kept hard on his heels (3) while he chanted:
You two—when (4) you race alongside me,
find my reins dragging, limp and slack;
Had I my youth, you would never command me (5)
till you lay dead or abandoned the track.
He said: then they captured him.
He continued: They allege that they once slaughtered a nasnās, whereupon someone exclaimed, “Glory be to God—how crimson its blood is!” (6)
A nasnās perched in a tree replied, “He had been eating sumac (7).” So they shouted, “A nasnās!” and seized him, saying, “Had he kept quiet, no one would have noticed him.”
(1) Muʿjam al-Buldan records the reading: “wa-l-qanis.”
(2) In Muʿjam al-Buldan, the word “akhir” (another) follows immediately after “fa-qala.”
(3) The verbs lazza bi-l-makān and alazza bihi both mean “to stay somewhere and cling to it.” Hence the prophetic hadith: “Alizzū fī ʾl-duʿāʾ: Yā Dhā ʾl-Jalāli wa-l-Ikrām” (Persist in supplication, saying: O Possessor of Majesty and Honor), related by al-Tirmidhi from Anas, by Ahmad and al-Hakim from Rabiʿa b. ʿAmir, by Ibn Abi Shayba from Anas, and by al-Hakim from Abu Hurayra. In other words: hold fast to this formula and keep repeating it.
(4) Omitted in the base manuscript; supplied from Muʿjam al-Buldan.
(5) The two verses are cited in Muʿjam al-Buldan, 3/327, where the readings are “tuḥāribāni” (instead of “tujāriyāni”) and “tukhalliyāni” (instead of “tufāriqāni”). Preceding them in that source are the lines: “Woe is me for what has befallen me—my lifetime of worries and sorrows. Pause a moment, you two dogs, listen to my words and believe me.”
(6) The base text reads literally, “How red is his blood,” whereas correct usage is, “How intense the redness of his blood is.” Al-Mubarrad explains in al-Muqtadab, 4/181, that for colors and physical defects—such as aʿwar (one-eyed) or aḥmar (red)—one does not say “mā aḥmarahu” (how red he is) or “mā aʿwarahu” (how one-eyed he is).
(7) A species of plant from the Chenopodiaceae family that grows in mountains and highlands. It bears very sour fruit in small, red clusters and is deep crimson in color.