and the land-surveyor of these spacious realms (1)
is more entitled to apply his measuring rod with deft hands (2);
he is more worthy of fearing his Lord (3)
than some ignoramus fussing with triangles, squares, and pentagons.
Ḥayṣa Bayṣa (4)—Saʿd b. Muḥammad b. Saʿd, Shihāb al-Dīn, Abū al-Fawāris al-Ṣayfī, the poet (5) known by the sobriquet “Ḥayṣa Bayṣa”—left behind a well-known dīwān of verse (6). He passed away on Tuesday, the fifth of Shaʿbān of this same year, at the age of eighty-two. The funeral prayer was performed for him at the Niẓāmiyya, and he was buried at Bāb al-Tabn (7). He left no offspring. In the art of letter-writing he had no equal: he affected archaisms and extreme eloquence, and no missive of his emerged save in an outlandishly rare style (8). He claimed descent from Banū Tamīm (9). When his father was asked about this, he said, “I never heard it from anyone but him.” Because of that pretension another poet lampooned him (10):
[al-khafīf]
How you strut about (11), and how tall you pull up the point of your silly cap (12)(13)!—
not a single hair of Tamīm is in you (14).
So eat lizard-meat and swallow the dried colocynth (15),
and drink, if you like, the urine of a male ostrich.
This is not the look of a man who entertains guests,
who serves them food, or who shields his womenfolk from harm.
(1) In the printed edition: "fasīḥa".
(2) This verse is not found in manuscript B.
(3) In the printed edition: "awlā bi-khashyah".
(4) His biography appears in al-Muntaẓam (vol. 10, p. 288); al-Kharīda (Iraq section, vol. 1, p. 202); Muʿjam al-Udabāʾ (vol. 11, pp. 199–207); Ibn al-Athīr (vol. 9, p. 146); Ṭabaqāt al-Aṭibbāʾ (vol. 1, p. 283); Wafayāt al-Aʿyān (vol. 2, pp. 362–365); Abū al-Fidāʾ (vol. 3, p. 61); al-ʿIbar (vol. 4, p. 219; Beirut ed., vol. 3, p. 65); Mirʾāt al-Jinān (vol. 3, pp. 399–400); and Ṭabaqāt al-Subkī (vol. 4, p. 221).
(5) In manuscript B it reads: "al-maʿrūf bi-al-Ḥayṣ Bayṣ".
(6) This dīwān was published in two volumes in Baghdad in 1974 CE.
(7) Bab al-Tabbān: a district of Baghdad along the canal, opposite the Qatiʿa of Umm Jaʿfar, containing the tomb of Imam Ahmad and adjoining the Quraysh cemetery. It also housed the tomb of Musa al-Kadhim, known as Mašhad Bab al-Tabbān. Saterbikh believed that the cemeteries of Quraysh, Bab al-Tabbān, al-Shunayzī, and the Kadhimīs were all parts of a single burial ground extending over vast areas beyond the city limits (al-Muʿjam al-Buldān, Khuṭaṭ Baghdād, p. 207).
(8) In A and the printed edition: "maʿjrufa".
(9) In manuscript B: "min Tamīm". Wafayāt al-Aʿyān (vol. 2, p. 365) alleges that he belonged to the descendants of Aktham ibn Sīfī al-Tamīmī, known as the Arab sage.
(10) The verses are found in Wafayāt al-Aʿyān (vol. 2, p. 364).
(11) In B: "tanādā".
(12) In B and the printed edition: "tuṭīl".
(13) In B: "aṭ-ṭayrāṭīr".
(14) In B and the printed edition: "wamā fīka". The metre does not scan in this case.
(15) In the printed edition and in Wafayāt: "waqriṭ".