82 
[No. 1, 
C. J. Lyall —The Mo l allaqah of Lelnd, with the 
30 This most touching and admirable poem has* been rendered by Riickert in his 
translation of the Hamaseh (Yol. I, p. 387). In line 2 “ mighty towers” is ^jLa/o^ 
plural of AxXwa/o, which has several meanings : “fortresses” is the one which seems to 
suit the passage best. Line 13 Riickert thinks probably spurious, the insertion of an 
after-age. He renders it— 
Der Mensch, was ist er anders als was er Frommes denkt ? 
und was sein Gut, als etwas auf Widerruf geschcnkt ? 
De Sacy understands it as of the fleeting of life—“ l’homme ressemble aux bonnes reso¬ 
lutions que suggere la piete.” The latter is the preferable sense, though it certainly 
has a modern tone which is strange to old Arab poetry. Riickert also rejects, as a 
commonplace interpolation, lines 25 and 26 : and certainly 23, 24 and 27, 28 seem to be 
consecutive in thought. In lines 17, 18 we have proof of Lebid’s already great age 
when Arbed died, before he became a Muslim ; line 18 might be more literally rendered 
“ I am as though, as often as I stand, I were stooping ;” rdki 1 is the posture assumed in 
prayer when the body is bent at right angles. In line 21 “ 0 go not away from us,” 
ili, is a phrase of frequent recurrence in dirges, and seems to have been used 
by the wailers at burials in the same way as (but with an exactly opposite sense) 
the Latin Meet. At the end of the same line I have followed De Sacy and Riickert in 
taking &s-yQ as meaning “ a trysting place” (“ un inevitable rendezvous,” “ unsre 
4 o/ 
Frist der Einigung”) : but it may also be rendered (as though pointed “threaten- 
* 
ing, imminent.” I prefer, however, the rendering adopted, as more suitable to the 
train of thought suggested by Ita. Lines 23 and 24 shew that Lebid was still a 
pagan and a disbeliever in the Resurrection when he uttered the verses. Lines 27 and 
28 are quoted and explained by Lane s. v. d^-k The “ waiter on the pebble’s cast” 
( AjjlkJ | or) is the woman who endeavours to obtain an augury by the 
cast and fall of stones (Riickert “ Sandwurfweissagerin”), while the “ watcher of the 
flight of birds,” jJaJ| is an auguress of the Roman sort (Riickert “ Vogelflug- 
ausleger”). It would seem that these allusions to divining and the vanity of it are 
indirect attacks on Mohammed. 
31 This history relates to the earliest days of el-Islam, before the first Flight, that 
to Abyssinia in A. D. 615. ‘Othmanson of Ma<5'un was one of the four converts who 
embraced the new faith together with ‘Abd-er-Rahman son of ‘Auf (Muir, Life of Ma¬ 
homet, II, 106) : he was a man of an ascetic temper, and his austerities caused the utter¬ 
ance by Mohammed of the precept—“ There is no monkery in el-Islam.” He led the 
emigration to the Christian Court of the Nejashi (id. II. 133). El-Welid ibn el-Mu- 
ghireh was an aged chief of the Qureysh (id. II, 32, 80, 128, &c.) who led in the 
rebuilding of the Ka‘beh after its destruction by a flood in or about A. D. 605. He is 
believed to be the gainsayer who is cursed in the 74th Surah of the Qui-’an; he was 
one of the most violent of the Prophet’s opponents, and a witness of his temporary 
apostacy, when he praised Lat, ‘Ozza, and Menat. 
82 “ The Holy Temple” el-Mesjid-el-Haram, i. e. the Ka‘beh. 
33 The rest of this poem is given in the preamble to Lebid’s Mo‘allaqah in the 
edition of the Mo‘allaqat with Persian notes by Rashidu-n-Nabi of Hugli. It runs— 
“ Yea—everything is vain except only God alone, 
and every pleasant thing must one day vanish away ! 
And all the race of men—there shall surely come among them 
a Fearful Woe whereby their fingers shall grow pale : 
