Muntakhab al-tawarikh 190: Couplet ‘Regard well what happens to others, For when it has passed by them it will be your lot also.’

190

God be gracious! We have fallen into the mouth of a dragon, where we cannot even struggle or move, and whence we cannot obtain freedom.
Devour thine own blood like the rosebud, mourn, and open not thy lips, For the rosebud of this garden, the world, has no hope of blossoming. It points out to thee that some form lofty as the cypress has crumbled away to dust On every spot which is shaded by the box-tree. Since some rose from the pleasance is every moment borne away on the wind, The solitary lily wears ever the blue raiment of mourning.
I would here request my respected and critical readers and acute appraisers not to be unduly carping and censorious as regards the lack of arrangement in this work, for the famous by the word qutb and also by the word alf (“one thousand”), which latter word was the date of the year in which I wrote this treatise which has given me so much pleasure.
Now that my heart is disgusted with those deprived wretches who have not scrupled unblushingly to cavil at and openly to revile the faith of Islam, convicting themselves of infidelity and shamelessness, and who are the cause of all the ruin which has fallen upon both the state and the people of Islam and are known as the strife of the latter days, I will proceed to an account of the physicians (of the court) although some of these, too, may be classed in the same category as the infidels just mentioned.