When the Ansari heard what Tamim had just narrated, he stood up and congratulated him for his safety and went away. At that moment, Imam [ʿAli] took Tamim, had his hair cut and his mustache shaved, and gave him one hundred dirhams from the Muslim treasury. At that time Hamza’s ghazwah, in the company of Khalid ibn Al-Walid, where Hamza was killed, took place. May God pardon him and may He bless our master, Muhammad, and grant him peace, together with his entourage.
Translated by Bassam Abu-Ghazaleh; from The Annual Journal of the Tunisian University, no. 35, 1994.
1. ʿUdda is the four months and ten days between a woman’s widowhood or divorce and her next marriage. This period of waiting is stipulated in Islamic law to ascertain that a woman is not pregnant by her former husband.
VII
Tales of Love
75
A Love Story
I shaq ibn Ibrahim al-Mawsili said:
When [Haroun] al-Rashid entered Basra [on his pilgrimage to Mecca] I was with him. One day Jaʿfar ibn Yahya [al-Barmaki]1 told me:
“I’ve heard, Abu Muhammad, of a beautiful concubine and singer [for sale]. Her owner, though, refuses to have her shown anywhere but in his house. I’ve decided to go there in disguise to see her. Will you come with me?”
“If that’s your wish,” I said.
At noon, the slave vendor came and Ja’far was told. He put on a turban, an outer shawl, and a pair of Arabic shoes, then he summoned me, and I put on the same. We rode on two donkeys equipped with saddles of the kind used by merchants, the slave vendor riding with us. On we went till we reached a house whose gate was a sign of old wealth and status.
The slave vendor knocked at the door, and a handsome young man, wearing a shirt, and with the marks of suffering on him, opened for us.
“Come through, sirs,” he said.
As we entered, we saw a large corridor and a neglected courtyard. The young man brought a piece from a large old mat and laid it down for us, and we sat.
“Bring out the slave girl,” the vendor told him. “The buyer’s here.”
He entered the house, and a girl came out, wearing the same rough shirt as that worn by the young man. For all its coarseness, she seemed as if in the finest attire, so great was her beauty. She was carrying a lute. Ja’far told her to sing, and she played well and sang beautifully; then she was overcome by weeping and couldn’t go on. We could hear, at the same time, the weeping of the young man. The girl rose, then tripped and stumbled into the house, from which a [further] loud noise of weeping and sobbing was heard. Then they were heard no more, and we feared the two might have expired. We were making ready to leave, when the young man came out, still wearing the same shirt.
“Please forgive me,” he said, “for what I’m about to do and say.”
“Tell us,” Jaʿfar said.
“God and you gentlemen are my witnesses,” the young man went on, “that this girl is free herewith. And I ask you to marry me to her.”
Jaʿfar gazed at the girl, perplexed, then addressed her.
“Do you wish me to marry you to your master?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
Jaʿfar accordingly married her to him.2 Then he turned to the young man. “Whatever made you do this?” he asked.
“I’m such and such,” the young man said, “the son of such and such. My father was one of the wealthy dignitaries of this city; this man here” (he indicated the slave vendor) “can vouch for it. My father put me to school. My mother had a young slave girl of my own age—this girl here—and she went with me to the school and learned all that I did. We’d go and return together. When she grew older, she learned singing, and I’d learn it from her.
“The greatest dignitaries of this city sought me for their daughters. My father, though, left the choice to me, and I made it clear I wasn’t interested in marriage. I grew up well versed in adab and basking in my father’s wealth, exposed to none of the things young people are usually exposed to. And that made people still more eager [to see me married to their daughters], since my chastity was seen as a mark of good character. But all this was solely on account of my love for this girl. My wishes never strayed from her to another. When, in her singing, she reached the level you’ve heard, my mother decided to sell her, knowing nothing of my attachment to her. Feeling ready to die, she was forced to speak of her feelings to my mother, and she in turn spoke to my father. They agreed together to give me this slave girl, providing her with all that was needed, and gave me a splendid ceremony. For a good while I enjoyed my life with her. Then my father died, and I was careless with my legacy. I lived recklessly, throwing away great sums in eating and drinking and other luxuries, till at last all the wealth was gone, and we arrived at what you see. This has been so for some years now.
“Not long ago, I heard that the caliph and his minister, and many of his entourage, were to come [here to Basra], and I told her:
“ ‘Your youth’s fading, your life passing. By God, I have no wish to sell you—I know I shall die if I’m parted from you. Yet it’s better I should die, if you can find a comfortable, opulent life. Let me offer you for sale. Perhaps one of these wealthy people will give you the chance of living, with him, a life of prosperity and plenty. If I should die after you’ve gone, then that’s according to my wish. Each of us would then be freed from wretchedness; and, if God should decree that I live on, I shall be patient and use the price I gained for you for my livelihood.’
“She wept when she heard that, her looks frantic. Then she rose, and said:
“ ‘Very well. Do it.’
“So, I went to this slave vendor and told him how things stood. He’d heard her singing in the days of my wealth and knew how matters were with us. I’d never, I told him, put her up for public sale, but only here in my house, for she’s never once passed over this threshold. I wished the would-be buyer to see her alone, so she wouldn’t be humiliated in a market or enter another’s house. She had only this shirt of mine to wear, and we share it between us. I wear it when I leave to buy food, while she covers herself with her cloak. When I return to the house, I give her the shirt to wear and put on her cloak.
“When you arrived, and she came out and sang, I was plunged into bitter weeping and anxiety. She came up to me.
“ ‘How very strange!’ she said. ‘You’ve tired of me, would rather part with me. And yet you weep in this way.’
“ ‘By God,’ I told her, ‘I should find it easier to part from my soul than from you. I wished only to free you from your wretchedness.’
“ ‘No, master,’ she answered. ‘Were I to have authority over you, I’d never sell you. I’d die of hunger rather. Death would be the only thing that could part us.’
“ ‘Have no worry, then,’ I answered. ‘Do you wish to see the truth of what I’ve told you?’
“ ‘Yes,’ she answered.
“ ‘Do you wish me,’ I said, ‘to go out to the buyer, free you before him, and marry you? And we’ll then go on suffering as we do now, till God assigns relief or death?’
“ ‘If,’ she said, ‘you’re true in what you say, then do it. I wish for no one but you.’
“With that I came out to you, and the rest you know. Please forgive me.”
“You are forgiven,” Jaʿfar said.
He rose, and I rose with him, and so did the slave vendor. When the donkeys were brought for us to mount, I approached Jaʿfar and said to him:
“God is great! How can it be that a man as generous as you sees such poverty yet doesn’t grasp the chance to do something? God knows my heart was torn for the young man.”
“Woe to you!” Jaʿfar said. “My heart’s torn for him, too. It was my pique at losing the slave girl, that held me back from giving him something from my bounty.”
“And where,” I said, “is the desire for heavenly reward?”
“You’re right, by God,” he said.
I turned to the slave vendor.
“How much,” I asked him, “wa
s the price given to you for the girl?”
“Three thousand dinars,” he replied.
“And where are they?” I asked Jaʿfar.
“They’re with my boy.”
Jaʿfar spoke with me, then to the slave vendor.
“Take them,” he said [to me], “and pay them over to the young man. Tell him to buy some clothes, then come to me so I can give him more and furnish him with employment.”
I went back, weeping, to the young man.
“God has hastened your relief,” I told him. “The man who’s gone from your house is Prince Jaʿfar ibn Yahya al-Barmaki. He’s ordered that you be given these and tells you such and such.”
He was so astonished, I thought he might have fallen in a faint. Then he came to himself and thanked me. I mounted, followed on after Jaʿfar, and told him. He thanked God for His guidance, and we returned to his home.
When it was time for dinner, we went to al-Rashid. They began discussing matters of state for the day. Then Jaʿfar told him the story of the young man and the girl.
“And what did you do?” al-Rashid asked.
He told him, and the caliph found it fitting.
“Assign him some income from the treasury,” he said (specifying a certain monthly sum). “Then do as you yourself think best.”
Next day, the young man came to me wearing good clothes, his looks handsome, and I found him to be most eloquent and learned. I took him to Jaʿfar’s assembly, where Jaʿfar instructed that things should be made smooth for him and appointed him one of his entourage, signing an order as the caliph had decreed, and another on his own account.
The matter became famous in Basra, and among the army, and all who could, presented the young man with something. By the time we left Basra, he’d become a wealthy man
From Abu ’l-Muhassin al-Tanukhi, Al-Faraj Baʿd al-Shidda (Reprieve After Hardship), vol. 3; in Qisas al-ʿArab (Stories of the Arabs), vol. 1.
1. Jaʿfar ibn Yahya al-Barmaki was an important Persian chief and the greatest aide ofHaroun al-Rashid. He was famous for his generosity, resourcefulness, honor, and eloquence. Accused by his enemies of conspiring to assume the caliphate, he was beheaded by al-Rashid in 187 / 803.
2. Jaʿfar is here playing the role of a guardian, who hears her consent and then gives her in marriage.
76
A Strange Vow
Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abdul al-Baqi al-Bazzaz relates how Abu ʾl-Qasim ʿAli ibn al-Muhassan al-Tanukhi quoted his father as saying: Abu ʾl-Faraj Ahmad ibn ʿUthman ibn Ibrahim, the jurist known as Ibn al-Nursi, told me as follows:
As a boy, when I was with my father in a company of people, my father was telling of people who’d found prosperity in various novel ways. Among those present was one of my father’s friends, and I heard him tell my father the following:
I’d been invited by a friend, a merchant worth a hundred thousand dinars, and a man of many good qualities. The meal he offered us included some dikabrika;1 but, seeing that he ate none of it himself, we held back, too.
“Take some,” he said. “If I eat any of this, I shall suffer for it afterwards.”
“Then,” we said, “we’ll help you by leaving it, too.”
“In that case,” he replied, “I’ll eat some with you and bear the consequences.”
He ate, then proceeded to wash his hands, but he was a long time about it. He washed them, I counted, forty times.
“What’s this?” I asked. “Do you have an obsession of some kind?”
“By doing this,” he replied, “I’m keeping myself away from harm.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He declined to give any reason. Then, when I persisted, he said at last:
“My father died when I was twenty, leaving me considerable wealth, some capital and the furnishings in his shop. He’d been a cloth merchant in al-Karkh.
“On his deathbed, he told me as follows:
“ ‘You’re my sole heir. I’ve no debts and I’ve committed no evil actions. If I die, be generous with provisions for my funeral, give away a certain sum on my behalf, and use another sum to provide for a pilgrimage. Then may God bless you with what remains. But remember the advice I’m about to bequeath you.’
“ ‘Tell me please,’ I said, ‘what that is.’
“ ‘Don’t squander your money,’ he said, ‘so that, when you need it, it’s vanished into the hands of others. Know that a little money coupled with honesty is a great deal, and a good amount coupled with corruption is small. Stay in the market. Be the first to enter and the last to leave—go in before dawn if need be. That way you’ll prosper, in ways the future will unveil.’
“He died, and I took possession of his property. I did as he’d told me, going into the market before daybreak and coming out well into the night. I never missed a single person who might come looking to buy a shroud and could find no one else. And then I’d sell him other things he needed, too. For over a year I stayed in the market, in good standing with the people there, who recognized my honesty and were generous with me.
“As I was sitting there one day, while some of the market was still open, a woman came riding by on an Egyptian donkey,2 its hindquarters covered with a shawl from Daibaq [in Egypt]. She wore the outfit of a housekeeper and was accompanied by a servant. She went right to the end of the marketplace, then, returning to my shop, dismounted from her donkey. I rose to meet her, greeted her with honor, then said: ‘How may I serve you?’ Viewing her more closely, I realized I’d never in my life seen a woman finer in every way, surpassing others in everything.
“She needed, she said, such and such material for clothing. I heard a melodious voice, and saw a form that captivated me. Straightaway I fell in love, with the most passionate love possible.
“ ‘Wait,’ I said, ‘till the other customers have gone out. Then I’ll find you what you need. Here I’ve only a little that’s suitable for you.’
“I brought out all I had. She sat talking with me, and knives were tearing my soul from love for her. She showed fingers I compared to the flowering of the palm tree, and a face like the full moon.
“I got up (before my feelings became too evident) and found what she needed in the marketplace, the whole, along with my own materials, coming to five hundred dinars. She took everything, mounted, but paid me no money.
“Such were my feelings of love for her, I did nothing to stop her taking the materials without payment. I didn’t even ask the way to where she lived, or from which family’s house she’d come.
“She was away a long time, and I began to fear she’d cheated me. The whole affair had left me short of money, but I dared not show my worries because of my debts to the other merchants. I sold everything I had in hand, and, with the little this brought, I was able to pay off all my debts and buy the bare necessities; then I contented myself with what I could collect on the property I’d inherited from my father. Sure now that I was finished, I carried on for one week more.
“Suddenly she reappeared; and, the moment I saw her, I forgot all that had happened and stood up to receive her.
Classical Arabic Stories Page 27
