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The dreariness of the (lover's solitary) nights was dispelled, and his turn of union (with the beloved) drew near; and my union with thee made those jealous, who used to pity me formerly when suffering from thy aversion. I swear by the truth of thy existence that, since thou art now present, I care not for any of my former disappointments. Thou camest to me who was deprived of life, and small was the price for which thou didst obtain me (3). The hearts (of men) are unable to conceive thee; but, O, the delicious source whereof I am allowed to drink! (I avow that) all which is forbidden to mortals is forbidden also to me; but how sweet in my bosom is the love I bear thee. Love for thee has drenched my very bones; what then have I to do with that which is not love? Bitter thirst oppresseth not the destitute when near him are sources of the purest water.

I saw a number of those who attended his assemblies and who sat with him in private, whilst he directed them, as is customary with the Sufis, in the path of spiritual life; they gave me an account of the strange sensations which then came over them, and of the extraordinary ecstasies which they experienced. He once arrived at Arbela as an envoy from the August Divan (4), and he held regular assemblies there, at which he preached; but I had not the advantage of seeing him, as I was then too young. He performed the pilgrimage very often, and on some of these occasions he made a temporary residence in the neighbourhood of the sacred Temple. The shaikhs of that age, who were masters of the path (5), used to write to him from the countries where they resided, addressing him questions drawn up in the manner of fatwas (or consultations on points of law), in which they asked his opinion on circumstances which concerned them. I was told that one of them wrote to him as follows. "My lord! if I cease to work, I "shall remain in idleness; and if I work, I am filled with self-satisfaction; which "is best?" To this as-Suhrawardi wrote, in reply: "Work: and ask of Almighty God to pardon thy self-satisfaction." Numerous anecdotes of this kind are told of him. He has inserted some charming verses in the Awârif al-Madrif, from which we select the following:

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I perceive in thee, (O valley,) a perfume which I know not, and I suspect that (my 551 beloved) Lamya has swept over thee with her train (6).

And again :

If I contemplate you, I am all eyes; and if I think of you, I am all heart.

By his studies under his uncle Abû 'n-Najib he attained great proficiency. He was born at Suhraward, towards the latter end of Rajab, or the beginning of

Shaaban (which of the two is doubtful), A. H. 539 (Jan.-Feb. A. D. 1145); and he died at Baghdad, on the first of Muharram, A. H. 632 (Sept. A. D. 1234). He was interred the next morning in the Wardiya cemetery (7).

(1) This is one of the most celebrated works on Sufism. Roi, ancien fonds, No. 375.

An excellent copy of it is preserved in the Bib. du

(2) These verses have a mystic import; the beloved is God.

(3) The poet means to say that he was dead by sin, and that he became the servant or slave of God by renouncing the world.

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(4) The government of the khalifate at Baghdad was generally designated at that time by the title of the August Divan (ad-Diwân al-Aziz.)

(5) See vol. I. page 259, note (3).

(6) The merit of this verse consists in its mystic signification. The shaikh perceived a young novice in Sufism manifesting an unwonted degree of excitement; and he supposed that the Divinity had passed near him. (7) Wardiya signifies rosary, rose-garden; it was the cemetery of the Sufis.

THE HAFIZ IBN DIHYA.

The hafiz Abu 'l Khattâb Omar Ibn al-Hasan Ibn Dihya, a member of the tribe of Kalb, and surnamed Zû 'n-Nasabain (the possessor of the double pedigree), was a native of Valencia, in Spain. His genealogy, as I found it written by himself, with the indication of the proper pronunciation of the names, runs as follows: Omar Ibn al-Hasan Ibn Ali Ibn Muhammad Ibn al-Jumaiyil Ibn Farh Ibn Khalaf Ibn Kumis (pronounced also Kaumis) Ibn Mazlâl Ibn Mallàl Ibn Badr Ibn Ahmad Ibn Dihya (pronounced also Dahya) Ibn Khalifa Ibn Farwa al-Kalbi : Dihya al-Kalbi was one of Muhammad's companions (1). He mentioned also that his mother, Ama tar-Rahmân, was the daughter of Abu Abd Allah Ibn Abi 'l-Bassam Mûsa Ibn Abd Allah Ibn al-Husain Ibn Jaafar Ibn Ali Ibn Muhammad Ibn Ali Ibn Musa Ibn Jaafar Ibn Muhammad Ibn Ali Ibn al-Husain Ibn Ali Ibn Abi Tâlib. It was for this reason that he signed himself the possessor of the double pedigree, being descended from Dihya and al-Husain. Alluding also to the same circumstance, he wrote himself down as Sibt Abi 'l-Bassâm (the grandson by the female line of Abû 'lBassâm). — Abû 'l-Khattâb Omar Ibn Dihya was a man eminent for his learning

and illustrious by his talents, a perfect master of the Traditions relative to the Prophet, and of the sciences connected with them, skilled in grammar and philology, and well acquainted with the narrations of the battle-days of the ancient Arabs, and with their poems. Having made the collecting of Traditions his chief pursuit, he visited most of the Moslim cities in Spain for the purpose of meeting their men of learning and their teachers, after which he crossed the water and entered Morocco, where he became acquainted with the persons of talent who resided in that city. He then proceeded to the province of Ifrikiya, and thence to Egypt. From that country he travelled to Syria, the East (Mesopotamia), and Irak. At Baghdad he received Traditions from some of Ibn al-Hasin's disciples, and at Wasit he heard others from the lips of Abù 'l-Fath Muhammad Ibn Ahmad al-Maidani. He then visited Persian Irak, Khoràsân with its neighbouring provinces, and Mazandaran, for the sole purpose of collecting Traditions and obtaining them from the great masters in that branch of knowledge whom he met there. During this period, he gave lessons to others, and communicated to them his own information. When at Ispahan he heard Abu Jaafar as-Saidalàni teach Traditions, and, at Naisapûr, he received some from Mansûr Ibn Abd alMunêm al-Farawi. In the year 604 (A. D. 1207-8) he arrived at Arbela, on his way to Khorasan, and perceiving the extreme zeal displayed by the lord of that city, al-Malik al Muazzam Muzaffar ad-din, the son of Zain ad-din, in his preparations for celebrating the festival of the Prophet's birth, he composed for that prince the work entitled Kitâb al-Tanwir fi Maulid as-Siraj al-Munîr (the 332 book of Illumination, treating of the birth-day of the enlightening Flambeau). In the letter K, under the head of Kûkubûri, we shall give a description of this solemnity. In the month of the latter Jumàda, A. H. 626 (May, A. D. 1229) we heard Ibn Dihya read this work to al-Malik al-Muazzam, in six sittings. It concluded with a long poem, the first verse of which was:

Were it not for our enemies, those base informers, people had never suspected (that we were in love.)

There is a circumstance connected with this poem which we have noticed in the life of Ibn Mammâti (2), and to this we refer the reader. When he finished his Kitâb at-Tanwîr, al-Malik al-Muazzam made him a gift of one thousand pieces of gold. A number of other works were composed by him. He was born on the

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first of Zù 'l-Kaada, A. H. 544 (March, A. D. 1150); and he died at Cairo, on Tuesday, the 14th of the first Rabî, A. H. 633 (November, A. D. 1235). He was interred at the foot of Mount Mukattam, as I have been informed by his son: I was told also, by his brother's son, that he had heard his uncle more than once say that he was born on the first of Zû 'l-Kaada, A. H. 546 (February, A. D. 1152). -Balansi means belonging to Balansiya (Valencia) which is a city in the east of Spain. Abu Amr Othman Ibn al-Hasan, Ibn Dihya's elder brother, was well acquainted with the phraseology of the Desert Arabs, which he knew by heart and taught publicly. When the sultan al-Malik al-Kâmil removed Abû 'l-Khattâb Ibn Dihya from his professorship in the Dar al-Hadith (or college of Traditions), which that prince had founded at Cairo, Abû Amr, the brother, was installed in the vacant place, and he continued to hold it till his death. He died at Cairo, on Tuesday, the 13th of the first Jumâda, A. H. 634 (January, A. D. 1237), and was interred at the foot of Mount Mukattam. He left some epistles in which he employed obsolete expressions.

(1) Dihya Ibn Khalifa al-Kalbi was Muhammad's envoy to Heraclius. —Abù 'l-Fedâ's Annals, year 7. (2) See vol. I. p. 194.-Ibn Dihya's surname is there incorrectly given; it must be pronounced Zû 'n-Nasa

bain.

ABU ALI AS-SHALAUBINI.

Abû Ali Omar Ibn Muhammad [Ibn Omar] Ibn Abd Allah, surnamed as-Shalaubini, was a member of the tribe of Azd, and a native of Seville, in Spain. He held the first rank as a grammarian, and possessed in an extraordinary degree the faculty of recalling to mind the various rules of that science. I met a number of his pupils, all of them men of talent, and they unanimously declared that the shaikh Abu Ali as-Shalaubini was in no degree inferior to the shaikh Abu Ali 'l-Farisi (vol. I. p. 379). The terms in which they spoke of him were commendatory in the highest degree; but they observed that, with all his talent, he neglected his personal appearance, and was subject to absence of mind. Of this

they related as an example, that as he was one day on the bank of a river, with some sheets of a book in his hand, he let one of them fall into the water; and, as it floated off so that he could not reach it with his hand, he took another of the sheets to pull it near him; so that both sheets were spoiled. Other similar anecdotes are related in proof of his absence of mind. He composed a large and a small commentary on al-Juzûli's Prolegomena (1), and a work on grammar, entitled at-Tautiya the beating out of the track). He resided at Seville, but pupils of his were occasionally arriving amongst us and informing us of his proceedings. On the whole, he really was, as they styled him, the last of the grammarians. He was born at Seville, A. H. 562 (A. D. 1166-7), and he died in the same city, in the month of the latter Rabî, some say of Safar, A. H. 645 (August, A. D. 1247).-Shalaubîni is derived from as-Shalaubin, which is a wordof the Spanish language, and means, it is said, the white and red (2).

1) The life of al-Juzûli will be found in this volume.

(2) Abû 'l-Fedâ says, in his Geography, that Shalaubînî means belonging to Shalaubiniya (Salobrenna), a fortress near Granada. He adds that those persons are mistaken who derive it from a word signifying red in the language spoken by the (Christian) inhabitants of Spain. He here certainly alludes to the statement made by Ibn Khallikân in this passage.

IBN TABARZAD.

Abu Hafs Omar Ibn Abi Bakr Muhammad Ibn Muammar Ibn Ahmad Ibn Yahya Ibn Hassan, surnamed al-Muwaddib (the preceptor), Muwaffak ad-din (aided 353 in religion by God's favour, and generally known by the name of Ibn Tabarzad, was a Traditionist of great celebrity, and a native of Baghdad. He inhabited that quarter of the city, on the west bank of the Tigris, which is called Dar alKazz, and he was sometimes styled, for that reason, ad-Dàrakazzi. The Traditions which he had received by oral transmission were remarkable as coming from the highest authorities, and, as he travelled through various countries teaching (them) to others, he became the link which connected the rising genera

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