CHRISTOPHER MIDDLETON
(2)
o
lord over men
in whose gifts we trust
grant me a sheet of paper
that will shield me against fate
whereon your hand may write
"To the One God Be Praise"
387
The Caliph's "sheet of paper" was the deed to a property near
Granada (Rakuna). Probably it came with a patent of nobility. But already a
quite particular "fate" was unfolding. Two years before the journey to Rabat,
the son of the Caliph had arrived in Granada as the new governor. Two
years before his arrival, Hafsa had begun at the age of nineteen (1154) her
celebrated love affair with the poet Abu Ja'far Ahmad ibn Abd ai-Malik ibn
Sa'id. For the new governor, a very young man and dark-skinned (as Abu
Ja'far needlingly reminded her), Hafsa wrote the following formal poem:
(3)
o
noble son of the Caliph,
of the most excellent
imam,
a festival to celebrate yourself
brings what you desire.
She whom you love comes to visit you,
combining ceremony with satisfaction,
and to recapture
pleasures lost and past.
Perhaps this poem and the next were written after 1162, for to Abu
Ja'far she writes:
(4)
You come first, but enemies,
unjust men who know more and more,
continually say that you do not.
He who has power over other men of his time–
seekers of glory who stop at nothing-
can he be ignored?
Hafsa is justifying her interest in the governor, whose full name is Abu
Sa'id 'Utman ibn 'Abd al-Mu'min. But Abu Ja'far, though a gallant himself,
must have been jealous. To make matters worse, he was 'Utman's secre–
tary, privy-councilor to him. The two poems epitomize a dangerous scene.
