Having thus secured her position she determined to take vengeance on Jadhíma. She wrote to him that the sceptre was slipping from her feeble grasp, that she found no man worthy of her except himself, that she desired to unite her kingdom with his by marriage, and begged him to come and see her. Jadhíma needed no urging. Deaf to the warnings of his friend and counsellor, Qaṣír, he started from Baqqa, a castle on the Euphrates. When they had travelled some distance, Qaṣír implored him to return. "No," said Jadhíma, "the affair was decided at Baqqa"—words which passed into a proverb. On approaching their destination the king saw with alarm squadrons of cavalry between him and the city, and said to Qaṣír, "What is the prudent course?" "You left prudence at Baqqa," he replied; "if the cavalry advance and salute you as king and then retire in front of you, the woman is sincere, but if they cover your flanks and encompass you, they mean treachery. Mount al-‘Aṣá"—Jadhíma's favourite mare—"for she cannot be overtaken or outpaced, and rejoin your troops while there is yet time." Jadhíma refused to follow this advice. Presently he was surrounded by the cavalry and captured. Qaṣír, however, sprang on the mare's back and galloped thirty miles without drawing rein.
When Jadhíma was brought to Zabbá she seated him on a skin of leather and ordered her maidens to open the veins in his arm, so that his blood should flow into a golden bowl. "O Jadhíma," said she, "let not a single drop be lost. I want it as a cure for madness." The dying man suddenly moved his arm and sprinkled with his blood one of the marble pillars of the hall—an evil portent for Zabbá, inasmuch as it had been prophesied by a certain soothsayer that unless every drop of the king's blood entered the bowl, his murder would be avenged.
Now Qaṣír came to ‘Amr b. ‘Adí, Jadhíma's nephew and son by adoption, who has been mentioned above, and engaged to win over the army to his side if he would take vengeance on Zabbá. "But how?" cried ‘Amr; " for she is more inaccessible than the eagle of the air." "Only help me," said Qaṣír, "and you will be clear of blame." He cut off his nose and ears and betook himself to Zabbá, pretending that he had been mutilated by ‘Amr. The queen believed what she saw, welcomed him, and gave him money to trade on her behalf. Qaṣír hastened to the palace of ‘Amr at Ḥíra, and, having obtained permission to ransack the royal treasury, he returned laden with riches. Thus he gradually crept into the confidence of Zabbá, until one day he said to her: "It behoves every king and queen to provide themselves with a secret passage wherein to take refuge in case of danger." Zabbá answered: "I have already done so," and showed him the tunnel which she had constructed underneath the Euphrates. His project was now ripe for execution. With the help of ‘Amr he fitted out a caravan of a thousand camels, each carrying two armed men concealed in sacks. When they drew near the city of Zabbá, Qaṣír left them and rode forward to announce their arrival to the queen, who from the walls of her capital viewed the long train of heavily burdened camels and marvelled at the slow pace with which they advanced. As the last camel passed through the gates of the city the janitor pricked one of the sacks with an ox-goad which he had with him, and hearing a cry of pain, exclaimed, "By God, there's mischief in the sacks!" But it was too late. ‘Amr and his men threw themselves upon the garrison and put them to the sword. Zabbá sought to escape by the tunnel, but Qaṣír stood barring the exit on the further side of the stream. She hurried back, and there was ‘Amr facing her. Resolved that her enemy should not taste the sweetness of vengeance, she sucked her seal-ring, which contained a deadly poison, crying, "By my own hand, not by ‘Amr's!"[82]
In the kingdoms of Ḥíra and Ghassán Pre-islamic culture attained its highest development, and from these centres it diffused itself and made its influence felt throughout Arabia. Some account, therefore, of their history and of the circumstances which enabled them to assume a civilising rôle will not be superfluous.[83]
About the beginning of the third century after Christ a number of Bedouin tribes, wholly or partly of Yemenite origin, who had formed a confederacy and called themselves The foundation of Ḥíra. collectively Tanúkh, took advantage of the disorder then prevailing in the Arsacid Empire to invade ‘Iráq (Babylonia) and plant their settlements in the fertile country west of the Euphrates. While part of the intruders continued to lead a nomad life, others engaged in agriculture, and in course of time villages and towns grew up. The most important of these was Ḥíra (properly, al-Ḥíra, i.e., the Camp), which occupied a favourable and healthy situation a few miles to the south of Kúfa, in the neighbourhood of ancient Babylon.[84] According to Hishám b. Muḥammad al-Kalbí († 819 or 821 a.d.), an excellent authority for the history of the Pre-islamic period, the inhabitants of Ḥíra during the reign of Ardashír Bábakán, the first Sásánian king of Persia (226-241 a.d.), consisted of three classes, viz.:—
(1) The Tanúkh, who dwelt west of the Euphrates between Ḥíra and Anbár in tents of camel's hair.
(2) The ‘Ibád, who lived in houses in Ḥíra.
(3) The Aḥláf (Clients), who did not belong to either of the above-mentioned classes, but attached themselves to the people of Ḥíra and lived among them—blood-guilty fugitives pursued by the vengeance of their own kin, or needy emigrants seeking to mend their fortunes.
Naturally the townsmen proper formed by far the most influential element in the population. Hishám, as we have seen, calls them 'the ‘Ibád.' His use of this The ‘Ibád. term, however, is not strictly accurate. The ‘Ibád are exclusively the Christian Arabs of Ḥíra, and are so called in virtue of their Christianity; the pagan Arabs, who at the time when Ḥíra was founded and for long afterwards constituted the bulk of the citizens, were never comprised in a designation which expresses the very opposite of paganism. ‘Ibád means 'servants,' i.e., those who serve God or Christ. It cannot be determined at what epoch the name was first used to distinguish the religious community, composed of members of different tribes, which was dominant in Ḥíra during the sixth century. Dates are comparatively of little importance; what is really remarkable is the existence in Pre-islamic times of an Arabian community that was not based on blood-relationship or descent from a common ancestor, but on a spiritual principle, namely, the profession of a common faith. The religion and culture of the ‘Ibád were conveyed by various channels to the inmost recesses of the peninsula, as will be shown more fully in a subsequent chapter. They were the schoolmasters of the heathen Arabs, who could seldom read or write, and who, it must be owned, so far from desiring to receive instruction, rather gloried in their ignorance of accomplishments which they regarded as servile. Nevertheless, the best minds among the Bedouins were irresistibly attracted to Ḥíra. Poets in those days found favour with princes. A great number of Pre-islamic bards visited the Lakhmite court, while some, like Nábigha and ‘Abíd b. al-Abraṣ, made it their permanent residence.
It is unnecessary to enter into the vexed question as to the origin and rise of the Lakhmite dynasty at Ḥíra. According to Hishám b. Muḥammad al-Kalbi, who gives a list of twenty kings, covering a period of 522 years and eight months, the first Lakhmite ruler was ‘Amr b. ‘Adí b. Naṣr The Lakhmites. b. Rabí‘a b. Lakhm, the same who was adopted by Jadhíma, and afterwards avenged his death on Queen Zabbá. Almost nothing is known of his successors until we come to Nu‘mán I, surnamed al-A‘war (the One-eyed), Nu‘mán I. (circa 400 a.d.). whose reign falls in the first quarter of the fifth century. Nu‘mán is renowned in legend as the builder of Khawarnaq, a famous castle near Ḥíra. It was built at the instance of the Sásánian king, Yazdigird I, who desired a salubrious residence for his son, Prince Bahrám Gór. On its completion, Nu‘mán ordered the architect, a 'Roman' (i.e., Byzantine subject) named Sinimmár, to be cast headlong from the battlements, either on account of his boast that he could have constructed a yet more The Castle of Khawarnaq. wonderful edifice "which should turn round with the sun," or for fear that he might reveal the position of a certain stone, the removal of which would cause the whole building to collapse. One spring day (so the story is told) Nu‘mán sat with his Vizier in Khawarnaq, which overlooked the Fen-land (al-Najaf), with its neighbouring gardens and plantations of palm-trees and canals, to the west, and the Euphrates to the east. Charmed by the beauty of the prospect, he exclaimed, "Hast thou ever seen the like of this?" "No," replied the Vizier, "if it would Nu‘mán becomes an anchorite. but last." "And what is lasting?" asked Nu‘mán. "That which is with God in heaven." "How can one attain to it?" "By renouncing the world and serving God, and striving after that which He hath." Nu‘mán, it is said, immediately resolved to abandon his kingdom; on the same night he clad himself in sackcloth, stole away unperceived, and became a wandering devotee (sá’iḥ). This legend seems to have grown out of the following verses by ‘Adí b. Zayd, the ‘Ibádite:—