He pushed it toward me and said, “Take it—may Allah deprive you of any blessing in it.”
Al-Khaṭīb ⦗1⦘ remarks that this very poem is also ascribed to al-Buḥturī in praise of al-Mutawakkil. ⦗2⦘
Marwān ibn Abī al-Janūb reports that he once lauded al-Mutawakkil with a qaṣīdah, and the caliph rewarded him with one hundred and twenty thousand and a set of garments.
ʿAlī ibn al-Jahm said: Al-Mutawakkil was passionately attached to a slave-girl named Qabīḥah and could not bear to be away from her. She appeared before him one day, having written with the costly perfume al-ghāliya ⦗3⦘ the word “Jaʿfar” upon her cheek. He contemplated her, then recited:
O she who with musk upon her cheek has written “Jaʿfar,”
My very soul would ransom the place where that musk has touched!
If she inscribed a single line of musk upon her cheek,
She has inscribed upon my heart whole lines of love. ⦗4⦘
At the beginning of his caliphate an earthquake struck Damascus: the battlements of the Congregational Mosque collapsed, the wall of the miḥrāb split, and many people perished beneath the rubble. It lasted three—
(1) In his Taʾrikh, vol. 7, p. 167.
(2) In Taʾrikh Baghdad, vol. 7, pp. 167–168, with the wording:
In Surra-man-raʾa we have an Imām
from whose ocean even the seas draw water.
A caliph whom one hopes in and fears,
as though he were Paradise and Hellfire.
Both his hands pour down gifts like rain,
like co-wives vying in jealousy.
The right hand never bestows a thing
without the left hand matching it.
Kingship is his and his sons’
so long as night and day alternate.
(3) A kind of perfume composed of musk, ambergris, and oil.
(4) The two verses are recorded in al-Aghānī, vol. 19, p. 311, where Abū l-Faraj attributes them to the poetess Faḍl; his version reads:
“Wa-kātibatan bi-l-misk fī l-khaddi Jaʿfarā / binafsī sawādu l-misk min ḥaythu atharā.
Laʾin atharat bi-l-misk satran bi-khaddi-hā / la-qad awdaʿat qalbī mina l-ḥuzni asṭurā.”
They are also cited in Ibn Kathīr’s History, vol. 10, p. 351, where the first line appears as: “Wa-kātibatan fī l-khaddi bi-l-misk Jaʿfarā / binafsī taḥuṭṭu l-misk min ḥaythu atharā.”
The couplet is further found, with slight wording variations, in Taʾrikh al-Khulafāʾ, p. 350, and in al-Nujūm al-Zāhira, vol. 2, p. 325.