“I dispatched you in longing, and you were rewarded with a glance,
yet you ignored me so long that I began to doubt you;
You conversed with the one I love and were received with favour—
oh, that I knew what your nearness truly gained!
You let your gaze roam over the beauties of her face,
and an ear of yours luxuriated in the sweetness of her voice.
I see upon the smooth of your cheek a glow that once was not (1)—
your eyes have stolen some of her very beauty.

When al-Maʾmūn embarked upon his innovations of Shiʿi partisanship and Muʿtazilī doctrine, Bishr al-Marrīsī rejoiced (2)—he was, after all, the Caliph’s teacher at the time—and al-Marrīsī recited (3):

“Our Maʾmūn, our lord, has spoken a word
whose confirmation is found in the Book divine:
‑ ʿAlī—Abū Ḥasan—is, after the Prophet of guidance,
the best of all whom the camels ever bore (4);
As for our deeds, they are ours alone,
and the Qur’an is a created thing.”

One of the poets from among Ahl al-Sunnah replied (5):

“People! Neither word nor deed is accepted
from anyone who says, ‘The speech of Allah is created.’
Abū Bakr never said it, nor ʿUmar,
nor did the Prophet, nor did the Ṣiddīq record it.
None utter it save every innovator—
a heretic against God, a renegade before Allah.
Purposely he seeks to wipe your religion away,
while by Allah their own religion is wiped away.
Lo, my people! The reason of your Caliph
now morning and evening lies in chains (6).”

Bishr then asked al-Maʾmūn to have the author sought out so he might discipline him. The Caliph said, “Shame on you! Had he been a jurist I would have disciplined him, but he is a poet—I will not trouble myself with him.”

When al-Maʾmūn was equipping himself for the campaign on what proved to be his final journey, bound for Tarsus, he summoned a slave-girl he loved and had