he died—namely, in his palace at Medinah | general officers of the army stationed at Selim (Medinaceli). SULTAN YAKUB AL-MANSUR OF MOROCCO. Seville, composed that beautiful ode in which he addresses Al-mansur and congratulates him upon his successful campaign against the Christians. Abu Abdillah had attended the expedition as commander of the van. ODE BY IBN WAZIR ASH-SHELBI. When we met, the spears were crossed, and the blows [followed each other] like the revolution of the millstone. Yusuf was succeeded by his son Abu Ysuf Yakub, surnamed Al-mansur-billah (the victorious by the grace of God), a monarch whose fame travelled far and wide, who upheld the glory of the Almohade empire, who raised the banners of holy war, suspended the balance of justice, and spread the decrees of civil law, rendered Islam triumphant, ordained what is right and forbade what is jugular vein but what had afforded a lodging to the scimwrong, and made his orders obeyed over The sharp Indian swords sported on our necks and on those some fell: Not a breast but what had an arrow fixed in it; not a itar. near as well as distant [lands], of all which the spear, and the greatest courage was displayed on both acts history affords abundant records. The learned and celebrated poet ABU ISHAK IBRAHIM IBN YAKUB AL-KANEMI, a black of Sudan, has said, in allusion to this sultan : Well may his Hajibs conceal him from my view; my sides. At last we charged and they staggered; [the victory was ours] for the staggerer soon after falls. This Abu Abdillah was a very experienced officer and an excellent poet. Annasir, one of the sultans of the posterity of Abdu-lmumen, appointed him governor of Kasr My knowledge of his virtues prompts me to approach, Abi Danis; but when Ibn Hud, who afterbut fear and respect fix me to my place. reverence [for him] is such that I see his image on the curtain. "In the days of Yakub," says an African historian, “conquests succeeded each other without interruption. In the year 586 (beginning Feb. 7, A. D. 1190), having received intelligence that the Franks had taken Shilb (Silves), one of the principal cities of Algharb, Yakub marched thither in person at the head of considerable forces, and, having laid siege to the city, restored it to the rule of Islam. Immediately after, he sent forward [into the enemy's country] a large army of Arabs and Almohades, which reduced four other towns of those which had been taken by the Christians forty years before." It was on this occasion that the Kayid Abu Abdillah Ibn Wazir Ash-shelbi (from Silves), one of the ward rose against the Almohades, made his entrance into Seville, he caused Abu Abdillah [who was residing there] to be arrested and put to death. After a prosperous reign of fourteen years and eleven months, Yakub Al-mansur died at Morocco, on Friday, the 22d of Rabi' the first, A. H. 595 (February, A. D. 1199). His body was conveyed to Tinmelel, where it was buried by the side of his father and grandfather. He was a powerful monarch, dreaded by his enemies and respected by his equals. In the year 587 the Sultan Salahu-d-din (Saladin), son of Ayub, sent an embassy to solicit his aid against the Franks, who had attacked him on the coast of Palestine; but this 1820 504 THE POETRY OF DEATH. Yakub would not grant, because Salahu-d-din | remark-there are two ways of dying. This had not in his letter addressed him by the title of Amiru-l-mumenin (Commander of the Faithful). Such, however, was Yakub's benevolent disposition, that, although highly offended with Salahu-d-din, to whom he returned a despicable present, he rewarded munificently the ambassador of that sultan, whose name was Ibn Munkid, having given him on one occasion, for a poem of forty verses, forty thousand dirhems, being at the rate of one thousand for each verse, adding, when he gave him that large sum, "This we give thee, not for Salahu-d-din's sake, but for thy learning and poetry." Ibn Munkid left Andalus in 588 (A. D. 1192). Translation from the Arabic, from copies in the library of the British Museum, by PASCUAL DE GAYANGOS, A. D. 1843. IT THE POETRY OF DEATH. T has been a common practice with sculptors, both ancient and modern, to place on either side of the tomb a genius holding a kindled torch. These torches, while they illumine the path of death, exhibit to the eyes of the dying the picture of their sins and errors in its proper light. 'Tis a grand idea that sculpture thus embodies; it formulates a phenomenon of human life. The death-bed has a wisdom of its own. It is a matter of common observation that, stretched on that couch, artless girls of the most tender age will display the sapience of the centenarian, develop the gift of prophecy, pass judgment on the members of their families, and read the hearts of the most accomplished hypocrites. This is the poetry of Death. But-strange it is and well worthy of por poetic vaticination, this power of looking forward into the future, or backward into the past, is strictly confined to invalids whose bodily organs only are attacked: to those who perish through the destruction of such tions of the system as subserve the material processes of life exclusively. Thus, persons attacked by gangrene, consumptive patients, persons who die from fever, or from inflammation of the stomach; those who, like soldiers, are cut off by wounds in the full tide of life and health;-all these enjoy to the very last, a sublime lucidity of mind; the manner of their deaths fills us with astonishment and admiration. Those, on the other hand, who perish from diseases that may be termed intellectual, whose maladies are seated in the brain, in that nervous apparatus which serves to convey the fuel of thought from the body to the mind; these persons die altogether their minds and bodies founder side by side. The former (souls unencumbered by substance) bring before our very eyes the spectres that we read of in the Bible; the latter are mere corpses. Translation of PHILIP KENT, B. A. 47824 |