"O the good knight ye left low at Rakhmán, Thábit son of Jábir son of Sufyán! He filled the cup for friends and ever slew his man."[252]
"As a rule the Arabian dirge is very simple. The poetess begins with a description of her grief, of the tears that she cannot quench, and then she shows how worthy to be deeply mourned was he whom death has taken away. He is described as a pattern of the two principal Arabian virtues, bravery and liberality, and the question is anxiously asked, 'Who will now make high resolves, overthrow the enemy, and in time of want feed the poor and entertain the stranger?' If the hero of the dirge died a violent death we find in addition a burning lust of revenge, a thirst for the slayer's blood, expressed with an intensity of feeling of which only women are capable."[253]
Among Arabian women who have excelled in poetry the place of honour is due to Khansá—her real name was Khansá. Tumáḍir—who flourished in the last years before Islam. By far the most famous of her elegies are those in which she bewailed her valiant brothers, Mu‘áwiya and Ṣakhr, both of whom were struck down by sword or spear. It is impossible to translate the poignant and vivid emotion, the energy of passion and noble simplicity of style which distinguish the poetry of Khansá, but here are a few verses:—
Death's messenger cried aloud the loss of the generous one, So loud cried he, by my life, that far he was heard and wide. Then rose I, and scarce my soul could follow to meet the news, For anguish and sore dismay and horror that Ṣakhr had died. In my misery and despair I seemed as a drunken man, Upstanding awhile—then soon his tottering limbs subside."[254]
Yudhakkiruní ṭulú‘u ’l-shamsi Ṣakhran wa-adhkuruhú likulli ghurúbi shamsi.
"Sunrise awakes in me the sad remembrance Of Ṣakhr, and I recall him at every sunset."
To the poets who have been enumerated many might be added—e.g., Ḥassán b. Thábit, who was 'retained' by the The last poets born in the Age of Paganism. Prophet and did useful work on his behalf; Ka‘b b. Zuhayr, author or the famous panegyric on Muḥammad beginning "Bánat Su‘ád" (Su‘ád has departed); Mutammim b. Nuwayra, who, like Khansá, mourned the loss of a brother; Abú Miḥjan, the singer of wine, whose devotion to the forbidden beverage was punished by the Caliph ‘Umar with imprisonment and exile; and al-Ḥuṭay’a (the Dwarf), who was unrivalled in satire. All these belonged to the class of Mukhaḍramún, i.e., they were born in the Pagan Age but died, if not Moslems, at any rate after the proclamation of Islam.
The grammarians of Baṣra and Kúfa, by whom the remains of ancient Arabian poetry were rescued from oblivion, arranged Collections of ancient poetry. and collected their material according to various principles. Either the poems of an individual or those of a number of individuals belonging to the same tribe or class were brought together—such a collection was called Díwán, plural Dawáwín; or, again, the compiler edited a certain number of qaṣídas chosen for their fame or excellence or on other grounds, or he formed an anthology of shorter pieces or fragments, which were arranged under different heads according to their subject-matter.
Among Díwáns mention may be made of The Díwáns of the Six Poets, viz. Nábigha, ‘Antara, Ṭarafa, Zuhayr, ‘Alqama, Díwáns. and Imru’u ’l-Qays, edited with a full commentary by the Spanish philologist al-A‘lam († 1083 a.d.) and published in 1870 by Ahlwardt; and of The Poems of the Hudhaylites (Ash‘áru ’l-Hudhaliyyín) collected by al-Sukkarí († 888 a.d.), which have been published by Kosegarten and Wellhausen.