You even went after his Companions once he was gone—reviling them, hurling slander, and violating the sacred. (1)

This is the poem’s end. May Allah curse its composer and lodge him in the Fire:
“On the Day when the excuses of the wrongdoers will not benefit them in the least; the curse will be theirs and theirs will be the worst abode.” ⦗Quran 40:52⦘

On that Day the author will cry for doom, will burn in a blazing Fire, and will taste a long-lasting humiliation:
“The Day when the wrongdoer will bite his hands, saying, ‘If only I had taken a path with the Messenger! (27) Woe to me—if only I had never taken so-and-so as an intimate! (28) He led me away from the Reminder after it had come to me. Truly, Satan is ever a deserter of mankind.’ ” ⦗Quran 25:27-29⦘

This that follows is the reply composed by Abū Muḥammad Ibn Ḥazm al-Ẓāhirī of al-Andalus. He uttered it extemporaneously when the poem reached him, enraged for the sake of Allah and His Messenger, as every on-looker attested. May Allah have mercy on him, honor his resting-place, and forgive his slips and sins.

From one who seeks refuge in Allah, Lord of the worlds,
and in the faith of Allah’s Messenger of the clan of Hāshim;

Muḥammad—the guide who leads to Allah by piety,
by sound guidance and Islam, the finest way upheld—

upon him be Allah’s ever-renewed peace
until all creation is raised for the Resurrection.

[These words are] to a speaker who, out of ignorant falsehood and error,
champions Nikephoros, the upstart among the foreigners, (2)

you have hailed as an “imam” a man whose care for his own house
is no more than the faded traces on obliterated tablets.

Calamities battered his caliphate
just as sweeping disasters battered the kings before him.

Nor is it strange that trial or misfortune
should befall a noble, free-born man, the son of noble sires.

Had he retained the mettle of his glorious forebears,
you would have quailed before the venom of his revenge.

Yet perhaps a merciful turning on Allah’s part toward the people of His religion
will revive among them the landmarks now in ruin.

You boasted of feats which, were someone among you
to unveil to you Allah’s true rulings—the wisest Judge—

shame would engulf you at their mere mention,
and every contentious tongue of yours would fall silent.

Time and again we despoiled you by frontal attack, yet you gained but a single deed—
a kind of charge performed by men of feeble resolve.

You leapt with joy and arrogance at that,
like a base, deficient fellow who nonetheless struts.

And that came only in a moment of heedlessness that overtook us,
when the turns of time were laden with mighty battles.

But when we contended among ourselves and grew complacent,
rule inclined toward an oppressor and the people of ignorance.

The caliphs then kindled within us the fire of civil strife
for the sake of their slaves—together with their Turks and Daylamites—

who repaid their benefactors with ingratitude and denial of rights,
raising to honor those they had lifted from the very depths of beasts.