Alf Laylah wa Laylah

“...grant me acceptance!” Then he pronounced the Two Testimonies The Shahada: the declaration of the Oneness of God and the Prophethood of Muhammad, or Professions of the Faith, and was recorded among the blessed. The palace was filled with crying and lamentation; the news of his death reached the King, and the people of the city wept. Even those at their prayers and women at their household chores grieved, and the schoolchildren shed tears for Bin-Khakan. Then his son, Nur al-Din Ali, arose and prepared the funeral. The Emirs, Viziers, high officers of state, and city notables were present, including the Vizier Al-Mu’in bin Sawi. As the funeral bier was carried from the house, someone in the crowd of mourners began to chant these lines:

On the fifth day I left all my friends forevermore, ʘ And they laid me out and washed me on a slab outside my door: In the original context, this practice was typically reserved for the very poor.

They stripped me of the clothes I was always used to wearing, ʘ And they dressed me in clothes I had never worn before.

On four men’s shoulders they carried me and bore me from my home ʘ To the chapel; and some prayed for him whom on their shoulders they bore:

They prayed a prayer for me that includes no prostration; Prayers over the dead are not universal in Islam; when they are recited, they lack the sijdah or prostration. ʘ They prayed for me, those who once praised me and were my friends of old;

And they laid me in a house with a vaulted ceiling, ʘ and Time shall end before its door opens for me again.

When they had shoveled the earth over him and the crowd had dispersed, Nur al-Din returned home and lamented with sobs and tears. The spirit of the occasion Lisan al-hal; a common Arabic literary device where the situation itself is personified as speaking seemed to repeat these verses:

On the fifth day at evening, they went away from me: ʘ I said goodbye as their departure became my destiny:

But as they went, my spirit went with them, and so I cried, ʘ "Ah, return!" but she replied, "Alas! there is no return

To a frame so empty and forlorn, lacking blood and life, ʘ A frame where nothing remains but bones that rattle and rot:

My eyes are blind and cannot see, extinguished by flowing tears! ʘ My ears are dull and lost to sense: they have no power to hear!"

He remained in sorrow for his father for a long time until, one day, as he was sitting at home, there came a knocking at the door. He rose in haste and, opening it, let in a man who was one of his father’s close friends and had been the Vizier’s constant companion. The visitor kissed—