a flagrant sinner, a lewd poet who plunged into every kind of disobedience, shrinking from no one and feeling no shame before anyone—both before he assumed the caliphate and after he had taken it. It is reported that his own brother Sulaymān was among those who strove to kill him; he said, “I testify, in all fairness, that he was a wine-bibber, a libertine, a reprobate, and that the vile man even tried to violate me himself.”

Al-Maʿafā ibn Zakariyā relates, through Ibn Durayd, Abū Ḥātim and al-ʿUtbī, that al-Walid ibn Yazid once cast his eyes upon a Christian woman—one of the most beautiful of their women—whose name was Safrā. He fell in love with her and sent to seduce her, but she refused. He persisted and became infatuated, yet she would not yield. When the Christians gathered in one of their churches for a festival, al-Walid went to a nearby orchard, disguised himself and pretended to be deranged. The women emerged from the church into the garden, saw him there and gathered round him. He began talking to Safrā (1) and conversing with her; she laughed with him, not recognizing who he was, until he had satisfied his eyes with gazing at her.

When she left, she was told, “Woe to you! Do you know who that man was?” She answered, “No.” They said, “It was al-Walid.” When she realised this, she became fond of him thereafter and was more eager for him than he had been for her before she felt that fondness.

Al-Walid then composed the following verses:

Cheer up your heart, O Walid, though lovesick—
long have you stalked and snared the fair.
For love of a clear-cheeked maiden, still a girl,
who came toward the church on festival day.
I watched her with enamoured eyes
until I saw her kiss a piece of wood—
the wood of the cross; alas for my soul!
Which of you has seen an idol like that adored?
I begged my Lord to let me take its place,
to be the fuel that feeds the blazing Hell.

He also said about her, when his affair became public and the people learnt of his condition—though some say this was before he became caliph:

How fine is Safrā, though they say of me
that I dote on a Christian woman who quaffs wine.
It would cost us little to pass the whole day till night
without praying either Ẓuhr (the noon prayer) or ʿAṣr (the afternoon prayer).

Qāḍī Abū al-Faraj al-Maʿafā ibn Zakariyā al-Jarīrī, known as Ibn Ṭarārah, first of al-Nahrāwān and later of Baghdad, after citing these exploits of al-Walid—his dissoluteness, frivolity and shallow religion, far too numerous to recount—adds: “We have challenged him in several pieces of verse, refuting the feeble misguidance and unbelief they contain.” (2)

Ibn ʿAsākir narrates, with his chain, that al-Walid heard of a brazen (3) wine-seller in al-Ḥīrah, so he made for him and drank three