116 
C. J. Lvall —Translations from the Hamdseh . 
%j t/ • 
[No. 2, 
kinsmen to all the men of Temim settled round about, to the Bel-‘Ambar, 
to the Benu Yerbu‘ ibn HanSaleh, and to the Benu Mazin ibn Malik, 
asking help against Bekr. How these men fared among their kinsmen, 
who helped them and who hung back, is told at great length, and were 
tedious to relate here. In the end the men of Mazin rode forth to attack 
Bekr, and overcame them, and recovered el-Waqba for their tribe, who 
still held it in the days of the geographer Abu ‘Obeyd el-Bekri, who died 
A. H. 487. And this deed of Mazin is the subject of the poem. 
Abu-1-Ghul et-Tuhawi, the author, is so called because he was descend¬ 
ed from Tuheyyeh, daughter of ‘Abd-Shems son of Sa‘d son of ZejM- 
Menah. This woman had three sons, ‘Auf, Abu Sud, and Jusheysh, by 
Malik son of Hanftaleh ; and the posterity of these were known by their 
mother’s name, not their father’s : a very rare thing in Arabian genealogies. 
v. 1. “ May my life be thy ransom !” is a phrase which recurs con¬ 
stantly in Arab verse. Like expressions are—“ May my father and mother 
be thy ransom,” “ May I he thy sacrifice !” &c. The idea of fida is, of 
course, that the person devoting himself takes upon him all the evil in the 
destiny of the other whom he addresses. Hence the common expression, 
heard every day in India, fidwi (properly fidaioi). 
v. 2. “ The Mill of Battle” : a frequent comparison in old Arab 
poetry ; the locus classicus is in the Mo'allaqah of ‘Amr son of Kulthum, 
vv. 30, 31 :— 
matd nenqul HI a qaumin rahdnd 
yekunu Ji-l-liqdH lahd tahind. 
yekunu thifdluha sharqiyya Nejdin 
ivaluhwatuhd Qudd‘atu ’ajmaHna 
“ When our war-mill is set against a people, 
as grain they fall thereunder ground to powder. 
“ Eastward in Nejd is set the skin thereunder, 
and the grain cast therein is all Quda‘ah.” 
(l Stubbornest strife”: the word zabun signifies thrusting, pushing, 
straining one against another. 
v. 4. “ Boasted ’ salu hil-harhi. This, again, is one of the com¬ 
monest phrases for War: as in the words of el-Harith son of ‘Chad (for 
the incident, see the notes to No. I) : — 
lam ’akun min junatihd, ‘alima-l-ld - 
hu, waHnni biharriha-l-yauma salt. 
“ I was not of those whose wrong wrought it, God knows ! 
yet must I today be burned in its blaze.” 
