—and your tents pitched at the winding bend of al-Liwā have been worn away with a wearing that no dwelling-place has ever suffered.
It was also said that his people took him on pilgrimage so that he might visit the Prophet ﷺ and make supplication. When they reached Minā he heard someone cry out, “O Layla!” He instantly fainted, and his father wept over him. When he came round he recited:
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A herald called out while we were in al-Khayf of Minā, and—without knowing—he set the quivering strings of my heart aflame. (1)
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He called the name Layla, though he meant another, and at the word “Layla” it was as though he loosed a bird that had long been caged inside my breast. (2)
She too was distraught at their parting and wasted away.
Another report states that his father once chained him; he began to gnaw the flesh of his own arms and throw himself about, so his father released him. He wandered into the wilderness, was later found dead, and was carried back to the tribe. They washed him, buried him, and the women and young men wept for him in large numbers.
Yet another account says that he lived on the wild herbs of the land; the desert beasts grew familiar with him. He would be seen in Najd and roamed as far as the borders of Syria.
His poetry is plentiful—among the most delicate and melodious ever composed. He lived during the reigns of Yazīd and Ibn al-Zubayr.
2 – Abū Muslim al-Khawlānī ʿAbd Allāh ibn Thawb* (M, 4)
al-Dārānī, leader of the Successors and ascetic of his age.