Had you lived to meet the Prophet Muḥammad —
the verses of the revealed Book would have praised you.
You revived God’s religion after His Prophet’s death,
and aided it while all creation had abandoned it.
For people are either a heretic and a hypocrite —
or a Muslim, submissive and humble.

Do not say “good tidings,” but say to me “two tidings” —
the appearance of the Summoner and the festival day.
His two palms were created to dispense death and life,
and his character has encompassed the very essence of Paradise.
So he, for everyone, in everything, stands alone —
in granting gifts, in dealing death, and in granting security.

Lavish in generosity without any excuse,
immense in kindness without demanding gratitude.
He pierces the champions with his glances until he leaves
the boldest of them trembling as a coward.
He is among those whom the Messenger of God established —
and his two exalted, beautiful ʿAlīs.
Your two palms have fulfilled both a promise and a threat,
and the two hands have encompassed the world for you.

— Ibn al-Muqātil the Blind (approximately forty verses in full)

Is it for religion and the world that you keep grieving —
or is it over the Summoner that you weep and lament?
Both were alive through him throughout his life;
now they have all died and bidden farewell.
If I weep, I do not weep over him out of affectation;
and if I bear it with patience, then patience is more painful.
His loss has made my heart forget how to be consoled,
and after him taught me how to grieve.
I had assured my soul against calamities,
so that I am not seen — however grave the affliction after him — to feel pain.
So rise and proclaim his death to East and West,
for the dreaded calamity has befallen.
No catastrophe — save his — is more dreadful,
and no day is worse than his, more hideous.
Through him Islam was stricken, so its throne collapsed,
and its pillars came to totter.
The paths of good deeds were effaced after Muḥammad,
and he left behind a weakness in the heights that cannot be lifted.
He died, and with him died resolve, valour, and bounty —
and the one who in this world could harm and benefit.
By his passing there departed, for the nation of his grandfather and his kindred,
a mountain of glory, most impregnable —
A hand surrounding them, compassionate toward them,
and an eye of his that, if they slept, would never sleep.
Their gathering was scattered after its harmony,
though through him the assembly of prophethood was united.
All creation became equal in his perishing after his sovereignty —
every one of them, over him, consoled and bereaved.
I saw people only laughing during his life,
and since he died, only weeping and aching.
There is no excuse, since death was not warded off before him,
when through him we used to ward off the blows of fate.

Though, had he willed, his sword would have saved him,
and a steed swift as a flash of lightning, or swifter still.
But he refused except to follow the example
of a band of the Family of the Messenger of God, martyred at al-Ṭaff.
And when he saw that flight is a disgrace,
and that the path of death is wider for the freeman,
He set firm a heart that would not be terrified into fleeing death,
nor was it of the kind that what frightens people frightens.
He kept defending his honour and his sanctity,
plunging into the pool of death and drinking deep.
The blue-grey spearheads³ snatched at his vital breath —
driven by something within him swifter to death.
Had his sword not betrayed him by breaking,
his enemies would have remained cut to pieces by him.
So he fell, his face never sullied by shame,
like lightning gleaming in the dark of night.
He did not die until the enemies died of fear of him —
they who used even in their sleep to start in terror of him.
By God, what a treasure his tomb encloses —
and more wondrous still: how does it not split apart?
Through him the world, for all its breadth, used to feel narrow;
it would dawn and dusk in fear and hope of him.
Death and gifts alternated by his hand,
pouring upon the near and upon the most distant.
His bounty and his vengeance shaded all creation:
his ally honoured, his rebel subdued.

If the enemies rejoice at the place of his death,
long indeed have they lived while bereaved by him.
So I said to them: do not gloat over his misfortune,
for there is not one among you but death is poised over him.
The best of deaths is death by the sword in battle,
just as the best of lives is what the sword withholds.
By the sword is our living, and by it our dying;
thus the sword has ever been enamoured of the noble.
He lived in the world beautifully, well-protected,
and died nobly, defending the sanctuary of religion.

O rider, convey peace and mercy to a grave at Jurjān
that remained a gathering-place of righteousness.
In its precinct alighted Ibn Zayd, Muḥammad,
and so a dreadful affliction befell creation.
The regions of the earth came to vie over him,
all of them wishing they could be his resting-place.
May God bless him as long as a dawn breaks,
and as long as a dove coos in the high branches.
I have sworn: my heart shall not cease to be stricken over him,
nor my eye to weep as long as night falls dark.

— Imam al-Nāṣir li-l-Ḥaqq al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī al-Uṭrūsh