1878.] 
C. J. Lyall —The Mo'allaqah of Zuheyr. 
21 
el-Lat, el-‘Ozza, Menat, Fuls, Wedd, and the rest, there was certainly a hack-ground 
of faith in The God, Allah , whose name was, as it still is, in the mouth of every 
Bedawi as his most frequent ejaculation. Without assuming such a faith as already 
well known to the people, a great portion of the Qur’an would he impossible : that 
revelation is addressed to men who join other gods with God, not those who deny Him. 
Some tribes may have had more of this belief in the One God, and been accustomed to 
look more immediately to Him, others (especially those who, like the Qureysh, pos¬ 
sessed famous shrines of idolatrous worship which brought them in much profit,) less : 
probably contact with Judaism and Christianity determined in some measure the • 
greater or less degree of it. Now among the neighbours of the tribes of Ghatafan 
were the Jews settled from Yethrib to Kheybar and Teyrna; to the North was Kelb in 
the Daumat (or Dumat) el-Jondel, almost entirely Christian; Christianity had made 
some progress in Tayyi’, nearer still; and we have seen how, according to a fairly 
vouched for story, Qeys son of Zuheyr, the chief of ‘Abs, spent the last years of his life as 
a Christian anchorite in ‘Oman. To the West was Yethrib, in constant relations with 
the Kings of Ghassan, who were Christian, together with their people ; and to the 
North-east was el-Hireh, whose King, en-Nofinan Abu Qabus, had long been a 
Christian, and where Christianity had spread among the people long before his day. 
En-Nabighah of D ubyan, Zuheyr’s famous contemporary, had dwelt long at the 
Courts both of el-Hireh and Ghassan; and in a well-known passage* (much con¬ 
tested, it is true, but in favour of the genuineness of which much may be said,) he 
refers to a Kabbinical legend of Solomon’s power over the Jinn, and how they built 
for him Tedmur. At the fair of ‘Oka<5 Quss son of Safideh had preached Christianity 
long before Zuheyr made this poem. And to ‘Abs itself belonged one of the Hanifs, 
Khalid son of Sinan son of Gheyth (see Ibn Quteybeh, Ma‘arif, p. 30). These 
things seem to me to make it not impossible that the lines may be genuine. The 
objection that they are inconsistent with v. 48 appears wholly groundless ; the latter 
refers to the vicissitudes of this world and the chances of life: the former to the 
reckoning of God in the world after death. (See note on v. 32 for a further argument 
in favour of the authenticity of these verses.) 
# 
v. 29. War, el-Harb , is feminine in Arabic ; as in vv. 31 and 32 it is personified 
as a woman, it seemed best to use in the translation the feminine pronoun in vv. 29 
and 30. 
v. 31. “ Skin,” thifdl , is the mat of skm that is placed beneath the mill to 
receive the flour. The comparison of War to a mill and the slain to ground grain is 
common in the old poetry ; so says ‘Amr son of Kulthum (Mo'all. vv. 30, 31)— 
AaJU) 
1 1 - t- 
/ •' / o' G ''G ^ \ y 
Q U-; ffi J! JSxj 
* " 
of i y 5> ' ^ Sts 
L ^^ 
0 ” y ' 
* En-Nabighah, v. 22 sqq. For a discussion of this passage, see Noeldeke, 
Beitrage z. Kenntn. der Poes. d. alt. Araber, id. XI, and Ahlwardt, Bemerkungen fiber 
die Aechtheit d. alt. Arab. Gcdichte, pp. 17-18 and 41. Noeldeke appears to overlook 
the tradition (unless he rejects it) that en-No‘man was a Christian. 
