Qays and Lubnā are a famous couple known for their sad love affair (though Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, the compiler of the Book of Songs, also gives an alternative, happy ending). Their story is told in simple prose, but not in a straightforward manner: it is somewhat rambling and repetitive, with a number of digressions. One could leave out all the chains of authorities and digressions, to make the text more unified and “literary,” as has been done for example by Max Weisweiler in his German translation (Arabesken der Liebe, pp. 78–90), and long before him by Ibn Wāṣil al-Ḥamawī (d. 697/1298) in his Tajrīd or “Abstract” of al-Aghānī. But this would distort the character of the original text, which is an illustration of how belles lettres and scholarship often go hand in hand. Here the chapter is translated almost in full, omitting only some lines of long poems and some technical details on the songs and the musicians. The longer chains of authorities have been printed in a smaller font size, to distinguish them from the story.
Qays ibn Dharīḥ (ca. 4/626–70/689), of the tribe of Kinānah, foster brother of al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib (grandson of the Prophet and the most famous martyr of the Shī‘ites), is famous as a poet of ghazal of the ‘Udhrī kind.
Qays ibn Dharīḥ, his genealogy and the reports about him
As is mentioned by al-Kalbī, al-Qaḥdhamī, and others, he is Qays ibn Dharīḥ ibn Sunnah ibn Ḥudhāqah ibn Ṭarīf ibn ‘Utwārah ibn ‘Āmir ibn Layth ibn Bakr ibn ‘Abd Manāh, who is ‘Alī ibn Kinānah ibn Khuzaymah ibn Mudrikah ibn Ilyās ibn Muḍar ibn Nizār. Abū Shurā‘ah al-Qaysī says that he is Qays ibn Dharīḥ ibn alḤubāb ibn Sunnah; the rest of the lineage is identical. He argues this on the basis of Qays’s verse:
If my doting on Lubnā is misguided,
then, Dharīḥ ibn al-Ḥubāb, I am indeed misguided.
Al-Qaḥdhamī says that his mother was the daughter of Sunnah ibn al-Dhāhil ibn ‘Āmir al-Khuzā‘ī, which is correct; and that a brother of his mother was called ‘Amr ibn Sunnah, who was a poet. He was the one who said,
They hit the elephant at al-Mughammas, till
it crept along as if it had a fever.382
Of him, Qays said,
My uncle, I am told, is owner of a camel herd
with smooth heads flat like stone slabs, near the holy place.383
In days gone by, when you lived near us as our protégé,
you had no camel mare to tend, nor stallion.
It would not harm you, Uncle ‘Amr, if they drank
from other cisterns, while the well is overflowing.384
Al-Ḥasan ibn ‘Alī informed me: Muḥammad ibn Mūsā ibn Ḥammād related to me: Aḥmad ibn al-Qāsim ibn Yūsuf related to me: Jaz’ ibn Qaṭan related to me: Jassās ibn Muḥammad ibn ‘Amr, one of the Banū l-Ḥārith ibn Ka‘b, related to us, on the authority of Muḥammad ibn Abī l-Sarī, on the authority of Hishām ibn al-Kalbī, who said:
A number of tribesmen from Kinānah told me that Qays ibn Dharīḥ was a foster brother of al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib (may God be pleased with them), who was suckled by Qays’s mother.
Several of our teachers informed me about Qays and Lubnā, his wife, in stories both connected and disconnected, in reports either scattered or properly arranged. I have put them all together to make a coherent text, except those isolated reports that could not be incorporated in the ordered narration, so I have mentioned them separately.
Among those who informed me about Qays is Aḥmad ibn ‘Abd al-‘Azīz al-Jawharī, who said: ‘Umar ibn Shabbah related to us (giving no link to further informants); and Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Ayyūb, on the authority of Ibn Qutaybah; and al-Ḥasan ibn ‘Alī, on the authority of Muḥammad ibn Mūsā ibn Ḥammād al-Barbarī, on the authority of Aḥmad ibn al-Qāsim ibn Yūsuf, on the authority of Jaz’ ibn Qaṭan, on the authority of Jassās ibn Muḥammad, on the authority of Muḥammad ibn Abī l-Sarī, on the authority of Hishām al-Kalbī, whose version is the most reliable. I have also quoted some things from the connected reports about Qays that are mentioned by al-Qaḥdhamī, on the authority of his sources, by Khālid ibn Kulthūm, on his authority and of those from whom he is transmitting, and by Khālid ibn Jamal; and some details related by al-Yūsufī, the author of the Epistles, on the authority of his father, on the authority of Aḥmad ibn Ḥammād, on the authority of Jamīl, on the authority of Ibn Abī Janāḥ al-Ka‘bī. I have quoted everything that is generally agreed upon in a continuous narrative, and every divergent motif wherever it fits in, duly attributed to its sources.
They all say that his people lived in the region outside Medina; he and his father were from the settled population of Medina. Khālid ibn Kulthūm says that they lived in Sarif, on the evidence of Qays’s verse:
God be praised! She’s a neighbor of those
in ‘Aqīq, while in Sarif are we.385
They say that Qays, while on some business of his, came past the tents of the Banū Ka’b ibn Khuzā‘ah. He stopped at one of the tents when the tribesmen were absent. It was the tent of Lubnā bint al-Ḥubāb al-Ka‘biyyah. He asked her for some water; she gave him some, coming out of the tent and bringing it to him. She was a tall woman, with dark, bluish-black eyes, sweet of face and speech. The moment he saw her he fell in love with her. He drank the water; then she said to him, “Will you stay and cool yourself a while with us?”
“Yes.”
He stayed with them. Her father came and slaughtered an animal for him and treated him hospitably. Qays left, in his heart an inextinguishable, ardent passion for Lubnā. He began to compose poetry on her which became well known and was recited widely. He came to her another day, being enamored of her. He greeted her and she emerged, answering his greeting and receiving him kindly. He told her how much he suffered from the passion for her and the love he felt; she told him at length that she, too, suffered from the same thing. They both discoverd what they felt for each other. Then he went to his father and told him about his situation, asking him to marry him to her. But his father refused, saying, “Dear son, you must marry one of your cousins, for they are more entitled to marry you.”
Dharīḥ was very wealthy and did not want to let his son marry a stranger. Qays left, very unhappy with what his father had said. He went to his mother and complained, asking for her support against his father. But she did not give him what he wanted. Then he went to al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib and Ibn Abī ‘Atīq386 and complained to them, sharing his feelings and how his father had reacted. AlḤusayn said, “I will help you.”
He went with him to Lubnā’s father. When the latter saw him he honored him, hastening toward him, saying, “Grandson of the Messenger of God! Why have you come? Why didn’t you send for me so that I would have come to you?”
“The very reason that made it necessary for me to come to you, for I have come to ask for the hand of your daughter in marriage on behalf of Qays ibn Dharīḥ.”
“Grandson of the Messenger of God, we would not disobey your command, nor do we dislike this young man. But we would prefer it if Dharīḥ’s father asked us to marry her to his son, and that the matter came from him; for we are afraid that if his father does not support this it will be a matter of shame and disgrace for us.”
Then al-Ḥusayn (God be pleased with him) went to Dharīḥ and his people while they were together. They stood up and honored him and said the same as the Khuzā‘īs had said.387 He said to Dharīḥ, “I beseech you, ask for Lubnā’s hand for your son Qays!”
“I hear and obey!”
He went with him, together with the leading persons of his clan. When they came to Lubnā, Dharīḥ asked her father for her hand in marriage on behalf of his son, and her father married her to him. Subsequently she was led to him and she stayed with him for a while during which they found nothing to dislike about each other!
He used to be much devoted to his mother; but now Lubnā and his obsession with her distracted him somewhat from this. His mother was upset by this and said, “This woman has distracted my son from his devotion to me.”
But she did not find an opportunity to speak out, until one day Qays fell gravely ill. When he had recovered from his illness his mother said to his father, “I was afraid that Qays would die without leaving offspring, since this woman has not had any children. You are wealthy and your possessions would go to distant relations. Marry him to someone else, perhaps God will then grant him children!”
She kept on insisting. He gave it some time, but when his clan was together he called for Qays and said, “Qays, you had this illness and I feared for you. You have no children and I have no one but you. This is not a woman who will have children. Marry one of your cousins, perhaps God will give you a son in whom you and we will rejoice.”
But Qays answered, “I will never marry anyone else, I swear by God.”
His father said, “I am wealthy; take slavegirls as concubines!”
“By God, I will never hurt her with anything like that.”
“I beseech you, divorce her!”
“By God, I would rather die! But I shall make you choose one of three things.”
“What are these things?”
“Either you yourself marry again and perhaps God will grant you another son…”
“I am too old for that.”
“… or let me leave you with my wife. Then do what you must do, even if I die of this illness…”
“Not that either.”
“… or call for Lubnā and let her stay with you, and I’ll leave: perhaps I will get over her, as I do not want her to be in my imagination after I had had it so good.”
“I do not want that unless you divorce her.”
And he swore an oath that no roof would ever shelter him until Qays had divorced Lubnā. He went outside and stood in the blazing sun. Qays would come and stand beside him, giving him shade with his cloak, himself being scorched by the hot sun; only when the shadows became longer would he leave. He would go in to Lubnā, each in the other’s embrace, both of them crying and she saying, “Qays, do not obey your father or else you will perish and cause me to perish too.”
Then he would say, “I could never obey anybody regarding you.”
It is said that this lasted one year. Khālid ibn Kulthūm said: Ibn ‘Ā’ishah mentioned that Qays resisted for forty days and then divorced her; but that is incorrect.
Muḥammad ibn Khalaf Wakī‘ informed me: Aḥmad ibn Zuhayr related to me: Yaḥyā ibn Ma‘īn related to me: ‘Abd al-Razzāq related to us: Ibn Jurayḥ informed us: ‘Umar ibn Abī Sufyān informed me, about Layth ibn ‘Amr, who had heard Qays ibn Dharīḥ say to Zayd ibn Sulaymān:
“Because of Lubnā my parents avoided me for ten years. I would ask to see them but they would refuse, until in the end I divorced her.”
Ibn Jurayḥ said, “I was told that ‘Abd Allāh, the son of Ṣafwān the tall one, met Dharīḥ, Qays’s father, and said to him, ‘What induced you to separate them? Don’t you know that ‘Umar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb388 said, “It would not make much difference if I separated a couple or killed them with a sword!”’389
“They say that when Lubnā was parted from him, after he had divorced her and nothing more could be said, it was not long before his mind gave way and he became like someone possessed. He thought of Lubnā and the time she was still with him, and he grieved, crying and sobbing bitterly. She heard about this and asked her father to take her away. Others say that she stayed until her waiting period390 was over, during which Qays used to visit her. Her father came with a howdah on a she-camel, and other camels to carry her belongings. When Qays saw this he turned to her servant girl and said, ‘Woe is me! What are they doing to me?’
“She replied, ‘Don’t ask me, ask Lubnā!’
“He went toward her tent to ask her, but her people stopped him. A woman from his own people turned to him and said, ‘Come on, why would you ask her? Are you stupid or just pretending to be stupid?! Lubnā is going away, tonight or tomorrow morning.’
“He fainted and fell down unconscious. When he came to he said,
I have exhausted all my tears with crying,
in dread of what has been and what will be.
They say: tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow
I will be separated from my love, parting at last.
I never feared my fate: to die
at your hands. Now the time has come.
“A song was made on these verses; the events are mentioned in the story of al-Majnūn.391 Qays also said,
‘Lubnā,’ they said, ‘is trouble! You were fine before
you knew her. Don’t be sorry for her and divorce her!’
So I obeyed my enemies and disobeyed who wished me well;
I gladdened my false gloating rivals’ eyes.
I wish, by God! that I had disobeyed them all,
mortal sins merely to please her,
Plunging into a heaving sea of trouble,
Biding in the midst of the submersing waves.
I see all loving people, now that she is gone, as if
they are the bitter juice of colocynths;
My eyes reject all pleasant sights,
my ears dislike all speech, since she is gone.
“A crow alighted near him and started to croak repeatedly. He took this as a bad omen and said,
The crow announced Lubnā’s departure:
my heart flew up, fearing this crow.
It said, ‘Tomorrow Lubnā’s dwelling will be far
and distant after all your love and nearness.’
I said, ‘Be damned, you wretched crow,
you’ve been forever bent on ruining.’
“He also said, after his people had forbidden him to visit her:
Song392
You crow of separation, woe to you! But tell
me truly about Lubnā; you have knowledge.
If you don’t tell me what you know,
may you not fly unless with broken wing,
And may you wander among foes, your love amongst them,
just as you see me wandering with mine.
“Sulaymān, Ḥajabah’s brother, made this into song in ramal mode, on the middle string.
“They say that, when they had made her enter the camel litter and she had departed, crying, as he followed her, he also said:
Song
You crow of separation, will you tell me of
good things, like you have told of parting and bad things?
You said, ‘Fate is like this: forever grievous.’
You spoke the truth. Can anything, with Fate, endure forever?”
Ibn Jāmi’ set these two lines to music, in the second heavy mode, with the fourth finger, following al-Hishāmī. Ḥabash mentioned that Qafā, the carpenter, made a song on them in the first heavy mode, with the middle finger.
When she and her people departed he followed her for some time; but then he realized that her father would not allow him to travel with her, so he stopped, watching them and crying, until they were no longer visible. Then he returned. He looked at the traces made by the hooves of her camel, bending over them and kissing them. When he got back he kissed the place where she used to sit, and her footprints. His people scolded him for kissing the dust. He replied,
I do not love your earth: I kiss
the trace of her who trod the dust.
My love for Lubnā has afflicted me,
I cannot swallow any drink.
When someone cries out Lubnā’s name
I’m dumb, unable to reply.
He said, looking at her traces:
Song
Lubnā’s abode, what do you say?
Tell me today, what have they done who dwelt here once?
If dwelling places answered lovers,
I’d get an answer from a place they left one year ago.
If I were able, on the morning when she said,
“You have betrayed me!”, while her eyes were full of tears,
I would have killed myself, hearing her saying this,
—the least thing I could do for her.
I would have cured my burning passion by my act,
I would not have remained, mindlessly roaming.
Ḥusayn ibn Muḥriz sang this in the second heavy mode, in the versions of Badhl and Qurayṣ.393 The remaining verses are:
Distraught since Lubnā left, I’m like
a mother of her only child bereft.
Woe unto you, my heart, be hard and strong,
for she is gone, the ambling camels took her hence.
You can’t bring Lubnā back, since she is gone,
whether or not you cry a lot.
You’ve lived so long so near to her!
But separation was the way it had to be.
So bear it patiently! One day the life of
every loving couple will come to an end.
When night fell and he was alone, he went to bed. But he could not settle, tossing and turning like someone bitten by a snake. He jumped up, went to where her tent had been and wallowed in the sand, crying, and saying:
Song
I spent the night, Lubnā, with sorrow as my bedfellow.
My tears have poured from me since you have gone away.
I’ve sighed whenever I thought of you, until
my ribs have parted with my heart.394
I shall pretend I have forgotten you, so that my heart
will also swerve, and I’ll be mad with love.
O Lubnā—may my life and loved ones be your ransom!—
past times we spent: could they return?
Muḥammad ibn Khalaf informed me: al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār said: ‘Abd al-Jabbār ibn Sa‘īd al-Musāḥiqī related to me on the authority of Muḥammad ibn Ma‘n al-Ghifārī, who had it from his father, on the authority of an old woman of his tribe called Ḥammādah, daughter of Abū Musāfir. She said:
I was living next to the family of Dharīḥ, with a herd of camels—some of them looking after calves that were not their own, others with a dummy calf,395 others without any calves, and some followed by their own young. Dharīḥ’s son, Qays, climbed on top of a hill, to see how the camels were doing and to admire them. Shortly afterward his father spoke harshly to him, telling him to divorce Lubnā. Qays nearly died. Then his father swore that if she stayed he would not live with Qays. She then left and Qays said,
O my heart that, broken, flies up from my body,
O my grief, what is it that pierces my heart?
I swear: half-blind old she-camels that care
for their dummies or tend their calves,
Sniffing at them—if they could only suck them up!—
and when they smell them their misery increases,
Old camels will never be chased from them,
they stay with them in dry, unfertile land:
Such camels do not love more strongly than I, the day she
was carried away, the first riders reaching the mountain path.
All of Time’s blows I found easy to bear,
but the departure of loved ones.
My uncle informed me: al-Kurānī related me: I heard Ibn ‘Ā’ishah say: Isḥāq ibn al-Faḍl al-Hāshimī said: Nobody has ever said anything on this motif as good as did Qays ibn Dharīḥ:
All of Time’s disasters I found easy to bear
but the departure of loved ones.
Ibn al-Naṭṭāḥ said: Abū Di‘āmah said:
Qays went off with some of the young men of his people, telling his father that he was going hunting; but he traveled instead to Lubnā’s country, expecting he would see her or someone who could be his messenger to her. The men were busy hunting. When they had hunted enough they returned to where he was still standing, and said to him, “We know why you wanted us to come with you. You don’t want to hunt, you only want to meet Lubnā. But you can’t; now come back!”
But Qays said,396
Wild oryxes that circle day and night
around a waterhole, drawn by the reeds,397
Seeking the water, never turning from it, yet
not coming any closer to the full, cool cisterns,
Seeing the water ripple, yet between them and
the water lies their death—they hear the voices of the men:
These do not yearn with hotter yearning
than I for you! But I am wronged by enemies.
My two good friends! Either I die or I shall talk
with Lubnā, and in private. Therefore go, leave me alone,
So I can have my wish, alone. I’ve often had my way,
in spite of fear and terror for my life.
You should not keep away from me, of all people, the one
who if she wished could cure me, and
Who leads me to my death, so sweet to sip,
when she will make me drink a deadly poisoned potion.
But they stayed with him until he met her. She said, “You are making an exhibition of yourself and making a scandal of me!”
He replied,
You’ve split his heart and strewn in it the love of you.
They censured him; the crack was mended.
The passion penetrated places reached
by neither drink nor grief nor joy.
Al-Qaḥdhamī said: Abū l-Wardān related to me: My father related to me: I recited Qays’s verse to al-Sā’ib al-Makhzūmī:
You’ve split his heart and strewn in it the love of you.
They censured him; the crack was mended.
Then he called a Sindī slavegirl of his called Zubdah,398 shouting, “Hey Zubdah, come here quickly!” “I am kneading dough,” she replied. “Never mind, come here and leave the dough!” So she came. Al-Sā’ib said to me, “Recite these two lines by Qays!” I repeated them. Then he said to her, “Zubdah, these are fine verses by Qays! If I am mistaken I’ll make you a free woman! Now go back to your dough, don’t let it get cold!”
Qays began to blame himself for obeying his father by divorcing Lubnā. He said to himself, “Why didn’t I take her to some place away from him, where I cannot see what he is doing and he cannot see me? Then if he had really missed me, he would not have done what he did, and if I had missed him I would not have given up. What difference would it have made, if I had left him and stayed with her tribe, or with some other Bedouins, or if I had refused to obey him? The crime would be mine only, and nobody else would have been to blame. But now what I have done will be my death! Who will give me my life back? Can I go back to Lubnā after the divorce?”
Whenever he punished and upbraided himself with these and similar thoughts he would cry bitterly, pressing his cheek to her traces on the ground. Then he said,
Song
Woe unto me! What can I do, now that she’s gone from me,
after I held her in my hands!
My heart said to my eye, reproaching it:
Here’s your reward! Now bite hard stones!
I told you not to deal with her. If only you had listened!
Endure it patiently: but don’t expect reward for patience.
They say that he also said,
Sweet Lubnā is gone and your heart is distraught;
your mind, once so firm, is demented.
I commend her to God’s care now that she is gone,
in spite of my wishes: her old man’s command is the law.
And yet I can see myself happy with Lubnā,
reunited, together, the bonds tied again.
Khālid ibn Kulthūm said: He also said,
Khālid ibn Kulthūm said: He also said,
Would that Lubnā came to visit me in a lone place;
I could complain of my distress, then she would go.
All sensible and all infatuated men will sober up:
my heart will suffer for the sake of Lubnā all my life.
O, who will help my heart that won’t recover from its love,
and who will help my eyes, tearful with ardent love?
They say that he also said, that night,
I said to my heart: no more Lubnā! Concede it!
Make an end of the matter and quit!
I used to swear oaths that I would not desert her—
All these words that were said, all the oaths that were sworn!
I am surrounded by slanderers, she has been taken away.
Never ever feel safe from the falsehood of those who surround you!
No more hope, no more hope! She’s a neighbor
of those in ‘Aqīq, while in Sarif are we …399
Sarif is six miles from Mecca; al-‘Aqīq is a wadi in al-Yamāmah.400
… In a Yemeni tribe, while our dwelling is in al-Baṭḥā’:
by your life, we will never be together again!
They say that the morning after she left he went in the direction she had gone, trying to inhale her smell. A gazelle came on his path; he headed for it but it fled, and he said,
Lubnā’s lookalike, be not afraid!
Don’t flee and scale the rocky mountaintops!
This is part of a long poem, in which he says,
O heart! I have turned pale and sick.
Lubnā’s departure was a kind of fraud.
The slanderers surround and pester me:
O for a slanderer who would obey me!
Today I blame myself
for something that is not within my power,
Like someone duped who bites his fingers,
the fraud apparent when the sale is done.
Lubnā has left you living in a place of loss;
thus death is led to those who suffered loss.
We lived a life of pleasure for a while:
if only Time could summon human beings again!
But all must part eventually,
and death in all its forms will call.
My paternal uncle related to me on the authority of al-Kurānī, on the authority of al-‘Utbī, on the authority of his father, who said:
The mother of Qays ibn Dharīḥ sent some girls of his people to him, who were charged with finding fault with Lubnā, with blaming him for being so upset and for crying, and with trying to make him fall in love with one of them. They gathered round him and began to jest with him, saying bad things about Lubnā and upbraiding him for his actions. When they had done this for some time, he turned to them and said,
Song
Her nearness cools my eye and those
who blame her only make my fondness grow,
So many people said: Turn back! I disobeyed:
That is a turning I shall never take.
Bear it, my soul! By God, you know you aren’t
the first soul that has lost its love.
The girls went back to his mother and convinced her that there was no hope Qays could be consoled.
All other transmitters I have mentioned relate that the women sat with him for a long time, talking to him, while he payed no attention to them. Then he cried, “O Lubnā!” They asked him, “Hey, what’s the matter?”
“My leg has gone to sleep. They say that if your leg has gone to sleep this will disappear if you call the name of the one you love the most. So I called her name.”401
Then they left him. Qays said,
Whenever my leg is numb I think of her who is the cause:
I cry out Lubnā’s name and call,
Call her whom, if my soul obeyed me, I would leave
and would have done with loving her.
Lubnā trimmed an arrow for the hunt and feathered it,
I feathered one like it and trimmed it.
Then when she shot at me she hit me with her arrow; but
I missed her with my arrow when I shot.
I have left Lubnā, she is gone: I feel as if
I was together with the highest star, then fell to earth.
Would that I’d died before she left;
Could she come back, undo the thing? Would that…!
[a few lines have been omitted]
Khālid ibn Kulthūm says:
Qays fell ill. His father asked the girls to visit him at his sickbed and to talk to him, so that he might be consoled or become attached to one of them. They did this; a physician accompanied the girls, in order to treat him. When they all sat together they started talking to him and questioning him at length about the reason for his illness. He answered,
Song
Qays is visited again by love for Lubnā:
Lubnā is an illness, love is a bad malady.
The day that women visit me my eye
says: I don’t see the one I want.
If only Lubnā came to visit me, and I could die!
But she is not among the ones that visit me.
Woe unto Qays, who caught from her
love-madness; love-sick is his heart.
The doctor asked him, “How long have you had this illness? And how long have you had this passion for that woman?”
Qays replied,
Song
My soul was tied to hers before we were created,
and after we were drops of seed, and in the cradle too.
The attachment grew like we ourselves did, ever stronger,
and will not be cut off, not even when we die;
It will remain whatever happens; it will come
and visit us in the dark gloom of grave and tomb.402
The doctor said to him, “Thinking of any of her bad qualities and blemishes, and all the kinds of filth that are loathed by humans, will help you to forget her. That is how one gets over one’s feelings.”
But Qays said,
If I find fault with her I liken her unto the moon
when full and rising—that is blame enough.
Lubnā surpasses everyone, just as the Night of Power
is better than a thousand months.403
Song
When she walks on the earth one span
she trembles, out of breath, unable to proceed.
Her buttocks quiver when she walks; her back
is like a willow branch, her waist is slim.
His father entered while Qays was saying this to the physician. He reproached him and blamed him, saying, “O God, my son! Beware, for if you persist like this you will die!”
Qays said,
I follow, if I die, the example of the ‘Udhrite, ‘Urwah,
and ‘Amr, ‘Ajlān’s son, who was killed by Hind.404
I have the same as what they died of; but
my time has not yet come.
Song
What else is love but tears that follow sighs,
a heated heart that can’t be cooled?
A stream of tears that gushes forth when I
hear something from your country that I did not know.
Al-Ḥaramī ibn Abī l-‘Alā’ related to me: al-Zubayr related to me—and al-Yazīdī related to us, on the authority of Tha‘lab, on the authority of al-Zubayr: Ismā‘īl ibn Abī Uways related to me:
I was sitting with Abū l-Sā’ib in the arrowmakers’ market. He recited to me the verses by Qays ibn Dharīḥ:
Qays was visited again by love of Lubnā: Lubnā
is Qays’s illness. Love: a bad disease.
If only she would visit me and I would die:
thereafter she would never have to visit me again.
And then I recited to him Qays’s verses:405
My soul was tied to hers before we were created,
and after we were drops of seed, and in the cradle too.
The attachment grew like we ourselves did, ever stronger,
and will not be destroyed, not even when we die;
It will remain whatever happens; it will come
and visit us in the dark gloom of grave and tomb.
Then Abū l-Sā’ib swore he would not rest before he memorized them. He entered Arrowmakers’ Alley, while I repeated the verses to him, and he stood up and sat down again, until he had committed them to memory.
To return to the story: Khālid ibn Jamal said: When Qays had been suffering for a long time his fellow tribesmen intimated to his father that he should marry him to a pretty woman, so that he might get over his love for Lubnā. The father proposed this to him, but he refused, saying,
Since she has left I fear my soul will be content
with nothing in this world, whatever it offers.
I keep myself aloof from her,406 since she is barred from me;
my soul will merely watch and wait for her.
His father told his relatives what Qays had said. They replied, “Tell him to travel to various Arab tribes and stay with them; perhaps his eye will fall on a woman who will please him.”
The father entreated him to do this; so he left. He came upon a clan of the Fazārah tribe, where he saw a pretty girl who had removed the veil from her face: she looked like the moon when it is at its fullest. He asked, “What’s your name, girl?”
She answered, “Lubnā.”
He fainted and fell. She sprinkled some water on his face, shocked at what had befallen him. Then she said, “This must be Qays ibn Dharīḥ! He is possessed!”
When he came to, she asked who he was and he told her. She said, “I knew you were Qays! But I implore you by God, and for the sake of Lubnā, take some food from us!”
She brought something to eat and he scooped a bit of it with one finger. Then he mounted his camel and left. A brother of hers who had been away, arrived and spotted his tracks; he saw the traces where his camel had rested. He asked about him and they told him who he was. Thereupon this brother went after Qays and brought him back to his dwelling, adjuring him that he should stay with them for a month. Qays said, “You have already put yourself to a lot of trouble for me, but I will do as you wish.”
The Fazārī became more and more impressed with Qays’s words, his intelligence, and his erudition.407 Finally he proposed that Qays become his brother-in-law. But Qays replied, “My friend, you may wish that, but I am preoccupied with something else. There’s no point in this.”
The man kept coming back to the proposal, until his fellow tribesmen criticized him, saying, “We are afraid that what you are doing will bring shame on us!”
He answered, “Let me go on with it, for someone like this young man is a desirable partner for noble people!”
He persisted until finally Qays gave in, allowing himself to be betrothed to Lubnā, the man’s sister. The brother said to him, “I shall pay the bride-price for you.”
But Qays replied, “Brother, I am, by God, the richest man of my tribe; why should you have to take this upon yourself? I’ll go to my people and I will bring the bride-price to her.”
This he did, informing his father what had happened. The father was pleased and paid the bride-price for him. Qays returned to the Fazārīs and his bride was brought to him. But they never saw him smile at her, or approach her and speak even one word to her, or give her the merest glance. He stayed with them for many days in this way; then he told them that he wanted to visit his own people for a few days. They allowed him to go, whereupon he went straight to Medina, where a friend of his, one of the Anṣār, lived.408 He went to see him and the Anṣārī told him that the news of his marriage had already reached Lubnā, who was saddened by it, saying, “He is faithless! I have resisted the pressure of my people to get married, but now I shall do as they say!”
Her father had complained to Mu‘āwiyah409 and told him that Qays had been harassing her after the divorce. Mu‘āwiyah wrote to Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam,410 with the decree that Qays’s blood could be shed with impunity if he harassed her, and ordering her father to marry her to a man called Khālid ibn Ḥillizah, of the tribe of ‘Abd Allāh ibn Ghaṭafān (others say, rather, that he ordered her to be married to a man of the family of Kathīr ibn al-Ṣalt al-Kindī, the ally of Quraysh). Then her father married her to him. On the evening that she was taken to her husband the women of the tribe recited:
has no one who excels him.
He’s privileged above all others
by what she nightly tells him.
But Qays is dead while yet alive,
he’s slain, midst women wailing, crying.
May God not keep him far from us;
Away with those who say he’s dying!
Qays was greatly shocked; he sobbed and cried hot tears. Instantly he rode to where his people lived. The women called out to him, “What are you doing here now? Lubnā is already with her husband!”
The men confronted him with similar words, but he did not answer until he reached the place where her tent had been. He dismounted and started to wallow in the dust, rubbing his cheek on the earth and crying bitterly. Then he said,
Song
I complain to God about the loss of Lubnā, as complains
an orphan child to God, bereft of both his parents,
An orphan harshly treated by his nearest kin;
his body lean, his parents distant memory.
Their home weeps for their absence and my tears
stream forth. Whom of the two who grieve could I condemn:
The one who shed his tears of love and passion, or
the other one, who madly cries from grief?
Ibn Jāmi‘ has a song based on the two first lines, in the first heavy mode, following al-Hishāmī; ‘Arīb has one in the second heavy mode. On the third and fourth lines there is one by Mayyāsah, in the light ramal mode, with the fourth finger, following ‘Amr, Ḥabash, and al-Hishāmī. The remaining lines of the poem, on which no songs are based, are these:
The love of Lubnā leaves me broken—
in all its forms love is a terrifying thing.
A man whose heart hangs on the love of Lubnā dies
or lives a wounded man as long as he’s alive.
Although I have resolved to bear your absence,
I’ll be always faithful to what was between us two.
A time in which our enemies have scattered what
was once united is an evil time indeed.
Can it be right, then, that your heart is free
and sound, and my heart sick with love?
Others say that these verses are not by Qays, but came to be mixed with his poetry; but in this particular report they are attributed to him.
He also said, on Lubnā’s departure from her homeland when she was taken to her husband in Medina, while Qays was staying among her tribe:
Song
Sweet Lubnā’s gone—my heart is what has gone.411
All that she promised was a putting-off, equivocation.
She failed to keep her promises you hoped for; now
my heart, since she is gone, is stunned.
God knows, if no one else, how I
am babbling when I think of you.
You most perfect of people, from your top to toe,
the prettiest of people, clothed or naked!
Sweet bedfellow when shortly after waking up
one draws a plump one to oneself, still sleeping or awake!
The poem ends as follows:
May God not bless those who believe that you
weren’t true to me, until events took a bad turn,
Till, finally, I woke, when she was married off:
my heart was as if stunned.
Her apparition came to me at night and kept me from my sleep;
I spent the night in yearning, shedding tears in streams.
Whether you cut the bond or merely part with me,
Fate comes to man in various shapes.
I’ve never seen someone like you among mankind,
though I have seen some tribes and womenfolk!
Ibn Qutaybah says, in his version on the authority of al-Haytham ibn ‘Adī, which is also transmitted by ‘Umar ibn Shabbah, that Lubnā’s father went to Mu‘āwiyah to complain about Qays and his harassment of his daughter after the divorce. Mu‘āwiyah wrote to Marwān, or possibly Sa‘īd ibn al-‘Āṣ,412 decreeing that Qays’s blood could be shed with impunity if he visited her. Then Marwān (or Sa‘īd) wrote a strongly worded letter to that effect to the owner of the watering place where Lubnā’s father lived. Lubnā sent a messenger to Qays to tell him what had happened and to warn him. His father found out and reproached him angrily, saying, “Now you’ve got yourself declared an outlaw by the authorities!”
Qays replied,
Song
They may bar me from her, they may slander to keep
me from her, a commander may issue a threat:
But they won’t stop my eyes from crying forever,
and they cannot remove what I keep in my mind.
I complain unto God of the passion I suffer,
of the burning and sighing that visit me regularly,
And the fire of my loving that burns in my breast,
and long nights full of grief that is never cut short.
I shall cry for myself with my eyes full of tears
like a sorrowing captive in fetters.
Yet, before people knew of our love,
we together enjoyed the most blissful of times;
But as soon as the slanderers had done their worst,
our loving each other was turned upside down.
You were all my soul needed: if only our union could last!
But the world and its joys are illusory all.
In the report this poem is attributed to Qays ibn Dharīḥ; but al-Zubayr ibn Bakkar says that it is by his grandfather, ‘Abd Allāh ibn Muṣ‘ab.413—Ibn al-Kalbī, in his version, says that Qays said about Mu‘āwiyah’s allowing his blood to be shed if he visited her:
A bar may’ve been placed between Lubnā and me,
unsurmountable, not to be crossed,
Yet the breeze blows the air that we breathe, she and
and we both see the beams of the sun when it sets,
And our souls meet at night in our tribe,
and we know, when at daytime siesta we rest,
Terra firma supports both of us, and above,
we can both see the stars that revolve in the sky,
Until Time will at last bring us peace, and the feuds
that it seeks from me now and the hatred will cease.
The following is found in a book by Ibn al-Naṭṭāḥ:414 Al-‘Utbī said: My father told me: Qays ibn Dharīḥ went on pilgrimage; as it happened, Lubnā also went on pilgrimage that year. He saw her when a woman of her people was with her. He was perplexed and stood immobile, as she went her way. Then she sent the woman to him with a greeting and inquired about him. The woman found him sitting alone, reciting poetry and crying:
That day in Minā415 when you turned away from me,
when I spoke not of what my soul would say to Lubnā…
My sickly soul finds consolation in despair
when it desires a goal that cannot be obtained.
She entered his tent and began to speak to him about Lubnā, and he talked about himself for a while. She did not tell him that Lubnā had sent her. He asked her to greet her from him, but she refused. He began to recite again:
When the sun rises, say “Be greeted!” For its rise
serves as my sign for greeting you,
A tenfold greeting when the sun is rising, and
another ten when its grows red,416 about to set.
Would that a friend could bring to her my greeting! She
would cry in anguish and her tears would drip.
The passion that she keeps a secret in her breast would show,
if she could hear a tale about me that would frighten her.
The pilgrims completed their pilgrimage and left. Qays fell very ill on the way home and nearly died. Lubnā’s messenger did not visit him, because her people had seen him and knew about him. Qays said,
O Lubnā, my plight will be grievous to you,
the morning when what I’m expecting will happen!
You are keeping me wishing, denying to me what I wish,
while my soul every day with its longing is cut into pieces,
And your heart never softens although it can see.
Woe to me, for so long have I humbly beseeched you!
I blame you for what you are doing to me; you blame me!
You are harsher and more aloof to your lover.
You’ll be told I have died of my grief
and your eyes, unmoved, will not shed any tears.
By my life, I cried only for you, even though
all my illness came only from you.
The morning the women who visit the sick
came to me: all the women were shocked.
“He had died,” said one woman, “before we arrived!”
And another said, “No, when we left he was breathing his last!”
Here, al-Qaḥdhamī transmits the following:
But no tears on account of this came to your eyes,
while my eyes dripped with tears, for the memory of you.
If you will not cry when a loved one has died,
then don’t cry when tomorrow I’m raised on my bier.
The verses reached Lubnā, who was greatly shocked, and she cried a lot. She went out one evening, having arranged a meeting. She apologized and said, “I am only making sure that you stay alive, for I am afraid that you will be killed. That is why I am shunning you. If it weren’t for that we would not have parted.”
She said farewell and left. Khālid ibn Kulthūm said that her family said to her: “He is ill and he will die on his journey.”
She replied, to avoid suspicion, “I think he is a liar in what he claims. He is merely pretending and not really ill.”
Qays heard about this, and said,
God’s earth, broad as it is, is now almost,
Umm Ma’mar, too confined for me:
For Lubnā disbelieves my love! If only she
were burdened with an equal love for me, she’d have a taste.
—If you knew all that’s hidden, you would know for certain that
I am sincere, I swear by all the sacrifices marked for slaughter.
For you my soul is yearning, but I hold it back,
ashamed—someone like me deserves to be ashamed.
I chase away my roaming soul from you:
to no one else but you will be its path.
For I, though you may cut our bond and flee from me,
am anxious for you, fearing fateful incidents.
[Nineteen more lines of the poem have been omitted. Apparently he recovers from his illness.]
He went to his people, took some of his camels, and told his father that he wanted to sell them and donate the proceeds to his family. His father knew very well that he wanted to see Lubnā. He reproached Qays and told him not to go, but Qays persisted. He took his camels and went to Medina. While he was offering them for sale, Lubnā’s husband negotiated with him about a she-camel; they did not know each other. Qays sold it to him, and the other one said, “Come and see me tomorrow in the house of Kathīr ibn al-Ṣalt and you’ll get your money.”
Qays agreed. Lubnā’s husband went home and said to her, “I’ve bought a she-camel from a Bedouin. He’ll come tomorrow to fetch his money, so prepare some food for him.”
The following morning Qays arrived and said to the servant girl, “Tell your master that the man with the she-camel is at the door.”
Lubnā recognized his voice, but did not say anything. Her husband said to the servant, “Tell him to enter.”
Qays entered and sat down. Lubnā said to the servant, “Ask him, ‘Young man, why are you so disheveled and covered with dust?’”
The servant asked and Qays sighed and said to her, “This is what happens to someone who parts from those he loves and chooses to die rather than to live.”
He began to cry. Then Lubnā said to the servant, “Ask him, ‘Tell us your story.’”
When Qays began to tell his story, Lubnā removed the curtain and said, “Enough! We know your story.”
Then she drew the curtain again. Qays was stupefied for a moment; he could not speak. Then he burst out crying, got up, and left. Her husband called out to him, “I say, what’s your story? Come back and take the money for your camel! We’ll give you more if you want.”
But Qays did not answer; he went outside, jumped into the saddle, and rode away. Lubnā said to her husband, “Man, that was Qays ibn Dharīḥ! Why did you do this?”
“I didn’t know it was him!”
Qays cried all the way home, bewailing and blaming himself for what he had done. Then he said,
Song
You are crying for Lubnā after you left her?
In the open country you had more chances to have her.417
Lubnā may move to and fro in the world;
the world has its ups and its downs.418
In her was a place one could trust,
one’s hand could explore her, one’s eye could feast,
Her saliva would quench a parched man,
a wine that inebriates him who is merry and proud.
In her presence I feel like a swing between ropes:
when my heart hears her name it rocks.
*
Al-Ḥaramī ibn Abī l-‘Alā’ informed me: al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār related to me: ‘Abd al-Malik ibn ‘Abd al-‘Azīz related to me:
A man from Medina called Abū Durrah married a woman who had been married before to another man from Medina called Abū Buṭaynah. The former husband met him and struck him, as a result of which his hand was crippled. Abū l-Sā’ib al-Makhzūmī met him and said to him, “Abū Durrah! Has Abū Buṭaynah struck you because of his wife?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I can testify that your wife is not like what Qays ibn Dharīḥ said about his wife Lubnā: ‘In her one could trust, one’s hand could explore her, one’s eye could feast, / Her saliva would quench a parched man, a wine that inebriates him who is merry and proud.’”
This wife of Abū Durrah was in fact black as a dung beetle.
*
He returned to his people, having seen her. He was angry with himself and sorry, and he was in a terrible state. His people were wondering what the matter was and they asked him, but he told them nothing. He fell ill so badly that he was on the point of dying. His father and his kinsmen came to see him and spoke to him. They reproached him, imploring him to forget her. But he said, “Do you really think I am making myself ill? Or that I have consoled myself now that I have lost all hope of having her, and that I willingly choose grief and misery? Would that be of my own doing? All this is what my parents have chosen for me and they have killed me in doing so.”
His father began to cry, praying for relief and solace for his son. Qays said,
You have tormented me, O Lubnā’s love;
now strike with either death or life.
For dying is more restful now than living
at a distance, separate, forever.
My nearest say: console yourself, forget
her! Yes, I said, I will, the hour I die.
After he had left Lubnā, she sent a messenger, saying to him, “Ask him to recite poetry. If he asks who you are, say you are from the tribe of Khuzā‘ah. After he has recited poetry to you, ask him: ‘Why did you marry again after the divorce, leading Lubnā to consent to being married too?’ Remember what he says so that you can repeat it to me.”
The messenger went to Qays, greeted him and said he was a Khuzā‘ī. He told him that he had come from Syria to hear him recite poetry. Qays recited his poem that begins with
I swear: half-blind old she-camels that care for
their dummies or tend their calves…
(these verses were quoted above). Then the man asked him, “Why did you get married again after divorcing her?”
Qays told him, swearing that he had never looked at the woman he had married, that he would not even recognize her if he saw her together with other women, that he had never touched her, or talked to her, or removed any of her clothes. The man said, “I am a neighbor of Lubnā’s, and she is so badly in love with you that her husband would like you to be near her, so that she will improve. Say anything you wish to her so that I can convey it to her.”
Qays replied, “Come back to me when you are about to leave.”
[When the man is about to leave, Qays recites to him a poem of twenty lines, which, as the author says, shows some confusion with verses of the same meter and rhyme by Qays ibn al-Mulawwaḥ, known as Majnūn Laylā.]
Al-Madā’inī related to me, on the authority of ‘Awānah, who heard it from Yaḥyā ibn ‘Alī al-Kinānī, who said:
The affair of Qays became widely known in Medina. Al-Gharīḍ, Ma‘bad, Mālik419 and others sang his poems and there was nobody, high or low, who was not greatly moved when they heard it, feeling sorry for Qays’s suffering. Lubnā’s husband rebuked and reproached her, saying, “You have caused a scandal for me, being mentioned in this way.”
But she replied, angrily, “Man, I swear by God I did not marry you because I wanted you or your possessions! And you were not deceived about me. You knew that I was married to him before, and that he was forced to divorce me. By God, I only agreed to remarry when they threatened to make him an outlaw if he visited our tribe. I was afraid that his passion would move him to risk his life and be killed; so I married you. Now it is up to you: divorce me; I don’t need you.”
The husband did not reply. He began to come to her with girls of Medina, who would sing Qays’s poems to her, hoping to be reconciled to her. But she only became more estranged from him. She would cry inconsolably whenever she heard any of these songs.
Back to the story now: al-Ḥirmāzī and Khālid ibn Jamal say that there was a woman called Buraykah, one of the clients of the tribe of Zuhrah—a very well-bred and noble woman. She had a husband from Quraysh and this man had a house for guests. When Qays had been ill for a long time, his father said to him, “I know that you can be cured by being near Lubnā. Go to Medina!”
Qays traveled to Medina and arrived at the guesthouse that belonged to Buraykah’s husband, whose servants were about to take down Qays’s saddle, but he said, “Don’t, for I am not staying here, unless I can see Buraykah, for I want something from her. If she can receive me I will stay or else I’ll move on.”
They went to her and told her. She came to him, greeting and welcoming him, and said, “It will be done, whatever it is! Stay!”
He dismounted, approached her, and said, “Shall I tell you what I want?”
“If you like.”
“I am Qays ibn Dharīḥ.”
“May God keep you alive and favor you! Your name sounds new to us every time!”420
“I should like to see Lubnā for one moment, any way you want.”
“Leave it to me.”
He stayed with them and she kept it a secret. He handed her many presents and said, “Be nice to her and her husband, until you are all good friends.”
She did so and visited her several times. Then she said to Lubnā’s husband, “Tell me about yourself, are you better than my own husband?”
“No.”
“And is Lubnā better than me?”
“No.”
“So why am I always visiting her and yet she doesn’t visit me?”
She went to Lubnā and asked her to visit her, and she told her that Qays was staying with her. Lubnā readily responded and came to her. When he saw her and she saw him they both cried until they nearly died. She asked him how he was and about his illness. He told her and asked her about herself and she told him. Then she said, “Recite to me what you composed when you were ill.”
He recited:
My soul holds on to remnants of my life;
while women visit, each a sick man’s guest.
When Lubnā’s name is mentioned I will smile
just like a baby at a milky breast.
I calmly speak of Lubnā when addressed,
but my recurrent sighs are manifest.
She can revive my spirit; and if you
could see me, I would give my life with zest.
From the same poem:
Song
Would that the days gone by came back again:
If they returned one day I would be blessed.
May clouds that thunder with their downpours rain
on Lubnā’s home wherever she may rest.
The remaining lines of the poem are:
No matter whether she is near or far:
the nearer she, the harder I am pressed.
Despair’s no comfort, nearness no avail,
Lubnā’s aloof and grants not my request.
I am like someone bitten by a snake,
by men’s hands held; I writhe and find no rest.
Dear Lubnā shot her arrow at my heart
and darling Lubnā’s arrow hit my chest.
My heart loves Lubnā, life-long, though relief
has come to every man by grief oppressed.
A woman said, He’s dead, or dying soon!—
My soul expects to issue from my breast.
My soul holds on to remnants of my life;
while women visit, each a sick man’s guest.
Al-Ḥirmāzī adds in his version:
She reproached him for getting married; then he swore that he would never look straight at his wife nor ever come near her. She believed him. Then he said,
Song
I wanted to give you up and bear it—I couldn’t,
for the old attachment to love still clings fast to my heart.
It remains in spite of all that took place over time;
in spite of your harshness, it is still precious to me.
You have broken with him, you are sound, and he in his sickness:
So far apart are they, the sound and the sick!
For a time you deceived him; he replied with forbearance:
he who loves is forbearing toward his loved one.
They say that they were together all day, while he talked to her and complained to her, most chastely and nobly, until the evening. Then she left, promising to return the following day. But she did not come back and did not send a messenger. Then he wrote the following verses on a piece of papyrus, gave it to Buraykah, and asked her to convey it to her. Then he traveled on to Mu‘āwiyah. The verses were these:
Song
How dear to me, the one who’s always in my heart,
the one who turns her hardened heart away!
The one for whom my love grows stronger all the time,
whose love for me is now a ruin in decay.
So then he traveled to Mu‘āwiyah. He called upon Yazīd,421 complaining about his plight and eulogizing him. Yazīd pitied him and said, “Ask what you will. If you want me to write to her husband and force him to divorce her, I will do so.”
But Qays said, “I don’t want that; but I want to stay where she lives and find out about her as much as I like without risking to be declared an outlaw.”
“Even if you had asked me this without traveling to us, you could not have been refused it. Stay wherever you want.”
He got a document from his father stating that Qays could stay wherever he wished and that nobody should oppose him, revoking the earlier decree about shedding his blood with impunity. Then Qays went to his own country. The Fazārīs heard about him and his visits to Lubnā; they wrote to him, reproaching him. Qays said to the messenger, “Say to the man (meaning the brother of the girl he had married): ‘Brother, I have not deceived you about myself. I told you that I was wholly preoccupied with someone else. I leave the matter of your sister to you: do what you think fit.’”
However, the man could not bring himself to make the couple separate. So she remained attached to him for a while, until she died.
Al-Ḥaramī ibn Abī l-‘Alā’ related to me: al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār transmitted to us: Sulaymān ibn ‘Ayyāsh al-Sa‘dī transmitted to us, on the authority of his father, who said:
One day I came from al-Ghābah422 and when I arrived at al-Madhād there was a campsite newly inhabited. A man was sitting on one side, slumped, crying and talking to himself. I greeted him but he did not return the greeting. I said to myself, this man is deranged! So I turned away. But a moment later he called out to me, “Greetings to you, too! Come, come to me, man who greets me!”
I went back to him and he said, “In truth, I heard your greeting but I am a man whose mind is preoccupied: it wanders from me at times and then comes back to me.”
I asked, “Who are you?”
“Qays ibn Dharīḥ al-Laythī.”
“Lubnā’s lover?!”
“Yes, Lubnā’s lover, upon my life, and her victim!”
His eyes shed tears like two waterskins. I will never forget his poem:
Has Lubnā left, before we either were a pair
or else cut off by her so that one can despair?
During the day with love-madness I am affected,
while all the night I feel by my own bed rejected.
Before today I was still free of love and pain;
in many diverse ways the dying may be slain.423
My heart is throbbing, after Lubnā said goodbye,
each throb is like a lightning flash that splits the sky.
Mad lovers will not find their sense: God has not willed.
Whatever has been decreed on them must be fulfilled.
Two things torment me with incessant wailing:
my heart, my eye, its eyelids shedding tears unfailing.
Al-Ḥasan ibn ‘Alī informed me: Aḥmad ibn Sa‘īd related to us: al-Zubayr related to us, as did Wakī‘ on the authority of Abū Ayyūb al-Madīnī: Ẓabyah related to me:
I heard ‘Abd Allāh ibn Muslim ibn Jundab recite to my husband the verses of Qays ibn Dharīḥ:
When Lubnā is mentioned he groans and complains
like a feverish man in distress who is ailing.
Night and day under shadow of death he’s barely
alive, while the tribesmen and women are wailing.
Loving Lubnā has broken the heart in his breast;
distracted with love are all lovers, obsessed.
My husband shouted, “Oh! Alas! Poor man!” Then he turned to Ibn Jundab and said, “Do you recite it like this?!” Ibn Jundab said, “How should I recite it then?” My husband said, “Why don’t you groan like he groans and complain like he complains!”
Al-Qaḥdhamī said: One day, Ibn Abī ‘Atīq said to Qays, “Recite to me the most passionate verses you have said on Lubnā!”
Then Qays recited:
I love to sleep even though it isn’t time
for sleep: perhaps I’ll meet her in my dream.
My dreams tell me that I will see you:
Would that dreams came true!
I testify I’ll never swerve from loving you
and that—I hope you know—I’ll never give you up
And that my heart will never yield to love
for anyone but you, although they say it will.
Ibn Abī ‘Atīq said to him, “You seem content with rather little on her part!”
“That is what the destitute have to bear.”
Aḥmad ibn Ja‘far Jaḥẓah said: Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā Tha‘lab424 recited to me these verses by Qays, which he found beautiful:
May rain fall on the remnants of the dwelling where
you were, a downpour, rain in summer and in spring!
A time went by when people asked for me to intercede;
tomorrow, who will plead on my behalf with Lubnā?
I’ll cut the bond, Lubnā, with you once and for all,
though cutting bonds with you is frightening.
I shall console myself and think no more of you
just as a man in foreign lands forgets his far-off home.
[seven verses have been omitted]
Song
If the departed tribe did not perturb my mind,
gray doves did so, alighting where they dwelt:
They called to one another and made lovers cry
when they lamented, though they shed no tears.
Song
When women, censuring, told me to give her up
my broken heart rejected what they said,
For how could I obey these censors when the thought
of her keeps me awake while censors sleep?
Al-Ḥaramī informed me: al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār related to us: ‘Abd al-Malik ibn ‘Abd al-‘Azīz related to me:
I recited to Abū l-Sā’ib al-Makhzūmī these verses by Qays ibn Dharīḥ:
I love you with all kinds of love, the like of which
I’ve never found described by anyone.
One kind is love for the beloved, sympathy
for what I know of what she’s burdened with.
Another is that thoughts of her will never leave
my heart, until my soul is near to death.
And love that in my body and complexion shows;
and love, more subtle than my spirit, in my soul.
Abū l-Sā’ib said, “Truly, I’ll be his devoted friend, I will be angry at what makes him angry and I will be pleased by what pleases him!”
Al-Ḥaramī informed me: al-Zubayr related to us: ‘Abd al-Malik ibn ‘Abd al-‘Azīz related to us, on the authority of Abū l-Sā’ib al-Makhzūmī, that the latter related to him:
I was in the company of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Kathīr in the roofed gallery in the house of Kathīr, when a funeral procession went by. Abd al-Raḥmān said to me, “Abū l-Sā’ib, it’s your neighbor Ibn Kaladah! Come, let us pray for his soul!”
“Yes, by God, an excellent idea!”
We stood up and went, but when we passed by the house of Uways I mentioned that Ibn Kaladah’s grandfather had married Lubnā and lived with her in Medina. So I went back and sat myself down in the roofed gallery again, saying, “God will not see me praying for that man!”
Later, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān returned and asked me, “Were you prevented from praying because of a ritual impurity?”425
“No, by God!”
“What was the matter then?”
“I remembered that his grandfather had married Lubnā and thus separated her from Qays when he took her to his country. So I am not going to pray for his soul!”
Muḥammad ibn al-‘Abbās al-Yazīdī informed me: Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā related to us: ‘Abd Allāh ibn Shabīb related to us: Hārūn ibn Mūsā al-Farawī related to me: al-Khalīl ibn Sa‘īd related to me, saying:
I passed by the bird-market, where I saw a crowd of people packed together. I looked to see what they were about, and there I found Abū l-Sā’ib al-Makhzūmī struggling with a crow that had got hold of the end of his robe, saying to the crow, “Qays ibn Dharīḥ says to you:
O crow that tells of parting, you have flown away
with Lubnā, just as I feared; now, won’t you alight?
“So why don’t you alight?”
He beat it with his robe while the crow was cawing. Someone said to him, “But Abū l-Sā’ib, God bless you, this isn’t the same crow!”
“I know, but I begin with the innocent, until the culprit will ‘alight’.”
Al-Ḥirmāzī says in his version: When Lubnā heard Qays’s verse “O crow that tells of parting, you have flown away / with Lubnā, as I feared; now, won’t you alight?”, she swore an oath that whenever she would see a crow she would kill it. So whenever she or a servant or a neighbor of his saw one, she would purchase it from its owner and cut its throat.
This verse is from one of Qays’s beautiful poems, the best lines of which are the following:426
Are you crying for Lubnā after you left her,
like someone willingly going towards his doom?
O heart, be firm and resign yourself to the facts,
and O my love for her, alight where you will!
And O heart, tell me, when Lubnā is far
away from you, what will you do?
Will you endure the pain and the parting,
or will you forget about shame and break down?
You are like a green one, you never saw people
before her, you haven’t been tested by Time.
O crow that tells of parting, you have flown away
with Lubnā, just as I feared; now, won’t you alight?
Whenever a lover is constant to his beloved
and loyal, Time will afflict him,
The lands on God’s earth where she is not,
though people be there, are but desolate wastelands.
You’ll never sleep peacefully when sweet Lubnā is far,
although all sleepers are welcomed by beds.
Song
I spend my day in talking and wishing
while at night I am joined by worry.
My daytime is like other people’s daytime; but
when darkness comes at night my bed shakes me to you.
My love for you is firmly fixed in my heart
like fingers are fixed to their hands.
Distress attacks me from all sides,
lasting disasters that will never leave.
Ah, I cry for what has happened,
but what’s the use of fretting about what may be?
I used to cry when parting was certain,
knowing what being apart would do to us.
I fled from you like someone loathed, while love
for you made cutting wounds in my heart.427
I go toward a land I do not want, so that
perhaps one day events will bring me back.
I fear your being far away; and dreadful was
our being parted when united for a while.
You will not get all you wish when free of cares,
you cannot follow passion’s course until the end.
Upon my life, the bed of him whose bedfellow
is Lubnā will be preferred above all other beds.
Such is sweet Lubnā; to visit her is out of reach.
And such is parting: absence unrelenting.
What God wants to unite no-one will sever,
and what He separates nobody can unite.
So do not cry from regret now that Lubnā has gone
and events have torn her away from your hands.
It is said that the three verses beginning “I spend my day in talking and wishing” are by Ibn al-Dumaynah al-Khath‘amī,428 which is in fact correct; but people have included them because of their resemblance to the rest.
There are different versions of how the story of Qays and Lubnā ended. Most of the transmitters say that they both died while they were separated. Some say that he died before her and that when she heard this she died from grief. Others say, rather, that she died before him and that he died afterward of grief. This is mentioned by al-Yūsufī, on the authority of ‘Alī ibn Ṣāliḥ, who said: Abū ‘Amr al-Madanī said to me:
When Lubnā died, Qays went out with a number of his relatives and stopped at her grave, saying:
Lubnā is dead: her death is my death too.
How can my sorrow help? My joy has been denied.
Now I will cry like someone grieving,
who dies from love for someone who has died.
Then he bent over the grave and cried until he fainted. His people carried him away while he was unconscious. He remained ill, not regaining consciousness and not responding to anyone who talked to him and three days later he died. He was buried next to her.429
[In another version,] al-Qaḥdhamī, Ibn ‘Ā’ishah, and Khālid ibn Jamal say that Ibn Abī ‘Atīq went to al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, the sons of ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, to ‘Abd Allāh ibn Ja‘far (may God be pleased with them), and to some other people of Quraysh, and said to them, “I want something from a man, but I am afraid that he will refuse. I’d like to use your high position and great wealth, to carry weight with him!”
“We will grant you this.”
They met on a day they had arranged, and he took them to Lubnā’s husband. When the latter saw them, he was greatly taken aback by their coming to him. They said, “We have come to you, all of us, because Ibn Abī ‘Atīq wants something from you.”
“Consider it done, whatever it may be!”
Ibn Abī ‘Atīq said, “You mean consider it done whatever it is, in matters of possessions, money, or family?”
“Yes.”
“Then will you give Lubnā, your wife, to them and to me, and divorce her?”
“I testify to you that she is hereby divorced!”
The others were embarrassed; they apologized and said, “We swear by God that we had no idea what he wanted. If we had known what it was we would not have asked you to give us Lubnā.”
Ibn ‘Ā’ishah says that al-Ḥasan gave the man one hundred thousand dirhams by way of compensation. Ibn Abī ‘Atīq took Lubnā to him.430 She stayed with him until her waiting period was over. Then they asked her father, who married her to Qays; they stayed together until they died. Qays eulogized Ibn Abī ‘Atīq in a poem.
The Merciful reward you with the best reward
for your benevolence towards a friend!
I’ve tried and tested all my friends
but I have found nobody like Ibn Abī ‘Atīq.
For he took pains to give me union after severance,
and put me on the path from which I strayed,
Extinguishing the torment in my heart
that choked me with its heat.
Ibn Abī ‘Atīq said to him, “Dear friend, please refrain from eulogizing me like this: if people hear it they will think I am a pimp.”