King Al-Mu’tamid, ‘The Prisoner In Aghmat Speaks To His Chains’

The Prisoner In Aghmat Speaks To His Chains

I said to my chains,
don’t you understand?
I have surrendered to you.
Why, then, have you no pity,
no tenderness?

You drank my blood.
You ate my flesh.
Don’t crush my bones.

My son Abu Hasim sees me
fettered by you and turns away
his heart made sore.

Have pity on an innocent boy
who never knew fear
and must now come begging to you.

Have pity on his sisters
innocent like him
who have had to swallow poison
and eat bitter fruit.

Some of them are old enough
to understand and I fear
they will go blind from weeping.

The others are now too young
to take it in and open their mouths
only to nurse.

by King Al-Mu’tamid of Sevilla
Translated by Cola Franzen
from the Spanish version of the Arabic by Emilio García Gómez

Al-Mu’tamid, the “Poet-King” of Sevilla, reigned from 1068 to 1092. He was dethroned and then exiled to Aghmat (Morocco) by the Berber Almoravids whom he himself had invited to Spain to help the Moorish rulers fight Alfonso VI. He died in captivity in Aghmat in 1095. With his exile the great age of Islamic culture began to decline in Spain.
— Cola Franzen, “Poems of Arab Andalusia”, 1989