| تعش سالما والقول فيك جميـل | صن النفس واحملها على ما يزينهـا |
| نبا بك دهـرا أو جفـاك خليـل | ولا تـوليـن النـاس إلا تجـمــلا |
| عسى نكبات الدهـر عنك تزول | وإن ضاق رزق اليوم فاصبر إلى غد |
| إذا الريح مالت، مال حيث تميل | ولا خير في ود امــرئ متـلـون |
| ولكـنهم في النائبـات قليــل | وما أكثر الاخوان حيـن تعـدهــم |
Translation:
Guard the soul and adorn it with thing that beautify,
For then you shall live wholesomely and will be well-mentioned.
And see society only for civility,
Even if afflictions hit you and your friends leave you.
And if the provision of today is straitened then be patient until tomorrow,
perchance there will cease to be long-standing sorrow.
and there is no good in the affection of a fickle person,
if the air bends then he bends as it bends.
And how many friends are there when you count them,
but how few were they in affliction.
Explanation:
This poem is a summary of a common theme that runs throughout the verses of Imam Shafi’i. The Imam exhorts mankind to look inwardly to solve our problems or to achieve our goals and desires. This can be seen in the previous poem on concealing a secret, as Imam Shafi’i, instead of addressing the person who spreads the secret, actually addresses the person who’s secret was spread. Initially this seems counterproductive until one realises that the actions of others are nearly always influenced by our own actions, and that if we manage to perfect ourselves and know how to behave in front of people, then we will be safe from the evils of the people. There is an Arab saying on this:
“Whomsoever learns the language of a people, is saved from their evil.”
Or, that we need to understand people and how they behave if we want to be free from their evil and want their praise. But before we can use this understanding, we need to understand ourselves and how we will use our understanding of others to influence our own behaviour.
Of course the praise or censure of mankind is but a fleeting thing and so, in the second verse, the Imam clarifies that one should not linger amongst society much, except that which is necessary to maintain a degree of civility, and to not even care if one’s friends become distant or if calamities befall one. This exhortation contradicts a poem that will come on later where the Imam encourages one to live with people if one wishes to understand them, but in reality this is not a contradiction at all, as the advices are for different sets of people and for different times. The first is for scholars and ascetics who choose to devote themselves to knowledge or worship, while the second is for those who wish to understand humanity. Indeed the Imam himself spent seventeen years living with the Bedouin tribe of Huzayl near the outskirts of Makkah and memorised ten thousand verses of poetry from their tribal folklore alone. This exposure was vital for him to gain the “farasah” or insight, and the ability to read the facial signs and body language of people. And yet at other times during his life he was extremely dedicated to gaining knowledge and memorised the entire Muatta of Imam Malik in just nine days.
Perhaps the most powerful advice is in the next verse. The Imam (who was an orphan and came from a relatively poor background) advises us that if the provision or sustenance of today is little or not to be found, then we should not become despondent, but rather should wait until the morrow perchance the straitening of the provisions of today are resolved tomorrow along with other calamities that might be hanging over you. This optimism is something a Muslim should always espouse within himself, and is indeed one of the things that beautifies the self, as the first verses of this poem advise.
But this optimism should of course be rooted upon something, and for a Muslim that is the firm belief that everything has already been decreed by Allah and that he takes it into his own responsibility to provide us sustenance. What is demanded of us by Allah is not to worry about our sustenance, but rather to be patient with the trial of poverty.[1]
The man who is nice one day and ill-tempered another is a man who vacillates in his emotions far too much and is, as shown by the verse “if the air bends then he bends as it bends”, too influenced by external influences. The Imam is once again advising us to become self-sufficient in our decision making and to arm ourselves with weapons that will make us capable of making these decisions for ourselves. This metaphor of “defence” of the soul is seen in the very first verse of the poem when the Imam says “Guard the soul and adorn it with thing that beautify”. The “Guard the soul” is an objective that can only be completed by the second part of the verse “and adorn it with thing that beautify”.
The poem finishes with a warning that friends are fickle and the true friends are only those who stay with you during times of hardship, and that the true measure of friendship is not by counting those who claim to be your friends but by looking at those who come to your aid in times of need.
The Imam advises us to arm our souls with four things in this poem: Not lingering with society more than necessary, being patient, being self sufficient and constant in our decision making, and finally, knowing that the true friends are only those who come to ones aid in times of need.
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