22 
C. J. Lyall —The Mo^allacqah of Zuheyr. 
[No. 1, 
“ When our War-mill is set against a people 
as grain they fall thereunder ground to powder ; 
Eastward in Nejd is set the skin beneath it, 
and the grain cast therein is all Quda‘ah.” 
“ Year by year shall her womb conceive” : telqali kishafan ; Jcishdf is said of a 
she-camel that conceives in two following years. Another word used in a like sense 
of War is ‘ awdn , which is applied to an animal with a hard hoof (as a cow or mare), 
that after bringing forth her first-born (bikr)' conceives again forthwith and bears 
another young one ; so harbun ‘awdn is said of a war the fury of which is perpetually 
renewed (see Hamaseh, p. 180). Again, hd'il, plural hiydl , is used of a war which lies 
long dormant; its meaning is a she-camel that does not conceive for two years, or some 
years, and it is therefore the opposite of kishdf. El-Harith son of ‘Obad said of the 
War of Basus after the slaying of his son Bujeyr by Muhelhil— 
J'— 
O x 
✓ 9 o y 
Ji); 
4 
“ The War of Wail has conceived at last, having long been barren.” 
v. 32. “ Ahmar of ‘Ad.” According to the received story of the Muslims, it 
was to Thamud, not to ‘Ad, that the prophet Salih was sent to warn them of their wick¬ 
edness. The sign that he gave them was a gigantic she-camel that issued forth at his 
bidding from a rock (Qur’an vii. 71): “Then said those among them that were filled 
with pride—‘ Yerily we reject that in which ye believed.’ And they slew the she-camel 
and rebelled against their Lord, and said—‘0 Salih ! bring upon us that wherewith 
thou didst threaten us, if thou art indeed of the Sent of God !’ Then the earthquake 
seized them, and they lay on their faces in their dwellings, dead.” (Qur. 1. c. vv. 
74—76. The story is also told in Surah xi, vv. 64—71.) The leader in the slaying 
of the Camel was Qudar el-Ahmar, “ Qudar the Red” ; and thus “ More unlucky than 
Ahmar of Thamud,” and “ More unlucky than the Slayer of the She-camel,” became 
proverbs. The people of Thamud (—who are mentioned* by Diodorus Siculus and 
Ptolemy, and as late as 450 A. D. in the Notitia dignitatum utriusque imperii: see 
C. de Perceval, Essai i., p. 27—) dwelt in Hijr, a valley on the road Northwards from 
the Hijaz into Syria. The race of ‘Ad, on the contrary, were settled in the South of 
Arabia, in the Ahqdf \ now a vast desert of sand : Ibn Quteybeh (Ma‘arif, p. 15) places 
them “in ed-Daww, and ed-Dahna, and ‘Alij, and Yebrin, and Webbar, from ‘Oman 
to Hadramaut and el-Yemen.” To them was sent Hud (Q,ur. vii. 63 and xi). They 
were thus separated by the whole distance of Arabia from Thamud, and, it is probable, 
also by a vast space of time, if the Thamudeni of the Notitia dignitatum are the same 
as the latter people. The commentators give two reasons to explain why Zuheyr 
said, “ Alnnar of ‘Ad” instead of “ Ahmar of Thamud” : the first is the necessity of the 
rhythm, which would not permit him to say Thamud ; the second is that some of the 
genealogists say that Thamud was a cousin of ‘Ad, and after the destruction of the 
* In Mr. George Smith’s “Assyria” (“Ancient History from the Monuments” 
Series), p. 100, Sargon, in 715 B. C., is related to have led an expedition into Arabia, 
“ where he conquered the Thamudites and several other tribes, carrying them captive 
and placing them in the cities of Samaria.” 
