For they have long paid you visits in your very homes,
traversing a year’s march on their massive, iron-sinewed steeds;

and as for Sijistān and Kirmān, and those
who have encamped at Kabul in the land of the Brahmans,

a surging host reaches to Fārs and to Susa,
and in Isfahān stands every gallant man of firm resolve.

Were that host to unite and descend upon you,
you would become prey, as lions make of burden-beasts their feast.

In resplendent Basra, in Kufa—famed for its clamorous assemblies—
in the forum of Wāsiṭ and the quarters of al-Kaẕāʾim,⦗1⦘

there are ranks whose numbers vie with the grains of sand;
none singled out by them departs in safety.

Before the House of Allah in Mecca—
thrice endowed with a glory that rivals the Pleiades—

the station of all the earth beside it, assuredly,
is but the underside of a sandal beside the gem of a ring.

A guarding from the All-Merciful surrounds it, as is its right;
never has a hostile glance been cast toward it and returned unharmed.

There the Abyssinians were struck, and before them
birds in the heights rained pebbles of clay upon the foe.

A host like the gathered sea—mighty and inexorable—
protected the navel of al-Baṭḥāʾ, the inviolate sanctuary.

And before the grave of the Chosen One, in the midst of Ṭaybah,
stand throngs as dark as the blackness of night;

an army of exalted angels leads them in direct combat,
shielding every worshipper in prayer and every fasting soul.

Had we but met you, you would have turned to carrion
at the hands of the men of our Najd highlands and Tihāmah lowlands;

and in well-defended Yemen are youths born for the raid—
should they confront you, you become mere morsels for the pot.

In the wilds of Yamāmah there is a band,
desert warriors with long, unbreakable knuckles,

that will wipe out both you and the Qarmaṭiyyah when a sovereignty
returns to a man of blessed pedigree, resolute and firm—

a rightful caliph whose rule champions the faith
and who, for Allah’s sake, fears not the blame of any blamer;

his lineage ascends, in overflowing pride,
to the offspring of al-‘Abbās, those radiant Abbasids—

kings whose bird of fortunate victory has ever flown;
a hearty welcome to those already gone and those yet to come!

Their seat may be in Jerusalem’s Mosque, or amid
the dwellings of Baghdad—the abode of noble virtues.

Should he arise from the nobles of ‘Adī and Taym,
or from Asad, the pious Ḥaḍārim,

then welcome, ease, bounty and greeting
to those choice men of the past and of what is to be.

They are the ones who rendered decisive aid to Islam;
they are the ones who opened lands with irresistible conquest.

Take heart: Allah’s truthful promise is approaching,
to make the people of unbelief drink the draught of bitter colocynth;

so, too, is the truth of the messages brought by the Guide—
Muḥammad, who came to abolish every tyranny.