[80] Ibn Qutayba in Brünnow's Chrestomathy, p. 29.
[81] Properly al-Zabbá, an epithet meaning 'hairy.' According to Ṭabarí (i, 757) her name was Ná’ila. It is odd that in the Arabic version of the story the name Zenobia (Zaynab) should be borne by the heroine's sister.
[82] The above narrative is abridged from Aghání, xiv, 73, l. 20-75, l. 25. Cf. Ṭabarí, i, 757-766; Mas‘údí, Murúju ’l-Dhahab (ed. by Barbier de Meynard), vol. iii, pp. 189-199.
[83] Concerning Ḥíra and its history the reader may consult an admirable monograph by Dr. G. Rothstein, Die Dynastie der Laẖmiden in al-Ḥíra (Berlin, 1899), where the sources of information are set forth (p. 5 sqq.). The incidental references to contemporary events in Syriac and Byzantine writers, who often describe what they saw with their own eyes, are extremely valuable as a means of fixing the chronology, which Arabian historians can only supply by conjecture, owing to the want of a definite era during the Pre-islamic period. Muḥammadan general histories usually contain sections, more or less mythical in character, "On the Kings of Ḥíra and Ghassán." Attention may be called in particular to the account derived from Hishám b. Muḥammad al-Kalbí, which is preserved by Ṭabarí and has been translated with a masterly commentary by Nöldeke in his Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden. Hishám had access to the archives kept in the churches of Ḥíra, and claims to have extracted therefrom many genealogical and chronological details relating to the Lakhmite dynasty (Ṭabarí, i, 770, 7).
[84] Ḥíra is the Syriac ḥértá (sacred enclosure, monastery), which name was applied to the originally mobile camp of the Persian Arabs and retained as the designation of the garrison town.
[85] Sadír was a castle in the vicinity of Ḥíra.
[86] Ṭabarí, i, 853, 20 sqq.
[87] Bahrám was educated at Ḥíra under Nu‘mán and Mundhir. The Persian grandees complained that he had the manners and appearance of the Arabs among whom he had grown up (Ṭabarí, i, 858, 7).
[88] Má’ al-samá (i.e., Water of the sky) is said to have been the sobriquet of Mundhir's mother, whose proper name was Máriya or Máwiyya.
[89] For an account of Mazdak and his doctrines the reader may consult Nöldeke's translation of Ṭabarí, pp. 140-144, 154, and 455-467, and Professor Browne's Literary History of Persia, vol. i, pp. 168-172.