Sol 5.6

  1. God honored us through our support of His Prophet,

    and through us He established Islam’s pillars.

  2. Through us He strengthened His Prophet and His Book,

    and made us mighty through the sword and bold advance.

  3. In every melee our swords send flying

    the skulls from the brains—the nestlings of the heads.

  4. Gabriel visits us within our dwellings,

    bearing Islam’s ordinances and judgments.

  5. There he recites the Light to us, made unassailable—

    I swear by your life, an oath unlike all other oaths.

  6. Thus we are the first to deem lawful what it makes lawful,

    and to forbid, for God, every forbidden thing.

  7. We are the chosen ones of all creation,

    its binding thread and the rein of every rein:

  8. those who plunge into the depths of every death,

    who answer for the calamities of time,

  9. who bind the cords of affairs firm with their might,

    and break the hardest cords of nations.

  10. Ask Abū Karib, and ask Tubbaʿ

    about us—and the folk of sacrificial rites and divining arrows.

  11. Ask also the discerning men among their nobles

    about the day of al-ʿUhayn, then Hājir, then Ruʾām.

  12. We surely protect whomever we wish to protect,

    and lavish kindness upon whoever comes seeking it.

  13. Our swords turn back the army’s onslaught,

    and raise aloft the proud and mighty chief.

  14. Never have the blows of our swords and spears ceased

    on any day of hand-to-hand struggle and mutual volleys,

  15. until we left the land, its rugged ground made smooth,

    strung with our cavalry as though upon a cord.

  16. Some little bands escaped, fleeing far; but had they

    stood firm, they would never then have returned in safety.

  17. And if I boast of them, surely the like of their ancient glory is

    what the wise man boasts of above all peoples.

Sol 5.6