Trailing after it from the sky of its crystal strainer come limpid streams—(1) borne upon the noblest, bright-dappled steeds.

I pass by the vineyard, hidden behind its wall, and a thrill of rapture overtakes me.
I was drunk yesterday merely because I resolved to drink tomorrow—how astonishing a wonder that is!
Its darling is its very drunkenness and the company it keeps, yet the Sacred Law of the Master of the Arabs has pronounced both forbidden.
So I left her aside and sought the shade of an Imām who delivers from calamities—
that wholly pure one…(2) the guardian of my sanctity, pure in character and pure in lineage.
What, then, can any panegyrist say of a man who is Allah’s vice-gerent and the Prophet’s cousin?

Among his graceful poems are also these lines, composed in the rajaz metre:

The mere mention of wine while still inside its leather skin commands awe—how excellent the majesty that surrounds it!
The cup-bearer brought it, though already felled by intoxication; and the drunkenness only grew when he arrived with it.
Its address is a formally notarised bond that binds every suitor who comes to her bankrupt.
With it he appealed to the heart of every miser, while leaving aside those who merely toyed with her.
Her charm caused the envious heart to repent, and people complained that every youth had been smitten by her.
Give her your support, for strength itself resides in her; even the Christians paid in advance for the grapes from which she was pressed.
With her, every joy has settled among us—yet her sin is greater than her reward.

[Then came the year 599 AH.]

Sibt Ibn al-Jawzī relates in “The Mirror” (3): On the night of Saturday, the last of Muḥarram, the stars surged across the sky eastward and westward (4), scattering like swarming locusts to right and left. He adds: nothing like this had been seen since the Year of the Prophet’s Mission and the year 241 AH.

[In this same year work commenced] (5) on rebuilding the wall of the Citadel of Damascus, beginning with the south-western corner tower adjacent to Bāb al-Naṣr.