471 — Muhammad ibn Abbād ibn Mūsā al-Uklī narrated to me, saying: Muhammad ibn Abd Allah al-Khuzāī narrated to us, saying ⦗147⦘: A man from Banū Sulaym narrated to me, saying:

Amr ibn Masūd, a man of Banū Sulaym and specifically of Banū Dhakwān, settled in al-Tāif. He was a close friend and brother to Abū Sufyān. He possessed wealth and children, but his wealth vanished, his children died, and old age overtook him. When Muāwiya became caliph, he came to him on the strength of the friendship that had existed between himself and Abū Sufyān. He remained at Muāwiya’s door for a year and part of another, unable to gain access to him.

Then one day Muāwiya—may Allah be pleased with him—came out before the people, so Amr wrote to him on a slip of paper:

[Basīt meter]

O king who openly shows us weariness,
had Sakhr lived anywhere on earth, he would not have wearied.

What has befallen your old man, choking on his cud?
This long ordeal has dragged on for an age, and he has wearied.

A year and a half have passed, yet he sees no hope
to bring him near you, while death itself has now drawn near.

He has come, both hands trembling upon his crooked staff;
Time has left him not a single son.

Hardships have aged him—he has grown old under them;
Time has bent his back, and he has grown old.

He cried while the breast of Time ground him down:
“I once sought refuge in the son of Abū Sufyān.”

Remember your father, Abū Sufyān: we possess
a claim upon him, yet for an age you have neglected us.

When Muāwiya read his letter, he summoned him and asked, “How are you? How are your dependants and your affairs?”

He replied, “What can the Commander of the Faithful ask about a man whose skin has withered and whose fruit has been cut off? His hair has whitened and his back has bent. In me, what I wished to be little has become plentiful, and what I wished to be pliant has become stiff. I have grown weary of women, though once they were a cure; I have come to dislike food, though once it was a delight. My stride has shortened and my absent-mindedness has increased. The stout cord of my strength has been unravelled and frayed. I have become a burden upon the face of the earth, and my limbs have drawn close together. My body has grown gaunt and weak, abject and exhausted; little vigour remains in it, its trembling has increased, and life has become hateful. Its sleep is a stupor, its understanding comes only at intervals, and its nights are fitful dozes—just as your uncle said:

I have awakened a very old man, tomorrow’s death-owl,
to shriek beside my grave—if not tomorrow, the day thereafter.

Time destroyed my milch herds and everything
my hands had gathered, possessions great and small.

Until, bereft of wealth and children, I became
an empty shell, destitute, with nothing left to count.

Then Time settled in, its pickaxe blade battering my flinty frame.
O Time, enough of what you seek from me—enough!

By Allah, O best of caliphs, had what
I suffered struck Uhud, it would have levelled Uhud’s peaks;

or struck that solitary, age-hardened crag, the very core
of that lone fastness would have split beneath it.

When, O Commander of the Faithful, he saw in himself
Time’s turns—from gathered plenty to scattered loss—

and the old man felt within his breastbone the last
remnant of life lodged between his chest and liver,

he resolved to depart, his crooked staff in both hands,
debating with himself whether to journey or remain:

either leave young women to be lost when he was gone,
or remain in an abode of humiliation and senility.

His soul consented to the journey, firmly resolved,
even were a lion crouching within its lair.

His heart was afraid, his tear ducts choked, and his tears
streamed from the intensity of his grief

for loving women whose children hungered,
like downy chicks settled at Damad.

He resolved to depart, and they gathered around their old man,
already lamenting him as lost whenever he ventured into the land.

Little children mourned in advance the loss of their father,
while a distraught woman laid a hand upon her breast.

They said, ‘Our father, if you leave, how could we ever find
another father like ours, whether near or far?

You fed us whenever the milk ran scant,
and guarded us with your very soul and body.’

The old man’s tears welled in his eyes,
and his breaths rose in gasps from the anguish of grief.

As he bade farewell to his children and his womenfolk, he said,
‘My children, I charge you to fear Allah.

If I live, I shall return with a milch beast for you;
but if I die, hold fast to the One, the Eternal Refuge.’”

Muāwiya wept intensely, “ordered that he be given one hundred thousand, clothing and goods, and provided him with a mount.” He reached al-Tāif from Damascus in ten days. Abū Bakr said, “My father—may Allah be pleased with him—recited four verses from this poem to me.”