Al-ʿImād relates in al-Kharīda (1) that ʿUmārah composed a poem whose opening—written in the basīṭ metre—runs as follows:

Knowledge, from the moment it arose, has needed the banner,
whereas the sword’s sharp blade can dispense with the pen.

The ode is exceedingly long and brims with unbelief and sheer heresy. In it he also says (2):

The first to champion this religion was but a man
who strove until they called him the master of all nations.

Al-ʿImād adds: the scholars of Egypt (3) issued a fatwa for his execution, and they urged the Sultan to visit upon him a matching mutilation (4). It is possible that this very couplet was the basis of their ruling—Allah knows best (5).

Ibn al-Sāʿī has quoted some of ʿUmārah’s more graceful verses; among them are these lines in praise of a certain king (6), composed in the kāmil metre:

A king whose beaming brow, when I behold it,
leaves me—yet the same beam now lights my own.
And when I kiss his right hand and depart
through his gates (7), the kings then kiss my right.

He also recited the following love-lyrics (8) in the basīṭ metre:

In my passion for the chaste, gazelle-eyed one I still have pleas;
since my tears confessed (9), denial is no longer mine.
In graceful waists, in kissing rosy cheeks,
in clasping tender breasts lie aims and desires of mine.
This is my choice—approve it if you will;
or else, leave me to what I love and choose (10).

Shaykh Tāj al-Dīn al-Kindī also declaimed, when ʿUmārah al-Yamanī was crucified (11), these lines in the ṭawīl metre:

ʿUmārah, within Islam, laid bare his treachery (12),
and there he pledged allegiance—to a bargain and to the cross.