Al-Khamriyya (Wine Ode), opening verses (1)-(6) -- the pre-eternal wine of divine love

al-Khamriyya, vv. 1-6 (Sharibnā ʿalā dhikri 'l-ḥabīb) · ʿUmar ibn al-Fāriḍ (576-632 AH / 1181-1234 CE)

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About Al-Khamriyya (Wine Ode), opening verses (1)-(6) -- the pre-eternal wine of divine love

The Khamriyya ("Wine Ode") of Umar ibn al-Farid (1181-1234) is the most celebrated mystical poem in the Arabic language, the supreme example of the Sufi tradition that figures divine love as intoxication.

Its opening verses praise a wine drunk "before the creation of the vine" -- a pre-eternal draught of divine love of which earthly wine is only a late, dim trace. The poem sustains the conceit with dazzling virtuosity, every attribute of literal wine transposed into the register of gnostic rapture. Hekhal's rendering preserves the controlling metaphor and the technical vocabulary of Sufi ecstasy rather than naturalizing the imagery.

Al-Khamriyya (Wine Ode), opening verses (1)-(6) -- the pre-eternal wine of divine love

al-Khamriyya, vv. 1-6

الخمرية -- الأبيات ١-٦

canonical c. 620-632 AH (c. 1220s-1234 CE) Arabic ʿUmar ibn al-Fāriḍ (576-632 AH / 1181-1234 CE) tr. Hekhal Targum Project (machine-assisted, provisional)

The opening six verses of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s al-Khamriyya, the most-celebrated Wine Ode in the Sufi tradition. Composed in Cairo in the last decades of the poet’s life (c. 1220s-1234 CE), the Khamriyya entered the Akbarian-Konyan canon through the commentary tradition of Qūnawī, Farghānī, Qayṣarī, Jāmī, and Nābulusī, who read its wine-imagery as the figural articulation of Ibn ʿArabī’s wujūdī metaphysics. The opening verse stages the entire ode’s pre-eternal frame: ‘In remembrance of the Beloved, we drank a vintage; we were intoxicated by it before the vine was created’ — the drinking precedes the cosmos, the intoxication precedes the very vehicle through which wine is later dispensed.

A reliable public-domain English of the Khamriyya exists: R. A. Nicholson’s prose translation in his Studies in Islamic Mysticism (Cambridge UP, 1921), pp. 184-188. The catalog wedge for this passage is therefore not “first reliable PD English” but the first apparatus-bearing controlled-vocabulary PD English of the opening six verses with drift / registry / citation audit, range cards on dhikr / mudāma / sukr / maḥabba / insān al-kāmil / asmāʾ / ḥaqīqa, line-level comparison to Nicholson’s canonical PD predecessor, and cross-tradition analogues linking the wine-as-divine-love motif to the Christian-apophatic eros register and the Kabbalistic shefa-yayin imagery. The Comparison apparatus tab below is the second non-empty PD-comparison surface in the Hekhal Targum catalog (after A4’s Tarjumān Ode I vs. Nicholson 1911) — this passage demonstrates the engine’s value relative to the most-respected PD predecessor of Ibn al-Fāriḍ.

١. شَرِبْنا عَلى ذِكْرِ الحَبيبِ مُدامَةً * سَكِرْنا بِها مِنْ قَبْلِ أَنْ يُخْلَقَ الكَرْمُ
(1) In remembrance of the Beloved, we drank a vintage; we were intoxicated by it before the vine was created.
Provisional draft (pending scholarly review)
٢. لَها البَدْرُ كَأْسٌ وَهْيَ شَمْسٌ يُديرُها * هِلالٌ، وَكَمْ يَبْدو إِذا مُزِجَتْ نَجْمُ
(2) Its cup is the full-moon; it is itself a sun which a new moon causes to circulate. And how many stars appear when it is mingled!
Provisional draft (pending scholarly review)
٣. وَلَوْلا شَذاها ما اهْتَدَيْتُ لِحانِها * وَلَوْلا سَناها ما تَصَوَّرَها الوَهْمُ
(3) Were it not for its fragrance, I would not have found my way to its taverns; and were it not for its radiance, the imagination could not have conceived it.
Provisional draft (pending scholarly review)
٤. وَلَمْ يُبْقِ مِنْها الدَّهْرُ غَيْرَ حُشاشَةٍ * كَأَنَّ خَفاها، في صُدورِ النُّهى، كَتْمُ
(4) Time has left of it nothing but a last breath, as though its concealment, in the breasts of intellects, were a hidden secret.
Provisional draft (pending scholarly review)
٥. فَإِنْ ذُكِرَتْ في الحَيِّ أَصْبَحَ أَهْلُهُ * نَشاوى وَلا عارٌ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلا إِثْمُ
(5) Yet if it is mentioned within the tribe, its people become intoxicated, with no shame upon them and no sin.
Provisional draft (pending scholarly review)
٦. وَمِنْ بَيْنِ أَحْشاءِ الدِّنانِ تَصاعَدَتْ * وَلَمْ يَبْقَ مِنْها، في الحَقيقَةِ، إِلّا اسْمُ
(6) And from between the inwards of the jars it has risen, and nothing of it remains, in Reality, but a name.
Provisional draft (pending scholarly review)
An orientation

This edition sets the verbatim original-language text beside a fresh English rendering and a critical apparatus: a running commentary on the passage, notes on the controlled vocabulary and the rendering chosen for each term, and cross-references to the lexicon and to related sections. It is a provisional scholarly draft, released openly for correction and not yet reviewed by a credentialed editor.

Apparatus
Tradition
islamic-sufism
Language
Arabic
Period
c. 620-632 AH (c. 1220s-1234 CE)
Attribution
ʿUmar ibn al-Fāriḍ (576-632 AH / 1181-1234 CE)
Translator
Hekhal Targum Project (machine-assisted draft; pending scholarly review)
License
CC-BY-SA-4.0
Provenance
The underlying text is in the public domain by age. The original-language text is reproduced verbatim from an openly-licensed digital transcription (credited on the page), and this English rendering and its apparatus are a provisional scholarly draft, released openly for correction and not yet reviewed by a credentialed editor.
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ʿUmar ibn al-Fāriḍ (576-632 AH / 1181-1234 CE). "Al-Khamriyya (Wine Ode), opening verses (1)-(6) -- the pre-eternal wine of divine love." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. Last modified May 2, 2026. https://hekhal.org/texts/ibn-al-farid-khamriyya-opening-targum.