I had become weary of the company of my friends in Damascus; I set out into the wilderness of Jerusalem and became familiar with animals.

Until I was captured by the Franks, I was kept working with Jews in a trench in Tripoli, doing mud work.

One of the leaders of Aleppo, with whom I had a past acquaintance, passed by and recognized me and said: O so-and-so! What is this state?!

I said: What can I say?:

I was fleeing from people to the mountains and plains

Because I was not focused on God but preoccupied with people

Imagine what my state was at that moment

When I had to live in the stable of an ignoble man

Being in chains before friends

Is better than being in a garden with strangers

He took pity on my condition and freed me from captivity for ten dinars, took me with him to Aleppo, and gave me his daughter in marriage with a dowry of one hundred dinars.

Some time passed. She was ill-tempered, quarrelsome, and disobedient; she began to be abusive and made my life bitter.

A bad wife in the house of a good man

Is his hell in this very world

Beware of a bad companion, beware!

And protect us, our Lord, from the torment of the Fire

Then, extending her tongue in reproach, she kept saying: Are you not the one whom my father ransomed from the Franks?!

I said: Yes! I am the one whom he ransomed from the Franks for ten dinars and delivered into your hands for one hundred dinars.

I heard that a great man saved a sheep

From the mouth and paws of a wolf

At night, he ran a knife across its throat

The sheep's spirit lamented from him:

That you rescued me from the claws of the wolf

When I saw the end, you yourself were the wolf