557 “A manifest victory” (fatḥan mubīnan): Q Fatḥ 48:1.
558 “Gardens of Eternity” (jannātu ʿadan): Q Tawbah 9:72 and passim.
559 Badr: site of a battle (2/624) between the Muslim forces and the much larger army of the Prophet’s opponents; the Muslims’ victory was a turning point in their fortunes and is often attributed to divine intervention.
560 “their circling eagle” (nisruhum al-mudawwimu): see 4.20.6n260.
561 “the crescent moon” (al-hilāl): an allusion to the crescent of the imperial Ottoman insignia.
562 “birds in flights” (al-ṭayr al-abābīl): the reference is to God’s destruction of an Ethiopian army that sought to take Mecca in the days before Islam (Q Fīl 105:3).
563 “You we worship” (iyyāka naʿbudu): the words are taken from the opening sūrah (“chapter”) of the Qurʾān, often recited at the initiation of an enterprise.
564 “And any spiteful gelding who hates you” (wa-shāniʾuka l-baghīḍu l-abtarū): echoes Q Kawthar 108:3.
565 “Farūq… the Furqān”: the epithet Farūq probably means “sharply dividing” (by analogy with other intensive adjectives of this form such as laʿūb [“very playful”] and ḥasūd [“very envious”]), though the dictionaries do not give it this sense, and reflects the idea that, previous to its conquest by the Ottomans, the city represented the divide between the Christian and Muslim worlds; the author appears to share this view as he derives it from al-Furqān, an epithet of the Qurʾān, so called because it “makes a separation… between truth and falsity” (Lane, Lexicon).
566 “The stringing of the pearls… your palm” (mā in yafī naẓmu l-laʾāliʾi… tuntharū): i.e., using conventional imagery, “The arrangement of lines of verses into a eulogy for you cannot match the gifts that are dispensed from your hand’s generous supply.”
567 “two Hijri dates” (tārīkhayni hijriyyayni): i.e., the author has used the system known as ḥisāb al-jummal, which allots a numerical value to each letter of the alphabet, to construct the final line of the poem, each of whose hemistichs consists of letters whose values add up to 1270 (the Hijri year that began on 4 October 1853), as follows: ʿAbd (70 + 2 + 4 = 76) + al-Majīd (1 + 30 + 40 + 3 + 10 + 4=88) + Allāh (1 + 30 + 30 + 5 = 66) + arkā (1 + 200 + 20 + 10 = 231) + ḍiddahu (800 + 9 = 809) = 1270 and so on for the remaining hemistich; hisāb al-jummal values may be found in Hava, al-Farāʾid, 4 (unnumbered).
568 “The Presumptive Poem… The Prescriptive Poem” (al-Qaṣīdah al-Harfiyyah… al-Qaṣīdah al-Ḥarfiyyah): see 4.18.6 above.
569 “litters” (hawādij): throughout these two poems, the author presses words from the early Arabic lexicon, including Qurʾanic terms, into the service of contemporary purposes; here, presumably, the women’s camel litter stands for the enclosed carriage.
570 “a ʿIlliyyūn”: a word used in the Qurʾān (Q Muṭaffifīn 83:19) and said to mean “a place in the Seventh Heaven, to which ascend the souls of the believers” (Qāmūs).
571 “raised couches” (surur marfūʿah): cf. Q Ghāshiyah 88:13.
572 “cotton mattresses” (aʿārīs): the translation is tentative; the word appears not to be attested in the lexica but may be an invented plural of the plural ʿarānīs (a word which according to Ibn ʿAbbād has no singular) meaning something like “things made by women out of cotton” and associated with beds: see al-ʿUbāb al-Zākhir in http://www.baheth.info, s.v. ʿirnās (ʿirnās al-marʾah mawḍiʿu sabāʾikh quṭnihā) and Lane, Lexicon, s.v. sabīkh, at end.
573 “the Uplifted Ones” (al-simākayn): Arcturus and Spica, two unusually bright stars.
574 “be delighted… Tunis” (fa-tuʾnasu minhā wa-hiya Tūnusu ghibṭatan): a pun based on the identical forms of the words tuʾnasu (“may you be delighted”) and Tūnusu (“Tunis”) when written without vowels.
575 “the Destroyer of All Pleasures” (hādim al-ladhdhāt): i.e., death.
576 “even should you travel so far that Jupiter lies behind you in the sky” (wa-law amsā warāʾaka Birjīsū): perhaps an allusion to the use of Jupiter as a reference point in celestial navigation.
577 “a geomancer’s spell” (inkīs): literally, a certain sign used by geomancers (see Volume One, 1.16.9).
578 “For if you add a zero to it, even an odd number becomes divisible by five” (fa-fī ṣ-ṣifri li-l-fardi l-ʿaqīmi takhāmīsū): perhaps meaning “so too an hour in Paris will make your life longer (for better or for worse) by orders of magnitude.”
579 “oceans” (qawāmīs): and, punningly, “dictionaries.”
580 “though it is studied” (wa-hwa madrūsū): or, punningly, “and has been erased.”
581 The poem is referred to earlier as having been written on the occasion of a visit by Emir ʿAbd al-Qādir to Paris, when the author “was honored by being invited to attend a gathering in his presence” (4.19.4); however, from references within the poem, it would seem that the relationship was more extended and included the emir’s standing the author up on at least one occasion.
582 “drowsiness… lukewarm” (bi-fātir… bil-fātir): seductive faces are conventionally described as having “drowsy” eyes or eyelids, using the same word as for “lukewarm, neither hot nor cold.”
583 “my creator” (fāṭirī): an apparent reference to the Qurʾanic verses “then we split the earth in fissures / and therein made the grass to grow” (thumma shaqaqna l-arḍa shaqqan / fa-nbatnā fīhā ḥabban), Q ʿAbasa 80:26–27, which is preceded by references to God’s role as creator, e.g., “Of a sperm-drop He created him” (min nuṭfatin khalaqahu), 80:19.
584 “night phantom” (ṭayf): the appearance of the beloved as a shimmering figure in the lover’s dreams is a standard trope.
585 “the Assembler” (al-ḥāshir): i.e., God, who will assemble men for judgment on the Last Day.
586 “word… consonant… sword-edge” (ḥarf… ḥarf… ḥarf): a triple pun.
587 “the emir became still” (sakana l-amīr): by the time the author met Emir ʿAbd al-Qādir, the latter had abandoned his struggle against the French colonization of Algeria and was living in exile.
588 “the Tablet” (al-lawḥ): “the Preserved Tablet” (al-lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ), on which God has written divine destiny.
589 “from Ṣubḥī” (min Ṣubḥī): or, punningly, “from my [rising in the] morning.”
590 Ḥassān: i.e., Ḥassān ibn Thābit al-Anṣārī (d. probably before 40/661), the poet most associated with the Prophet Muḥammad, on whom he wrote eulogies.