the Fazārī, a Kūfan, and one of the foremost aristocrats. He was the nephew of ʿUyaynah ibn Ḥiṣn, one of the muʾallafah qulūbuhum (those whose hearts were reconciled to Islam).
Asmāʾ transmitted hadith from ʿAlī and Ibn Masʿūd. Narrating from him were his own son Mālik and ʿAlī ibn Rabīʿah.
About him al-Qaṭamī (1) said:
Should Ibn Khārijah ibn Ḥiṣn die,
may the sky never again rain upon the earth;
may no courier return with the spoils of an army,
and may women bear no children conceived in purity. (2)
The hadith scholar Marwān ibn Muʿāwiyah ibn al-Ḥārith ibn ʿUthmān ibn Asmāʾ ibn Khārijah al-Fazārī related:
“I went to al-Aʿmash, stated my lineage to him, and he said, ‘Your grandfather Asmāʾ once divided up some booty. He forgot a neighbor of his and felt ashamed to have already given to others, so he went to the man and poured money over him in heaps. Would you do the same?’ ”
Abū Isḥāq narrated from Abū al-Aḥwaṣ: “Asmāʾ ibn Khārijah once boasted…”
(1) ʿUmayr ibn Shiyam ibn ʿAmr ibn ʿAbbad, of the clan of Jusham ibn Bakr, kunya Abū Saʿid al-Taghlibi; “al-Qatami” is the sobriquet by which he became known. Ibn Sallam writes that he was a first-rate poet, refined in expression and agreeable in verse; al-Akhtal, however, enjoys wider renown and greater poetic strength.
Two oft-quoted lines of his read:
“People, when they encounter a fortunate man, address him with whatever he wishes, while the errant one is cursed.”
“Slow deliberation may secure part of one’s aim, whereas haste is often accompanied by error.”
Source: Ibn Sallam, Tabaqat fuhul al-shuʿaraʾ, pp. 535, 540.
(2) Ibn Sallam (p. 539) attributes both lines to al-Qatami, yet they are absent from his Dīwān and its appendix. They appear, with two additional verses ascribed to al-Akhtal, in Tahdhib Ibn ʿAsakir 3/42, Hamāsat Ibn al-Shajari pp. 108–109, Ansab al-ashraf 11/249, and Fawat al-wafayat 1/168, but are likewise missing from al-Akhtal’s Dīwān. The same couplets are attributed to ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayri al-Asadi in al-Wahshiyyat, no. 904, and in al-Aghani 4/246, while al-ʿIqd al-farid 3/290 cites them without any attribution.