lest your hearts grow hard and you yield to your enemy. By Allah, no one whose hope is stretched out while he does not know whether, after rising in the morning, he will live to see the evening—or, after nightfall, will live to meet the dawn—has any warrant for complacency; death and destiny may strike him in just such fleeting moments. Only the one who is certain of deliverance from Allah’s punishment and from the terrors of the Day of Resurrection can rest secure. But as for him who, whenever he treats one wound of this world, is gashed from another side—how can he ever feel at ease?

I seek refuge in Allah lest I command you to do what I forbid myself, thereby ruining my own bargain and exposing my destitution on a day when nothing will avail but truth and sincerity.” Then he wept until we thought he would breathe his last, and the mosque and everything around it shook with sobs and wailing. (1)

He said: “I left my two companions and told them, ‘Choose a new pasture (2) of verse, unlike what we used to recite for ʿUmar and his forefathers, for this man is a man of the Hereafter, not a man of this world.’

He continued: “Maslamah then sought permission for us to see him on a Friday. When we entered, I greeted him and said, ‘Commander of the Believers, our stay has grown long and our gain is slight, and the Arab delegations are speaking of the coldness you have shown us.’

He replied, ‘Charity is only for the poor and the destitute…’ (Qur’an 9:60), and he recited the verse. ‘If you are among those categories you will be given; otherwise you have no right to it.’

I said, ‘Commander of the Believers, I am destitute, a traveler cut off from my means.’

He said, ‘Are you not staying with Abū Saʿīd?’—meaning Maslamah ibn ʿAbd al-Malik.

We answered, ‘Indeed.’

He said, ‘Whoever is in the care of Abū Saʿīd has no further claim here.’

I said, ‘Permit me, Commander of the Believers, to recite.’

He said, ‘Yes, but speak only the truth.’

So I declaimed a poem in his praise:

You ruled, yet you reviled not ʿAlī nor did you alarm
an innocent man, nor heeded the cue of any criminal.
By deeds you confirmed the words you had spoken—
what you accomplished left every Muslim content.
Indeed, what suffices a youth after he has strayed
is the straightening tool that sets the crooked right.
The world has donned her ninefold garments for your sake—
she displayed herself to you with hand and jewel-laden wrist. (3)
At times she glints with a sickly eye,
and smiles, revealing clustered pearls.
But you turned from her in loathing, as though
she had made you taste a draught of venom and colocynth.
Once you were atop her mountains, secure from assault,
and amid her seas with waves foaming and swelling.
Ever yearning toward every lofty goal,
you scaled thereby the highest forefront of the edifice.
Then sovereignty came to you unbidden, and thereafter
no seeker of worldly gain had any room to speak.
You abandoned what perishes, though it be alluring,
and chose what endures with a resolute decision.
You harmed the fleeting world and girded yourself for that
which lies ahead on a day of dreadful evil.
And when you were caliph, no guardian restrained you
from any wealth you safeguarded or any blood—save Allah alone.