Songs
الأطلال Al-Atlal (The Ruins)
- Year
- 1966
- Lyricist
- Ibrahim Nagi
- Composer
- Riad Al-Sunbati
- Maqam
- Huzam
Lines marked with a gold ornament carry a note — select one to read it.
يا فؤادي لا تسل أين الهوى
Ya fu'adi, la tasal ayna l-hawa
O my heart, do not ask where love has gone
An apostrophe to the poet's own heart, in high classical Arabic — the register of the qasida, not the street. Sunbati sets it in maqam Huzam, a mode of the Sikah family whose quarter-tone-tinged home note gives the opening its ceremonial, grief-lit color: mourning conducted with perfect posture.
Ibrahim Nagi, a physician and leading romantic poet, died in 1953; Umm Kulthum sang his words thirteen years later. The sung text was assembled from more than one of his poems, trimmed and reordered — a reminder that a Kulthum song is an act of editorship as much as composition.
كان صرحًا من خيالٍ فهوى
Kana sarhan min khayalin fa-hawa
It was a towering edifice of imagination, and it fell
The Arabic turns on a celebrated pun: hawa means both "love" and "it fell." Love was a palace built of fantasy, and the same word that names the passion names the collapse. This kind of jinas — twinned words with divergent meanings — is a signature pleasure of the classical lyric tradition.
اسقني واشرب على أطلاله
Isqini washrab 'ala atlalihi
Pour for me, and let us drink to its ruins
"Pour for me, and let us drink to its ruins" fuses the two oldest genres of Arabic verse in a single breath: the atlal elegy of the pre-Islamic ode and the khamriyya, the wine song. The lovers hold a wake at the ruin, toasting what destroyed them — and the next line doubles the play with another jinas, rawa meaning both "to narrate" and "to quench."
وارْوِ عني طالما الدمع روى
Wa-rwi 'anni talama d-dam'u rawa
And tell my story for me, as long as the tears can tell it
كيف ذاك الحب أمسى خبرًا
Kayfa dhaka l-hubbu amsa khabaran
How did that love become mere news —
Love demoted to khabar — a news item — and to one more tale among the "tales of longing": the lover has become the narrator of his own ruin. The opening movement closes its triple rhyme (hawa, rawa, jawa) on that word jawa, the classical term for love's inward burning, so the sound itself files the affair away among the old stories.
وحديثًا من أحاديث الجوى
Wa-hadithan min ahadithi l-jawa
one more tale among the tales of longing?
لست أنساك وقد أغريتني
Lastu ansaka wa-qad aghraytani
I have not forgotten you — you who tempted me
A portrait built entirely of parts: a mouth sweet in its calling, a hand, a gleam in the eyes. The hand "stretched through the waves to a drowning man" is the stanza's masterstroke — rescue and shipwreck in one image, for a love that did both. With this section the rhyme shifts to a clipped -iq, the first of several rhyme-climates through which the sung text travels.
بفمٍ عذب المناداة رقيق
Bi-famin 'adhbi l-munadati raqiq
with a mouth sweet and gentle in its calling
ويدٍ تمتد نحوي كيدٍ
Wa-yadin tamtaddu nahwi ka-yadin
and a hand held out toward me like a hand
من خلال الموج مُدَّت لغريق
Min khilali l-mawji muddat li-ghariq
stretched through the waves to a drowning man
وبريقٍ يظمأ الساري له
Wa-bariqin yazma'u s-sari lahu
and a gleam the night traveler thirsts after —
أين في عينيك ذيّاك البريق
Ayna fi 'aynayka dhayyaka l-bariq
where, in your eyes, is that gleam now?
يا حبيبًا زرت يومًا أيكه
Ya habiban zurtu yawman aykahu
O beloved whose thicket I once visited,
طائر الشوق أغني ألمي
Ta'ira sh-shawqi ughanni alami
a bird of longing, singing my pain —
لك إبطاء المدلّ المنعم
Laka ibta'u l-mudilli l-mun'imi
yours was the slowness of the pampered and indulged,
وتجنّي القادر المحتكم
Wa-tajanni l-qadiri l-muhtakimi
the caprice of the powerful whose word is law;
وحنيني لك يكوي أضلعي
Wa-hanini laka yakwi adlu'i
and my yearning for you sears my ribs,
والثواني جمراتٌ في دمي
Wa-th-thawani jamaratun fi dami
and the seconds are live coals in my blood
أعطني حريتي أطلق يديّا
A'tini hurriyyati, atliq yadayya
Give me my freedom, set loose my hands!
The most electric moment of the song. A lover's plea to be released became, in the halls of the late 1960s, something larger: after the defeat of 1967, audiences heard "give me my freedom" as a collective cry, and she answered their applause by repeating the line in ever-fiercer arcs. Few passages show more clearly how tarab turns a text into an event.
إنني أعطيت ما استبقيت شيّا
Innani a'taytu ma stabqaytu shay'a
I have given everything and held nothing back
The dignity of the line lies in its bookkeeping: everything given, nothing withheld, therefore nothing owed. The classical verb forms carry a formality that colloquial song cannot reach — this is heartbreak argued like a case at law, and Umm Kulthum delivers it with the gravity of an advocate.
آهِ من قيدك أدمى معصمي
Ah min qaydika adma mi'sami
Ah, how your chains have bloodied my wrist
The ghazal's conventional "bond of love" turns literal here: a shackle that has drawn blood at the wrist. The quatrain then closes its account with bitter symmetry — I did not cling to the chain, and the chain showed me no mercy. In concert these lines rode the same rising wave as the freedom cry, each pass flung higher than the last.
لم أُبقِه وما أبقى عليّا
Lam ubqihi wa-ma abqa 'alayya
I have not kept them — and they have not spared me
ما احتفاظي بعهودٍ لم تصنها
Ma htifazi bi-'uhudin lam tasunha
Why keep vows that you have never honored?
وإلامَ الأسر والدنيا لديّا
Wa-ilama l-asru wa-d-dunya ladayya
And how long this captivity, when the world is mine?
أين من عيني حبيبٌ ساحرٌ
Ayna min 'ayni habibun sahirun
Where has he gone from my eyes, that enchanter —
فيه عزٌّ وجلالٌ وحياء
Fihi 'izzun wa-jalalun wa-haya'
all dignity, majesty, and shyness of grace?
واثق الخطوة يمشي ملكًا
Wathiqu l-khatwati yamshi malikan
Sure of every step, he walks a king,
"Sure of every step, he walks a king" — perhaps the most quoted portrait line in modern Arabic verse, detached from the song and applied to every commanding presence since. Its companion phrase, "beauty's tyrant, delicious in pride," compresses the whole ghazal convention of the cruel beloved into four words: the injustice of beauty is exactly what makes it irresistible.
ظالم الحسن شهيّ الكبرياء
Zalimu l-husni shahiyyu l-kibriya'
beauty's tyrant, delicious in his pride,
عبِق السحر كأنفاس الربى
'Abiqu s-sihri ka-anfasi r-ruba
fragrant with magic like the breath of the hills,
ساهم الطرف كأحلام المساء
Sahimu t-tarfi ka-ahlami l-masa'
dreamy-eyed as the reveries of evening
أين مني مجلسٌ أنت به
Ayna minni majlisun anta bihi
Where is the gathering you once lit —
فتنةٌ تمت سناءً وسنى
Fitnatun tammat sana'an wa-sana
a splendor made perfect, radiance and light —
وأنا حبٌّ وقلبٌ هائمٌ
Wa-ana hubbun wa-qalbun ha'imun
when I was love itself, a heart adrift,
وفراشٌ حائرٌ منك دنا
Wa-farashun ha'irun minka dana
a dazzled moth that had drawn too near you,
ومن الشوق رسولٌ بيننا
Wa-mina sh-shawqi rasulun baynana
and desire went between us as a messenger,
ونديمٌ قدّم الكأس لنا
Wa-nadimun qaddama l-ka'sa lana
and a companion kept filling the cup for us?
هل رأى الحب سكارى مثلنا
Hal ra'a l-hubbu sukara mithlana?
Has love ever seen drunkards like us?
The poem here joins the old Arabic tradition of the khamriyya, the wine song: intoxication as the only honest measure of love. In performance this question drew some of her most soaring melismas, the voice itself reeling — controlled abandon, the paradox at the center of her art.
Listeners' shouts — "'Azima!", "Allah!" — often forced her to circle back and sing this passage again, differently. No two nights of "Al-Atlal" were alike; the surviving recordings are single evenings of a work that was, by design, never finished.
From this line to "each on a separate road" the text quietly leaves "Al-Atlal" altogether: these seven verses come from Nagi's poem "Al-Wada'" (The Farewell), chosen by the poet Ahmad Rami and spliced into the qasida. The join is invisible because both poems mourn the same lost love — and the borrowed section became the most famous passage of the song that bears the other poem's name.
كم بنينا من خيالٍ حولنا
Kam banayna min khayalin hawlana
How many castles of fantasy we built around us
ومشينا في طريقٍ مقمرٍ
Wa-mashayna fi tariqin muqmirin
And we walked a moonlit road together
تثب الفرحة فيه قبلنا
Tathibu l-farhatu fihi qablana
Joy leaping ahead of us as we went
وضحكنا ضحك طفلين معًا
Wa-dahikna dahka tiflayni ma'an
And we laughed like two children together
وعدَونا فسبقنا ظلنا
Wa-'adawna fa-sabaqna zillana
and we ran, and outran our own shadow
وانتبهنا بعدما زال الرحيق
Wa-ntabahna ba'dama zala r-rahiq
And we came to, when the nectar was gone,
وأفقنا ليت أنّا لا نفيق
Wa-afaqna layta anna la nufiq
and woke — ah, would that we had never woken:
The wine song ends where wine songs must: in the morning after. "Would that we had never woken" is the khamriyya's oldest sigh, and the stanza unfolds as a slow-motion collapse of the dream — night, the lovers' friend, withdraws; light arrives not as hope but as a warning; dawn is a fire on the horizon. Four clauses beginning "and suddenly" (wa-idha), each one stripping away another layer of the enchantment.
يقظةٌ طاحت بأحلام الكرى
Yaqzatun tahat bi-ahlami l-kara
a waking that scattered the dreams of sleep;
وتولى الليل والليل صديق
Wa-tawalla l-laylu wa-l-laylu sadiq
the night was over — and night was a friend —
وإذا النور نذيرٌ طالعٌ
Wa-idha n-nuru nadhirun tali'un
and suddenly the light was a warning raised,
وإذا الفجر مطلٌّ كالحريق
Wa-idha l-fajru mutillun ka-l-hariq
and the dawn loomed over us like a fire,
وإذا الدنيا كما نعرفها
Wa-idha d-dunya kama na'rifuha
and there stood the world as we know it,
وإذا الأحباب كلٌّ في طريق
Wa-idha l-ahbabu kullun fi tariq
and the lovers — each on a separate road
أيها الساهر تغفو
Ayyuha s-sahiru taghfu
You who keep the night watch: you drowse,
The meter abruptly contracts: after long, rolling verses, six short lines, the only passage of the song in this clipped form. Sunbati marks the change with a lighter, swaying setting — a lullaby for an insomniac — before the finale. The closing aphorism, "learn how to forget, and learn how to erase," escaped the song entirely and lives on as a proverb of heartbreak in everyday Arabic.
تذكر العهد وتصحو
Tadhkuru l-'ahda wa-tas-hu
remember the promise, and wake;
وإذا ما التأم جرحٌ
Wa-idha ma lta'ama jurhun
and whenever a wound has closed,
جدّ بالتذكار جرحُ
Jadda bi-t-tidhkari jurhu
remembrance opens a wound anew.
فتعلّم كيف تنسى
Fa-ta'allam kayfa tansa
So learn how to forget,
وتعلّم كيف تمحو
Wa-ta'allam kayfa tamhu
and learn how to erase
يا حبيبي كل شيءٍ بقضاء
Ya habibi, kullu shay'in bi-qada'
My love, everything is decreed by fate
The song closes where the evening closed: in fatalism. After the fury of the freedom cry, the song's final posture is acceptance — everything is decree, unhappiness was never ours to choose — the qasida's oldest consolation. Sunbati lets the melody settle onto Huzam's home note like a mourner finally sitting down, and night after night the halls refused to let the silence hold.
ما بأيدينا خُلقنا تعساء
Ma bi-aydina — khuliqna tu'asa'
It is not by our own hands that we were made unhappy
ربما تجمعنا أقدارنا
Rubbama tajma'una aqdaruna
Perhaps our destinies will gather us
ذات يومٍ بعدما عزّ اللقاء
Dhata yawmin ba'dama 'azza l-liqa'
one day, when reunion has grown past hoping;
فإذا أنكر خِلٌّ خِلَّه
Fa-idha ankara khillun khillahu
and if one lover then denies the other,
وتلاقينا لقاء الغرباء
Wa-talaqayna liqa'a l-ghuraba'
and we meet as strangers meet,
ومضى كلٌّ إلى غايته
Wa-mada kullun ila ghayatihi
and each goes on toward a separate end —
لا تقل شئنا فإن الحظ شاء
La taqul shi'na, fa-inna l-hazza sha'
do not say we willed it. Fate willed it so.
What this song means
Every tradition keeps one work as its measuring rod. For the Arabic song of the twentieth century, that work is “Al-Atlal” — The Ruins — premiered by Umm Kulthum in 1966 and regarded ever since, by a remarkable consensus of critics and listeners, as the summit of her art.
Its poet never heard it. Ibrahim Nagi, a Cairo physician and one of the leading romantic poets of his generation, died in 1953. The sung text was drawn from his verse and carefully reordered — a curated poem rather than a transcribed one — so that the evening traces a single arc: the lover standing before the wreckage of a great passion, the cry for release, and the backward glance at an intoxication nothing since has equaled, before settling, as the old odes settle, into the consolation of fate. The editing had a second author: the poet Ahmad Rami selected seven verses from Nagi’s “Al-Wada’” — The Farewell — and spliced them in, from “Has love ever seen drunkards like us?” to “the lovers, each on a separate road.” The graft took so completely that the borrowed passage became the most famous stretch of the song named for the other poem. The title itself reaches back a millennium and a half, to the pre-Islamic poets who opened their odes weeping over the abandoned campsites of the beloved. Nagi’s ruins are inner ones, but the gesture is ancient, and audiences felt that depth of field.
Riad al-Sunbati, the most classical of her composers, set the qasida in maqam Huzam, whose quarter-tone-shaded tonic gives the music its characteristic solemn luminosity — grief wearing ceremonial dress. His setting unfolds in long, distinct sections, each with its own melodic climate, giving the singer room for the repetitions and variations through which tarab does its work. In her hands a single hemistich could return five or six times, never twice the same. The full text reveals how deliberately those climates are sequenced: the portrait of the beloved — “sure of every step, he walks a king,” a line Arabs still quote at any commanding presence — gives way to the moonlit intoxication, then to the terrible sobering-up (“would that we had never woken”), and then, just before the fatalist close, to the one metrical surprise of the evening: the short-breathed “ayyuha al-sahir” interlude, six clipped lines swaying like a lullaby for the sleepless, whose final couplet — “learn how to forget, and learn how to erase” — left the song long ago to become a proverb.
Then history intervened. When she sang “Give me my freedom, set loose my hands!” after the June 1967 defeat, the line detonated. A lover’s plea became a nation’s, and concert audiences answered it with an intensity preserved on the live recordings. No one planned that meaning; the song was simply large enough to hold it.
That is finally why “Al-Atlal” matters: it demonstrates the classical ideal at full power — high poetry, rigorous composition, and a voice capable of making formal perfection feel like spontaneous confession. A song about collapse, built like a monument.
Related songs
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Araka 'Asiyy al-Dam' (1965): Abu Firas al-Hamdani's captivity qasida in Riad al-Sunbati's maqam Kurd setting — annotated lyrics, translation, and its story.
Fakkarouni (They Reminded Me) فكروني
1966 · Maqam Rast
Fakkarouni (1966): a chance remark rekindles a buried love — Abdel Wahab's maqam Rast setting, the famous one-word hook, meaning & translation of Umm Kulthum's classic.
Howwa Sahih el-Hawa Ghallab (Is It True Love Conquers All?) هو صحيح الهوى غلاب
1960 · Maqam Saba
Howwa Sahih el-Hawa Ghallab (1960): full lyrics & translation of Bayram al-Tunisi's last song for Umm Kulthum — Zakariyya Ahmad's maqam Saba farewell.
Lissa Faker (Do You Still Believe?) لسه فاكر
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Lissa Faker (1960): Riad al-Sunbati sets Abdel Fattah Mustafa's proud refusal for Umm Kulthum — 'that was long ago.' Annotated excerpts and essay.
From the wiki
All articlesConcepts
Understanding Maqam
A plain-language guide to the maqam system — quarter tones, sayr, and tarab — through four maqams heard in Umm Kulthum's songs: Rast, Kurd, Huzam, Farahfaza.
Concepts
Where to Start with Umm Kulthum: A Listener's Guide
New to Umm Kulthum? A step-by-step listening guide: which songs to start with, from Enta Omri to Al-Atlal, and how to enjoy her hour-long live tarab recordings.
Concepts
The Art of the Qasida
The qasida — the classical Arabic ode — was the most prestigious form Umm Kulthum sang. A guide through Salou Qalbi, Al-Atlal, the Rubaiyat, and Nahj al-Burda.