and he thanked him for persevering in that struggle against them and for safeguarding the bastion of Islam, saying in one of those letters:
“These hours in which you now live are the brides of lifetimes, and the monies that flow at your hands are the dowries of the ḥūr (maidens of Paradise) in the Everlasting Abode. Truly blessed is the one who entrusts to the hand of Allah what lies in his own; such are Allah’s favors upon him, and His enabling grace—a grace not every seeker attains. The blackness of the dust-clouds that swirl in these battle lines counterbalances the inner blackness with which sins have stained the ledger-pages; how blessed are those halts (1), and how greatly those tremors restore serenity (2).
He also wrote to him (3):
‘May Allah keep that name a diadem upon the crests of pulpits and parchments, and a source of life for the world and all the bodies and souls it contains. This servant has come to know, through direct observation and through the outcome that befell at Beirut (4), what the situation demands. No comparison can better portray (5) the matter than the poet’s words:
Have you not seen that when a man’s right hand is mortally diseased (6)
He severs it deliberately so that the rest of him may live?
Had any other course been possible, Our Master would have been the first to take it; and whoever clips a single nail from his finger has, by that act, brought benefit to the body and repelled harm from it.
As another poet said:
Enduring what is distasteful brings no harm— (7)
Indeed, I have always thought it the road to what is praiseworthy.
The end of every hardship (8) is the beginning of every expedition; so let our Master never tire of the intention of ribāṭ (frontier watch) and its execution, of accepting hardships and shouldering their load. When he turns his face toward a single Face—the Face of Allah—Allah (9) will cause all faces to turn toward him: “As for those who strive in Our cause, We shall surely guide them to Our paths; indeed, Allah is with those who excel” [Al-ʿAnkabūt: 69].’
In this same year the term of the truce that (10) Sultan Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn—may Allah have mercy on him—had concluded with the Franks (11) came to an end.