Observations placeholder

Ibn El-Arabi - The Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, tr. Reynold A. Nicholson, [1911]

1. As I kissed the Black Stone, friendly women thronged around me; they came to perform the circumambulation with veiled faces.
2. They uncovered the (faces like) sunbeams and said to me, 'Beware! for the death of the soul is in thy looking at us.
3. How many aspiring souls have we killed already at al-Muḥaṣṣab of Miná, beside the pebble-heaps,
4. And in Sarḥat al-Wádí and the mountains of Ráma and Jam‘ and at the dispersion from ‘Arafát!
5. Dost not thou see that beauty robs him who hath modesty, and therefore it is called the robber of virtues?
6. Our trysting-place after the circumambulation is at Zamzam beside the midmost tent, beside the rocks.
7. There everyone whom anguish hath emaciated is restored to health by the love-desire that perfumed women stir in him.
8. When they are afraid they let fall their hair, so that they are hidden by their tresses as it were by robes of darkness.'