270 – Abū Muḥammad al-Tamīmī al-Baṣrī told me: Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah said:

Ibn Shubrumah had stayed away from Kūfa for a long while. On his return he made for the mountainside whose shade he and his companions once frequented, delighting in its coolness and passing the time in conversation. He found the shade still there but the friends who had once cheered him were gone, so he recited:

(on the metre al-ṭawīl)
I burst into tears for Tawbadh the moment I saw it;
and it called out in a mighty voice, beckoning me.
I said to it, “Where are the people I used to know,
clinging to your flank in days of ease and prosperity? ⦗131⦘
It replied, “They have gone, entrusting their homeland to me—
and who is there that can endure the turns of fate?”

Saʿīd ibn Muḥammad al-ʿĀmirī recited to me these verses as well:

(on the metre al-ṭawīl)
The world has been soured for those who love her,
for she is hemmed in on every side by calamities.
Even were she free of disasters, no man of experience
would ever choose to love her under any condition.
Have you not seen her suckle her sons with her milk,
only for marvellous afflictions to strike them down?
The good she bestows when it comes to its people—and likewise the evil—
are but like the fickle flashes of lying lightning.
Both blessing and hardship depart from whoever dwells in her,
just as the first gleam of the stars vanishes from the sky.