But Oumm Saiyar and the women had reached the tents of the Beni-Firaz, and aroused the tribe. And the best men of the camp sprung to horse in haste, and rode fiercely to the Pass of Ghazal; but they only found Rabyah lying there, naked and dead, and the vultures circling above him. And leaving him there, they pursued so furiously after the sons of Sulaim that the long way smoked beneath them; yet they could not overtake them.
So they rode back to where Rabyah lay, and they buried him there, with great mourning, in the place of his last and greatest deed. And they built above him a hill of black stones to mark the spot, and in the midst thereof, at the summit, they set up a great white stone, shaped like the back of a camel.
And never thereafter—until the days of the Prophet—did any Arab of any tribe pass that way who did not sacrifice a camel in honor of the valiant one who had defended his women even after he was dead. (Except, indeed, Hafs, son of Al-Ahnaf, who, having but one camel, could not make the sacrifice; but he composed an immortal poem in honor of Rabyah, and his verses are still in the mouths of the Arabian people.)
And never a son of Firaz passed that way to war who did not cry out unto Rabyah: 'La tab'adan! Abide with us! Be with us this day, O Rabyah!'
And after Islam, not less than in the Days of Ignorance, the wives of the desert horsemen prayed they might become mothers of brave tall boys worthy to bear Rabyah's name.
And whenever, in time of foray, or in days of ill fortune of war, or amid the ghastly perils of desert travel, women found themselves face to face with the fear of shame, they would cry out the name of him upon whom no woman had ever called vainly in those wild, dark days before Islam.
And Islam itself, spreading like a holy fire east and west, two hundred days' journey from India to the Sea of Darkness, bore abroad his name, and flashed it far into the black South, making it known unto the blue-eyed Touareg, whose camels dance to the sound of music—making it known even to those swart sultans whose domains do border upon the unknown lakes of Afrikia.
And these are some of the verses that were composed in that long rolling measure which is called Kamil, before the sepulchre of Rabyah, by the poet Hafs, the son of Al-Ahnaf:—
Bide with us still, Rabyah, son of Mokaddem, near!
May the clouds of dawn keep green thy grave with unfailing showers....
My camel fled when she spied the cairn on the stony waste,
Built over one who was free of hand, most quick to give.
Start not, O camel! for sure no shape to be shunned was he—
A carouser mirthful, a mighty stirrer of battle-flame.
Long is my way, and the thirsty desert before me lies,
Else here for thee she had fallen, butchered to feast thy friends.[1]
[1] C. J. Lyall's version, as given in his admirable Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry (London: 1885).