Ibn al-Madīnī said, “Sālim never met ʿĀʾishah, but he did meet Ibn ʿAbbās, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr, al-Mughīrah ibn Shuʿbah, Ibn ʿUmar, and a number of others.”
45 – ʿAdiyy ibn al-Riqāʿ al-ʿĀmilī
The poet. He composed panegyrics for al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik and traded satires with Jarīr ibn al-Khaṭafā. It is also said that he was afflicted with leucoderma, yet he was a prodigy in poetry.
46 – As for ʿAdiyy ibn Zayd ibn al-Ḥimār al-ʿIbādī, the Tamīmī, the Christian: he was a pre-Islamic poet, one of the master poets; I mention him here only to differentiate between the two names. He is counted among the four great poets, namely himself, Ṭarafah ibn al-ʿAbd, ʿAbīd ibn al-Abraṣ, and ʿAlqamah ibn ʿAbadah. The author of al-Aghānī, however, records his grandfather’s name as al-Khumār, with a khāʾ that carries a ḍammah.
He is the one who said:
“Where are the dwellers from the people of Noah—
then ʿĀd after them, and Thamūd?
Where are our fathers, and where are their sons?
Where are their fathers, and where the grandfathers?”
(*) Al-Aghani 8/172, 177; al-Muʾtalif wa-l-Mukhtalif, p. 116; al-Marzubani, p. 253; Tarikh al-Islam 4/150; Tabaqat Ibn Sallam, pp. 88–89; al-Ishtiqaq, p. 225; Simt al-Lali, p. 309; Khizanat al-Adab 4/470; Sharh al-Shawahid, p. 168; al-Shiʿr wa-l-Shuʿaraʾ 2/618, 621. These sources add: “He was an accomplished poet, and no one described a gazelle more beautifully than he did,” quoting the following lines:
Like a peerless young gazelle that grazes / over her own land, its barren flats and trysting-grounds.
The flash of lightning has tinted the curve of her brow / where her twin horns and slender neck have rubbed.
As adornment brightens a bride’s face / once shyness fades and she toys with her admirer,
She drives on a slim one whose tapering tail / is like the nib of a pen freshly dipped in ink.
(* *) Tabaqat Ibn Sallam, p. 31; Tarikh Khalifa, pp. 482–483; al-Shiʿr wa-l-Shuʿaraʾ 1/225, 233; Al-Aghani 2/97; Simt al-Lali, p. 221; Ibn al-Athir 1/483, 485; al-Lubab 1/111; Tarikh al-Islam 4/151; Maʿahid al-Tansis, 139, 145; Bulugh al-Arab 2/262, 265; Shuʿaraʾ al-Jahiliyyah, 439, 474; Khizanat al-Adab 1/183, 186.