1877.] C. J. Lyall— Translations from the Hamdseli and the Aglidni. 155 
The hyena laughs over the slain of HutSeyl, and 
the wolf—see thou—grins by their corpses, 
And the vultures flap their wings, full-bellied 
treading their dead, too gorged to leave them. 
Notes. 
Tho measure is the Medici, the basis of which is a pair of ionics a minore separated 
by an anapaest:— 
WW_j \J KJ _ J KJ \J _|| O U_| \J _ J \J \J _ 
This poem stands in the Hamaseh under the name of Ta’abbata Sherra; but it is 
also attributed to Ta’abbata’s sister’s son, and held to refer to the vengeance wrought 
by the nephew on his uncle’s slayers. The commentators, however, say that the slain 
man camiot be Ta’abbata himself, for Sal‘, the place named in the first verse, is in the 
neighbourhood of el-Medineh: but the place where Ta’abbata was slain lay in the 
country of HucSeyl, eastward of Mekkeh, and was called Bakhman. His sister said, 
bewailing him— 
O SO 9 O s G O I O ^ f ?(jS * SO 'O 
✓ s''' ' “* 
O ^ O O? s so O * ?0S (j s 
VjlyOjifl <S)jt J {J 
11 Fair was the warrior whom ye left in Bakhman 
—Thabit son of Jabir son of Sufyan, 
Who slew his foe and poured wine for his fellow !” 
i 
(Thabit son of Jabir was the real name of Ta’abbata Sherra, which means u He 
carried evil under his arm.”) 
But the weight of evidence is against the authenticity of the poem as an utterance 
of Ta’abbata’s ; it is more probably attributed to the famous imitator of the songs of 
the pagan Arabs, Abu Mohriz ibn Hayyan, commonly known as Khalaf el-Ahmar. 
This man was a native of Farghana, and was taken captive with his parents when 
Khurasan was conquered by the Muslims ; he grew up to be a most eminent man of 
learning, and among all those of that class, who abounded in the days of the first ‘Ab- 
basi Khalifehs, he was the truest poet. He is best known as a fabricator of poems in 
the style of the ancients, with which he deceived tho learned men of el-Kufeh, and 
even Hammad er-Bawiyeh himself; he afterwards acknowledged the poems to be forg¬ 
ed, but they refused to believe it. He died about A. H. 180. (Ibn Qutoybeh, Ma‘arif, 
p. 270. Id. in Noldeke’s Beitrage zur Kenntniss d. Poes. d. alt. Arab. p. 15. Ibn 
Khallikan, I. p. 571, and III. p. 391. Aghani Y. 174.) 
The following are some of the marks of a late origin (athdr et-taulid) which are 
to be found in the piece:—- 
The subtlety of the thought conveyed in the words of verse 5, b , — jella hattd 
daqqa fihi-l-ajellu: this struck the ancient commentators as unlike the speech of a 
Desert Arab : 
The play of words in verse 8 between y&bisu-l-jembeyni (dry-sided, i. e. lean) and 
rtedi-Ukeffeyni, (moist-handed, i. e. liberal) : 
