1. Husayna departed and followed those who departed.

    And after union she brought you new estrangement.

  2. And Husayna, when she rose to bid us farewell

    at parting, wearing gold beads and coral,

  3. was only a purebred oryx of the sands that left her herd,

    from the wild herds of Aʿfar or of Nayyan;

  4. or a gazelle of al-Huwwa's gazelles, grazing

    stream-end hollows bursting with herbage and ḥujrān.

  5. The early rainy season spat its spittle there,

    so it grew tender clover and buttercups.

  6. She bends tenderly toward a dark-eyed fawn, overcome

    by daytime sleep, so that he remains ever drowsy.

  7. When she hopes he will respond to her, he refuses

    all but turning away from her and forsaking her.

  8. A firstborn, she nurtures him in the wake of a cloudburst,

    where you see blue bowls of water and pools.

  9. When she emerges from one meadow, she descends into

    another, where the dragonfly spends the day bewildered.

  10. And you will not roam any land you visit

    without finding guests of God there,

  11. among His creatures: He clothes them and provides for them

    day after day, and never asks a price.

  12. They have an attentive Lord, who neglects none, nor

    does anything hidden escape Him, wherever it may be.

  13. Possessed of power, whom the length of time makes no more

    distant from them, nor heedless of them.

  14. Indeed, al-Walid, Commander of the Faithful, decreed

    a command the nearest convey to the farthest of us:

  15. a decree through which God protected His servants,

    so they became brothers in God's Book,

  16. after discord and manifest rancors,

    and death, in which the doomed met their end.

  17. Thus, after God, the leaders of affairs were

    the sons of those angered by Uthman's killing,

  18. who enjoin their community to fear God,

    and stand as helpers in what is right;

  19. and who say, 'We have attained every noble deed;

    our forebears sought it out for our later generations.'

  20. At a crisis, a clan wins over for them

    all who drink water, willing and angry alike.

  21. But for God and the people of Jordan, it would have split—

    the community's fire—into many fires on the day of al-Marj.

  22. They were visitors to the people of Syria; they understood

    when they saw injustice and rancor among them.

  23. They agreed on a rendezvous; then, when they assembled,

    they marched together and said, 'God is our Protector.'

  24. On the morning of the advance, they were not the most numerous among them

    in battle ranks, nor in cavalry horsemen,

  25. nor was their insight into the cause that guided them

    like dawn, which anyone awake recognizes,

  26. on the morning they prayed, with eyes humbly lowered:

    'Our Lord, let the most God-fearing of us take command!'

  27. So God brightened their faces on the day of al-Marj

    through His victory, and through God's sword, Marwan,

  28. and through his son after him, ʿAbd al-Malik; indeed,

    they increased the gratitude and faith of our men of understanding.

  29. Then God chose for Islam, after those two,

    from their household, a light and a proof.

  30. He deemed al-Walid worthy of it, and made him king,

    and chose from us the one He approves, and pleased us.

  31. So praise be to God, who entrusted our caliphate

    and our affairs to the best of us in faith and the strongest,

  32. bitter in enmity, making those who harbor hatred suffer,

    sweet—when no suspicion troubles him, he is gentle.

  33. We are the subjects, and the All-Merciful protects us;

    and you, on earth, after God, watch over us.

  34. He imposed upon them, as his due in justice—as they know—

    their utmost sincere loyalty, in private and in public.

  35. They see obedience to him as bringing God, their Lord,

    pleasure, and disobedience to him as disobedience to God.

  36. For you are rain that, by God's leave, He has sent

    as life-giving showers for Muslims, and renewal for the earth.

  37. You see no bounty flowing like his,

    nor any building on earth like his building.

  38. He built congregational mosques for Islam,

    and left no house of polytheism as it had been:

  39. a church whose stones ʿAd had brought down

    from the mountains east of Lebanon,

  40. from every forbidding mountain whose summit snow cloaks,

    until it melted away and the peak stood bare in summer;

  41. rugged in its high peaks, dusty on its flanks,

    where you see tawny, white-legged ibex in company.

  42. In it are the wounds of hardened pickaxes,

    from which the exposed rock faces ring and resound.

  43. They built its arches, until, when they had set

    for it pillars of ancient massive stone,

  44. your builders perfected the work and rose

    above those who sang in it for ages.

  45. They clothed it in the craftsmen's work, with gleaming

    pure gold that almost snatches sight away.

  46. As though they were summer's bows, when they chased

    a towering cloud, which the wind swept along, rain-laden.

  47. When Quzah drove its cloud away from it,

    you saw its colors amid the downpour.

  48. Your undertaking concerning the people of al-Tawana came from

    the aid of Him above us; and God granted us

  49. an undertaking whose knot you tightened by God's leave,

    adding good to our religion and our worldly life.

  50. And the raiment of the good you were given was

    mighty victory, firmness, and proof:

  51. a blessing from God, through which He increased the Muslims'

    piety; and, praise be to God, it brought understanding.

Sol 6.1