each competitor seeks to take first place; if he fails to do so, he tries for the rank immediately below the front-runner.

These ten terms⦗1⦘ designate the successive positions in a race; the fiskil is the one who finishes last, after whom no one comes.

Later on, this vocabulary was employed figuratively outside the sphere of horse-racing. It is related that Asmāʾ bint ʿUmays first married Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib, by whom she bore ʿAbd Allāh, Muḥammad, and ʿAwn. She then married Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq and bore Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr, and after his death she married ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib. She said, “Three men whose last is you are surely the noblest.” He then said to her children, “Your mother has made me the fiskil.”⦗2⦘

If the stake-setter were to award the musallī more than the sabiq, or the tālī more than the musallī, or if he were to give the musallī nothing at all, the agreement would be invalid, because that would lead the competitors to aim not for the lead but for a later position, thereby frustrating the very purpose of the contest.