Have you forbidden the drinking of wine while you yourself (1)
are intoxicated, brimming over with the cup of injustice?

You have set aside the wine-cups out of scrupulous piety,
yet around you the cups of what is unlawful still circulate.

What will you say when you are borne (2)
to decay, alone, and Munkar and Nakir approach you?

Plaintiffs will cling to you while you, on
the Day of Reckoning, are dragged along (3) in chains.

Your armies will have deserted you, and you will be
laid out and buried in the cramped confines of the grave (4).

You will wish that you had never held authority,
not for a single day, nor that people had hailed you “emir.”

After your glory you will remain pledged to a shallow pit,
in the realm of the dead, despised and insignificant.

You will be gathered naked, grief-stricken, weeping,
restless, with no protector among mankind.

Are you content to live while your heart lies in ruins—utterly desolate (5)—
though your body is well maintained?

Are you content that others should ever enjoy His closeness,
while you are cast far away (6) and forsaken?

[Prepare a plea for yourself by which you may be saved
on the Day of Return—perhaps then you will be (7) excused.] (8)

When King (9) Nūr al-Dīn heard these verses (10),
he wept bitterly and ordered the abolition of the mukūs and all other taxes throughout the realm—may Allah have mercy on him (11).

ʿUmar al-Mullā of Mosul then wrote to him. He had already instructed that city’s governors and commanders not to conclude any matter until they had consulted him; whatever he directed them to do, they carried out. A righteous ascetic, Nūr al-Dīn used to borrow from him each Ramadan the food with which he broke his fast; the shaykh would send him crumbled bread and thin wafers, and the king would break his fast on that throughout the whole month.

Shaykh ʿUmar al-Mullā (12) wrote to him: “The trouble-makers have multiplied and the situation calls for firm governance; such a matter will not be …”