It is in fact a very long poem, close (1) to one hundred and fifty verses, and Shaykh Qutb al-Din (2) has quoted a considerable portion of its superb and elegant lines.
Ibn Israʾil al-Hariri (3)
He is Muhammad ibn Sawwar ibn Israʾil ibn al-Khiḍr ibn Israʾil ibn al-Hasan ibn ʿAli ibn Muhammad ibn al-Husayn, Najm al-Din, Abu al-Maʿali, al-Shaybani, from Damascus.
He was born in the forenoon of Monday, the twelfth of Rabiʿ al-Awwal in the year 603 AH, and in 618 AH he accompanied Shaykh ʿAli ibn Abi al-Hasan ibn Mansur al-Busri (4) al-Hariri. Prior to that he had donned the khirqa (Sufi mantle) at the hands of Shaykh Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi (5), and he claimed that the latter put him through three solitary retreats (khalwa).
Ibn Israʾil also maintained that his forebears had come to Syria with Khalid ibn al-Walid and had settled in Damascus. He was a cultured man, outstanding in the craft of poetry and masterful in composition, yet in his prose and verse there are hints of ḥulūl and ittiḥād—incarnation and mystical union—after the fashion of Ibn ʿArabi (6), Ibn al-Farid (7), and his own teacher al-Hariri; Allah knows best his state and the reality of his affair.
He died in Damascus on the night of Sunday, the fourteenth of Rabiʿ al-Akhir of this year, at the age of seventy-four. He was buried in the cemetery of Shaykh Raslan, within the same domed chamber. Shaykh Raslan had been the teacher of Shaykh ʿAli al-Maghribl (8), under whom Shaykh ʿAli al-Hariri—the teacher of Ibn Israʾil—had studied.
Of his poetry are the following lines (9):
[long metre]
A visitor from the burning of longing has come back to haunt me—
will the tryst with the mole-cheeked beauty on the slope return as well?
Does her fire still rise at al-Ajraʿ al-Fard,
for a lone watcher over whom the night itself has grown grey?
O my two drinking companions from Saʿda, let the talk circle round her,
for my recollection of her love and the wine are one and the same.
Soft-limbed, her graces refined beyond measure—
just as the torment I endure for her love is sublime. (10)