Listen, my friend

Samuel ha-Nagid

1039

Listen, my friend, and listen to me well:
Whom do you think all your loose talk can frighten
When God’s my Rock and Light?
Friend you may be,
But keep up all your bluster
And you’ll end up with my worst enemies.
No one fools with me in my hometown—
So stop your slandering,
Or else stand up and face me like a man.
As for the rest of you,
Hear me and judge between the two of us.
He says I pal around with kings too much.
I say I play the hand life dealt me.
He tries to scare me,
Says they’ll turn against me.
My answer is: my trust is in the Lord.
“Since when,” he asks, “do you ride into battle?”
But when I die and where they bury me were long ago decided,
And God, who sent His angels to my dreams,
Will see me through.
And if—sinner that I am—I fall,
What can I do?
My fate’s already written in the book.
Some men bite the dust without a fight,
Like the Egyptian slain by Moses;
Others reach ambition’s peak and slip
Like Zimri, monarch for a week.
And how many perish famished, trod on, friendless, condemned without a trial?
Then let me be, I say!
I may live to a ripe old age,
Sipping juleps on a balcony;
Would you rather that I dashed my cup,
Railed at my destiny?
Instead of worrying about my future,
And disapproving of the wealth and fame
For which, year after year, at my own peril,
I have gone through water and through flame,
Think about your own, which could prove shorter,
Though all your days are safely spent at home.
That was a day, though!
The foe we fought had seized a town we fortified,
And butchered the commander like an ox.
Its leader was a cousin of my king
(Kinsmen can be more dangerous than strangers),
Joined by two Spanish princes at the head
Of a company of Visigoths.
They took the town and had turned on the strongholds
That surrounded it, plundering them like Furies,
When we marched out against them,
And fighting with us—God!
Still high summer it was and high in the rock cliffs we found them,
Where no trees or even grass grew.
Oh, we brought them down to earth, that high-flying crew!
We scattered them in groups of four and five
Like olives batted by the harvester,
Then ran and slashed them through by twos and threes,
Dashed and dotted them like vowel signs,
Flung them from altitudes that only Og,
The giant of the Bashan, ever fell from.
Those Spanish princes were both cut down, too,
And met a rebel’s end.
Nine men were all that got away that day;
Their ringleader made ten.
And in the autumn, when our holidays begin,
I brought him as a present to my king.
That’s it, my friend:
The Lord looked after me and Him I laud,
Seer and Purger of my fear,
Soul-Salver, Savior!
“What?” you ask. “Are you a poet too?”
“Quite right,” I say. “Like David in his day.”
“You mean,” mock you, “like Saul among the prophets?”
I mean, sir, that I have the gift from Merari,
From Elkana, Asir, and Misha’el,
From Eltsafan and Sitri and Asaf,
Levites like me, singers and psalmists all.
Another ancestor was Jeduthun.
Choirmaster to a king;
Unless you think I’m not my father’s son,
Must I not sing
In sweetest measures the most bitter woes
Visited by God upon my foes?
How, when He has healed my every hurt,
Can I not honor Him in well-honed verse?
My enemies are for Him to dispatch;
His ways for me to hymn.
I labor by the day—when each is done,
My wage is paid by Him.
Translated by Hillel Halkin.

Credits

Samuel ha-Nagid, “The Battle of Samantin,” trans. Hillel Halkin, from Hillel Halkin, Grand Things to Write a Poem On: A Verse Autobiography of Shmuel Hanagid (Jerusalem: Gefen, 2000), 59–62. Used with permission of the publisher.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 3: Encountering Christianity and Islam.

Engage with this Source

In this poem, Samuel ha-Nagid responds to criticism of his closeness to Badis, the king of Granada. In the course of the poem, he recounts a military encounter in which, as his son later described, Yaddair (a nephew and political enemy of Badis) and two generals from the rival city of Almería raided two Granadan towns, first Arjona (on the Guadalquivir River) and then another, Samantin (its location is unknown). Samuel ha-Nagid then, it seems, led some soldiers out from Granada, captured Yaddair, and brought him back to the Zirid ruler of Granada, Badis.

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Related Guide

Early Medieval Poetry

9th to 12th Century

Creator Bio

Samuel ha-Nagid

993–1056

Born in Córdoba, in al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) into a leading Jewish family, Samuel ben Joseph ha-Levi ha-Nagid became the prototypical Andalusi Jewish courtier, poet, talmudic scholar, and communal leader, and an important patron of Jewish learning. Samuel was educated in Hebrew and Arabic literature and, although his family suffered during political upheavals at the outset of the eleventh century, he became a secretary, chief minister, and even a military commander for the Berber Zirid ruler of Granada. More than 1,700 of Samuel ha-Nagid’s poems survive, including war poems, ethical verses, and panegyrics. Later scholars write of his prolific contributions to Hebrew linguistics, but his treatises on this topic are largely lost. There is some evidence that he engaged in a religious polemic with the Muslim polymath Abū Muḥammad Ibn Ḥazm (994–1064), although the precise contours of this exchange remain uncertain. He also composed an influential legal compendium. This, too, survives only in fragments.

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