“The fool addresses me with every ugliness, and I would rather not answer him. He grows in foolishness and I grow in forbearance, like aloeswood that burning only makes more fragrant.”

Two lines from the Diwan of poetry attributed to al-Shafi‘i. The image is exact: ‘ud, aloeswood, gives off its scent only when it burns, so the insult meant to harm becomes the occasion for the fragrance. The verse echoes the Qur’an down to its verb, in its description of the servants of the Most Merciful: “when the ignorant address them, they say words of peace” (25:63).