Original content

English translation

Once, Siddiq the Greater (Abu Bakr), may God be pleased with him, during the days of his caliphate was walking along the alleys of Medina and passing by the door of each house. Suddenly he came upon a house and heard from it the sound of weeping: a woman was reciting a couplet and shedding hot tears from her eyes. The theme of the couplet was this:

O you whose countenance in beauty surpasses the moon, Before the moon of your face the sun itself is abject. Even before the nurse laid milk upon my lips, In memory of your ruby lip I was drinking blood.

The hearing of that couplet took effect in Siddiq's heart. He knocked; the one who had recited the couplet came out. He asked her: Are you free or a slave? She said: A slave. He said: In whose love were you reciting this couplet, and for whom were you shedding these tears?

She said: O Caliph, by the tomb of the Prophet, peace be upon him, pass me by! He said: I will not stir a single step from this place until I draw forth the secret of your heart. The slave-girl heaved a cold sigh and named one of the youths of the Banu Hashim. Siddiq, may God be pleased with him, went to the mosque and summoned the master of that slave-girl. He bought her, paid her price in full, and sent her to her beloved.

O heart, [seek] the beloved of your desire whom fate knows how to pair with you, Except that from all the desires of the age, one comes forth solitary. The work comes to fulfillment through pain; and if you have not that, Then lament, so that the heart of a man of heart may be moved to pain.