Letter: T-S AS 178.16

Description

Family letter in Arabic script. To be delivered 'to the house of Abū Manṣūr.' Opens with two verses of Arabic poetry: "I write, suffering from your absence what I suffer, with love's yearning and ardor in my liver. / Were it not for fate's fickleness I would visit and honor you, just as the dew visits the rose petal." (كتبت وعندي من فرقك ما عندي وفي كبدي من لاعج الشوق والوجد / فلولا صروف الدهر زرتك قاصدا حفيا كما زار الندى ورق الورد.) There follows a greeting to 'the noble lady' (al-sitt al-jalīla) and 'the dear sister' (al-ukht al-karīma). In the margin, greetings to Abū Manṣūr (the same as in the address on verso). Nothing more is preserved. This poem has been kindly identified by Hussein Al-Osman as a variant of a poem by al-Muʿtamid Ibn ʿAbbād (ruler of Seville, d. 1095 in Morocco): https://www.aldiwan.net/poem14008.html.