He replied, “I believe such a man is saved, and I hope that Paradise awaits him. Who is this man?”

He said, “It is I.”

I answered, “By Allah, I do not think you are secure when you have been composing passionate verse about Buthayna for twenty years.”

He retorted, “May I be denied the intercession of Muhammad—peace and blessings be upon him—and, standing as I am on the first day of the Hereafter and the last of this world, if ever I laid a hand upon her in anything blameworthy.”

He (the narrator) adds: “We stayed with him until he passed away.”

I say: His death occurred in Egypt. He had travelled to ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Marwān, who honored him and inquired about his love for Buthayna. “It is intense,” he replied. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz asked him to recite some of his poetry and panegyrics, which he did; the governor then promised to reunite him with her, but death overtook him in 82 AH—may Allah have mercy on him. Āmīn. (1)

Al-Aṣmaʿī relates that a man reported: Jamil once said to him, “Will you convey a message from me to the clan of Buthayna? You may have everything I possess.”

He answered, “Yes.”

Jamil said, “When I die, mount my she-camel, put on this mantle of mine, and recite these lines, among them:

Arise, O Buthayna, mourn with loud lament,
and weep for a friend dearer than every friend.

When the messenger reached their encampment, he recited the verses. Buthayna came out like a full moon gliding through a garden, swaying gracefully in her cloak, and said, “Woe to you! If what you say is true, you have killed me; if it is false, you have disgraced me.”

He replied, “Indeed, by Allah, it is true—[here are his mantle and his she-camel].”

Realizing this, she screamed at the top of her voice, struck her face, and the women of the tribe gathered around her, weeping with her. She then fell unconscious; on regaining her senses she recited:

If ever I should forget Jamil, even for a single hour,
never has that hour come, nor will it ever come.
It is all the same to us, O Jamil ibn Muʿammar—
whether life be harsh or gentle, once you have died. (2)

The narrator said, “Never have I seen a day with more weeping men and women than that one.”

The ḥadīth scholar Ibn ʿAsākir (3) reports that someone once said to Jamil in Damascus, “Would that you abandoned poetry and memorized the Quran instead!”

He replied, “Anas ibn Mālik informs me, on the authority of the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—that he said, ‘In some poetry there is wisdom.’” (4)

ʿUmar ibn ʿUbayd Allah (5) ibn Maʿmar ibn ʿUthmān, Abū Ḥafṣ al-Qurashī al-Tamīmī, was one of the eminent, generous commanders; many lands were opened at his hands, and he served as Ibn al-Zubayr’s governor in Basra.