96 
C. J. Lyall —The Mo l allaqah of Lebid. 
period they could not marry again nor go forth from their houses, and were thus most 
miserable. Reference appears to be made to this ante-islamic custom in v. 240 of the 
Surat-el-Baqarah .—“ Such of you as shall die and leave wives shall bequeath their wives 
a year’s maintenance without causing them to leave their houses.” That the period of 
mourning in the Ignorance was a full year, not for widows only hut for the whole fami¬ 
ly of the deceased, may he gathered from the verses of Lebid on his own death quoted 
near the end of the notice of him in the Aghani, where he bids his daughters mourn for 
him— 
cT 'O * * fry * c" c ' ^ 4, ^ * ° '**%< ° ' I 
±3* ^/o j U.XJ..U ,*3LJ| f pi Jysr'i ^f 
* . " 
“ Until the year is done—then the name of Peace he on you : 
for he who weeps for a year has discharged what is due from him.” 
Ez-Zauzeni, however, takes murmildt as meaning merely “ poor women”LJJ| 
• •* 
j\ and refers the lengthening of their year spoken of to the weariness of 
their life of poverty. 
v. 89. The commentator quoted by Arnold explains humu-l- ashirek as equivalent 
to hum muslihu-l- ‘ashireh : “ They are the men who order or rule the tribe.” Ez-Zau- 
zeni and the Persian commentator Rashidu-n-Nabi, however, reject so violent an ellipse 
and take the verse in the simpler construction which I have followed. Of the use of o| 
in the negative sense which it bears here ( = lest) other examples are to be found in 
the Mo‘allaqah of ‘ Amr son of Kulthum, vv. 25 and 32. 
