1. A brother to me whose efforts are appreciated and a lord
Whose valleys delight when companionship becomes unbearable

2. Has he not made me face the testing of an experienced person
On the basis that he is truly the kindest person to me

3. He examines my style of eloquence
Can grief and joy be the same to me?

4. And how can I be patient when it branches out
And the vast path becomes narrow for its seekers

5. I shone to him, I ruined the negligence and ignorance
In which the star and the shooting star go astray

6. So O esteemed judge, you who
Draw water from the fresh, cool springs

7. And those whom the masters of science yield to altogether
Plainly and humbly, and He is their Lord

8. I seek refuge in you from doubting that I am the one
Who came first while all else lags behind or crawls

9. And the likes of me, when men strive and weary
Their souls striving and their circumstances become difficult

10. I advance, coming second in the lead
And leave behind those who raced me in their exhaustion

11. Do I live oblivious to my standing and boast
That I am from the celestial realm of the highest order

12. Can the full moon on the night of its fullness
Be hidden from you, and the meteors and comets concealed?

13. You before whom the unseen becomes manifest
With your insight that no veils can withstand

14. So how can that which competes with ignorance in stability
While those of knowledge equal the white and the black in it

15. And far be it from me that vain glory should extend through my speech
And that calm should be provoked by my words of pride

16. Rather I have in Joseph the best example
And no fault lies with one who emulates the Prophet

17. He says, and truth and honesty said, that I
Am a guardian, knowing - no truthful one is blamed

18. If steel were to acquire the sharpness of my thoughts
Flesh and solid stone would be equal before it

19. And if fire had any of its intelligence
And the sea's fury overflowed onto it, it would not be extinguished

20. No branch of knowledge is specialized with my disposition
Rather my domain in all is vast and fertile

21. The disciplines of knowledge begin to shine when they fall
Into the hands of men, and had been seized wrongfully

22. I have not been saddened - praise be to God - by any
Quest for knowledge that the non-Arabs and Arabs left

23. My ally, reviver of my zeal and its illuminator
And lifter of my mention wherever the caravan traveled

24. And my companion since twenty five pilgrimages
I go and return while it is my drawn sword

25. And my lofty approach which I do not fear for my life
To abandon - what harm did isolation bring?

26. And an abundant wealth I do not fear its depletion
By spending it - rather it increases and flows

27. I transcended myself, not with glory which
The hostile time targeted with its instruments

28. Though I could have said, claiming so, and the ugliest saying
Is that which is touched by lies

29. But one who does not fortify what befalls him
Babbles in his structures and weakness shakes them

30. So if you wish, question me about religious knowledge
An aperture that has not been hidden from me, it has a hole

31. As for the springs of hadeeth, I
Am their turbulent sea and their pouring well

32. And I compiled from the jurists' opinions a framework
By my memory, of what eons had elapsed with it

33. And if students of dialectics stand by my side
Then I am their drink and all of them imbibe

34. And my knowledge of what is in secret with my opponent is like his knowledge
So nothing, difficult or easy, was hidden from me

35. And if poetry is mentioned, Jarir would not be
Ahead of me in wagering, nor Ka'b

36. And my poetry was not harmed that it grew popular while
Tameem and Kalb did not gain knowledge of me

37. And if you ask about languages and grammar
Nothing, difficult or easy, was hidden from me

38. And my position in that is not preceding
Despite that fatigue and affliction did not tempt me

39. It is enough that in rhythmic composition I forbid
When strings are counted, and refrain, and tempo

40. And if you mention history, then I
Am its collector since the hillocks sprouted

41. No command of a ruled king was hidden from me
Nor was any matter of Sulaym or war concealed from me

42. Equal to my mention are the near and the remote
And those whom earth carried and those dust covered

43. And if genealogies are mentioned, I was their investigator
And no living soul or branch was hidden from my mention

44. Had Aristotle been alive I would have refuted him
He did not live except that he was for me like ashes

45. My knowledge travels wherever I traveled, wandering about
And accompanies me wherever the caravan lightened its load

46. Its place is my chest and the dwelling of its life
Where my sides meet from me, and the dust

47. When slumber settles into its bed
It alerts about my bedding - I turn my side from it

48. I am the sun in the atmosphere of sciences, illuminating
But my defect is that my rise is the west

49. If it were rising from the east
It would find what was lost of my mention returned

50. And I have some yearning towards the sides of Iraq
No wonder the frigid longs for the morning warmth

51. If the Merciful should settle my belongings among them
Then sorrow and anguish would pass

52. How many have I neglected while present
And I seek what reports would bring about books

53. There it will be realized that distance has a story
And that the corruption of knowledge has proximity as its detriment

54. So strange are those who when absent, they yearned
For him, and drew near to the sinner with coins of sin

55. A place too narrow for me is constricting
Though its horizons are spacious and its directions vast

56. And men who lost me are lost
And a time whose fertility I did not attain is barren

57. If I had addressed the people ignorantly
It would be said, "This claim stands on no sand dune"

58. But I addressed the most knowledgeable of those who walked
For whom all knowledge, we have enough of it

59. Every listener believes me in describing him
With certainty, no tongue or heart refuses