Abd al-Rahman’s Palm Tree

By Scott Horton

A palm tree stands in the middle of Rusafa

Born in the West, far from the land of palms

I said to it, “How like me you are, far away and in exile!

In long separation from family and friends

You have sprung from soil in which you are a stranger

And I, like you, am far away from home”

–Abd al-Rahman (عبد الرحمن الداخل), The Palm Tree (770 CE)(transl. D. F. Ruggles, Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999))