Sol 6.1

  1. Welcome to your auspicious, radiant brow,

    and to the approach of your distant campaign;

  2. and to what was specially bestowed upon you:

    qualities both newly acquired and inherited.

  3. O son of the imamate and

    the caliphate, of glorious noble lineage;

  4. and brother of generosity, valor, and

    favors broad and enduring.

  5. You have distinction in jihad,

    upheld by a steadfast soul,

  6. and a crushing blow—the enemy bowed

    before it, though his onslaught was fierce.

  7. You sent ahead of you, before

    the campaign, sound plans;

  8. and you reinforced Ifriqiya with detachments

    with which you severed his jugular vein.

  9. You left him awaiting

    the might of your annihilating charge.

  10. He hunted the champions by guile,

    while good fortune decreed that you would hunt him.

  11. How often he prepared a stratagem

    against you, yet the stratagem availed him nothing.

  12. He has tasted a crushing blow to his resolve;

    it has begun, and you will see it recur.

  13. The traces of one who forsook

    honor—his palaces, out of disdain, and his graceful women [syntax unclear].

  14. And he saw, in the man who stayed back from

    battle's heat, the marks of a housebound woman.

  15. O lion of war, for whom

    the lion itself became prey,

  16. you loved Tunis after

    afflictions lying in wait had laid it waste;

  17. and you erased, when the enemy raged,

    his threat through the truth of your promise.

  18. You left it like a garden,

    through the bounty of your glorious palm.

  19. A marked steed praises you,

    whose neck you adorned with the blood of glory;

  20. and [an unclear word], supple when brandished,

    and a keen sword of pure steel.

  21. The institutions of religion became, after

    their effacement, rebuilt through you.

  22. You spent from piety's marketplace,

    as though it were profiting through you.

  23. The world strutted because of you,

    in pride—behold it, like a secluded maiden.

  24. At the throne of learning you became—

    when it had no leader—its leader.

  25. You spread the learning between al-Khalil—

    one of the scholarly masters—and Ibn Sidah.

  26. You adorned the reaches of glory,

    O Abu al-'Ala, and made its deserts flourish.

  27. Kingship forgets the memory of its Ma'mun,

    through you—indeed, even of its Rashid.

  28. How could it recall, with you being who you are,

    its kings, and count its proud lords?

  29. And if you seek from the caliph

    the loving and the defiant,

  30. a king with two flavors for

    the loving faction and the defiant:

  31. to the peaceful he is honeycomb,

    and to enemies, like bitter colocynth.

  32. The qualities of lordship were found in him,

    after they had been absent.

  33. May the nobles rejoice that he has become

    their king, and they his servants.

  34. And to you, O son of the imam

    and his likeness, comes a poem from me:

  35. the work of one whose heart is molded

    upon steadfast love for you;

  36. praying for your reign to endure

    and seeking still more of its good fortune.

  37. I alone proclaim what

    your peerless lordship keeps concealed.

  38. Gratitude to you has become for me

    second nature—no, rather a creed.

  39. Time and its people wear away,

    but my love is forever new.

  40. The bearer of glad tidings came with news of your nearness;

    so I prostrated many times.

  41. I gave him my very self; and it is part of

    the due of glad tidings that I give him more.

  42. May the joyous feast bring you joy,

    and may it rejoice that you are its feast.

  43. And live forever for a reign, never ceasing

    to be the peerless jewel of its peerless splendor.

  44. while good fortune sings unceasingly:

    Welcome to your auspicious, radiant brow.

Sol 6.1