and laid siege to al-Ḥajjāj. His wife, Ghazāla, had no equal in courage, and a poet lampooned al-Ḥajjāj, saying (1):

“You are a lion when you meet me, yet in battle an ostrich—
long-necked, you bolt at the mere whistle of the whistler!
Why did you not step out to face Ghazāla in the fray?
Nay, your heart was fluttering between a bird’s two wings.”

Shabīb’s mother, Jahīza (2), was also present on the battlefield.

A man said, “I saw Shabīb enter the mosque, and the whole building kept trembling for him. He was wearing a long cloak (ṭayālisah).
He was tall, grizzled with grey, curly-haired, and brown-skinned (3).”

Shabīb drowned during the fighting on the Dujayl (4) in the year 77 AH; he was fifty-one years old.

It is related that ʿItbān the Harūrī came before ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān, who said to him, “Are you the one who recited:

If among you were Marwān and his son, and ʿAmr, and among you were Hāshim and Ḥabīb,
then from us are Ḥuṣayn, al-Baṭīn, and Qaʿnab, and—from us—‘Commander of the Faithful,’ Shabīb?

He replied, “I only said, ‘and—from us—O Commander of the Faithful, Shabīb,’ as a form of vocative address.” This explanation pleased ʿAbd al-Malik, and he set him free (5).