Book II. Genealogy of the descendants of al-Hamaysa‘ b. Ḥimyar.
Book III. Concerning the pre-eminent qualities of Qaḥṭán.
Book IV. Concerning the first period of history down to the reign of Tubba‘ Abú Karib.
Book V. Concerning the middle period from the accession of As‘ad Tubba‘ to the reign of Dhú Nuwás.
Book VI. Concerning the last period down to the rise of Islam.
Book VII. Criticism of false traditions and absurd legends.
Book VIII. Concerning the castles, cities, and tombs of the Ḥimyarites; the extant poetry of ‘Alqama,[40] the elegies, the inscriptions, and other matters.
Book IX. Concerning the proverbs and wisdom of the Ḥimyarites in the Ḥimyarite language, and concerning the alphabet of the inscriptions.
Book X. Concerning the genealogy of Ḥáshid and Bakíl (the two principal tribes of Hamdán).
The same intense patriotism which caused Hamdání to devote himself to scientific research inspired Nashwán b. Sa‘íd, who descended on the father's side from one of the Nashwán b. Sa‘íd al-Ḥimyarí († 1177 a.d.). ancient princely families of Yemen, to recall the legendary past and become the laureate of a long vanished and well-nigh forgotten empire. In 'The Ḥimyarite Ode' (al-Qaṣídatu ’l-Ḥimyariyya) he sings the might and grandeur of the monarchs who ruled over his people, and moralises in true Muḥammadan spirit upon the fleetingness of life and the futility of human ambition.[41] Accompanying the Ode, which has little value except as a comparatively unfalsified record of royal names,[42] is a copious historical commentary either by Nashwán himself, as Von Kremer thinks highly probable, or by some one who lived about the same time. Those for whom history represents an aggregate of naked facts would find nothing to the purpose in this commentary, where threads of truth are almost inextricably interwoven with fantastic and fabulous embroideries. A literary form was first given to such legends by the professional story-tellers of early Islam. One of these, the South Arabian ‘Abíd b. Sharya, visited Damascus by command of the Caliph Mu‘áwiya I, who questioned him "concerning ‘Abíd b. Sharya. the ancient traditions, the kings of the Arabs and other races, the cause of the confusion of tongues, and the history of the dispersion of mankind in the various countries of the world,"[43] and gave orders that his answers should be put together in writing and published under his name. This work, of which unfortunately no copy has come down to us, was entitled 'The Book of the Kings and the History of the Ancients' (Kitábu ’l-Mulúk wa-akhbáru ’l-Máḍín). Mas‘údí († 956 a.d.) speaks of it as a well-known book, enjoying a wide circulation.[44] It was used by the commentator of the Ḥimyarite Ode, either at first hand or through the medium of Hamdání's Iklíl. We may regard it, like the commentary itself, as a historical romance in which most of the characters and some of the events are real, adorned with fairy-tales, fictitious verses, and such entertaining matter as a man of learning and story-teller by trade might naturally be expected to introduce. Among the few remaining Muḥammadan authors who Ḥamza of Iṣfahán. bestowed special attention on the Pre-islamic period of South Arabian history, I shall mention here only Ḥamza of Iṣfahán, the eighth book of whose Annals (finished in 961 a.d.) provides a useful sketch, with brief chronological details, of the Tubba‘s or Ḥimyarite kings of Yemen.