Sol 6.1

  1. Suppose the full moon should one day set,

    Or that al-Simak al-Aʿzal should plunge down,

  2. Or that a sea's waters should drain away,

    Or Radwa were leveled, or Yadhbul split apart—

  3. Would that be a loss like the loss humankind suffered

    When that scholar, devoted to worship, died?

  4. A loss that drives the composed man distraught, so his mind,

    From what assails it, is the mind of one without reason.

  5. O you who bid me be patient, what patient endurance

    Could ever be fitting after Ibn Ibrahim?

  6. The full moon of learning—may you have no father!—has come to rest

    In a pit, with stones piled above him.

  7. It was he who revived Ahmad's sacred law,

    And made clear within it what was obscure and perplexing.

  8. We used to seek refuge with him whenever we were perplexed

    By a knotty inquiry among the difficulties of learning.

  9. And the radiant Sunnah—he was its beauty;

    And through him the chains of hadith transmission were linked.

  10. And in exegesis he would plunge into its depths,

    Into deep seas before which every scholar stood bewildered.

  11. And he ranged through the two foundational sciences like an expert,

    Not like one who ranged while shackled.

  12. And he raised the heights of the science of rhetoric,

    And through him Atwal and Mutawwal grew loftier.

  13. All the sciences answered his summons,

    And the last of them and the first hastened to him.

  14. So they halt wherever he halts; and when he sets out

    On a journey, they depart at his departure.

  15. And he followed the way of the Companions, adhering to

    The explicit text of the proof, from which he never turned.

  16. He never sullied the purity of his learning with affectation,

    Or arrogance or pretension that cannot be accepted.

  17. Rather, the aim he sought in his speech

    And his deeds was to attain what is best.

  18. Never in all his days did there cross his mind

    The pursuit of high rank; he never turned toward it.

  19. And he turned away if the lightning flashes of covetous hopes appeared,

    Toward which feet hasten whenever they gleam.

  20. O you who went forth in the footsteps of detachment,

    And died with nothing there to weigh you down.

  21. You died with the robes of your asceticism still pure,

    No drink had stained them, nor any food.

  22. Never delving into what did not concern you, nor

    Flaunting your learning with a speech in an assembly.

  23. He loved obscurity despite those virtues of his

    With whose like Time came to adorn itself.

Sol 6.1