The doomed of the House of Hāshim seek shelter with him, and when they are with him they live amid bounty and favor.
By my life, Asid—and Bakr alongside them—have sped headlong into hatred of us, repaying our kindness as one feeds a ravenous beast.
Neither ‘Uthmān nor Qunfudh held back from attacking us; they only carried out the dictates of those clans,
obeying Ubayy and that son of ‘Abd Yaghūth of theirs, giving no heed to any plea made on our behalf.
So it was with Subay‘ and Nawfal: each turned away, offering not the least courtesy.
Yet if we catch them—or if God delivers them into our grasp—we shall repay them measure for measure, bushel for bushel.
That Abū ‘Amr would have nothing but our ruin, resolved to drive us off to dwell among people of sheep and camel.
Morning and evening he whispers against us. Whisper on, Abū ‘Amr—then plot your treachery!
He swears to us by God that he does not assail us; yet we see him openly, without the slightest disguise.
His hatred of us has narrowed every pass of the land for him, from the twin ridges to the rugged gorges.
Ask Abū al-Walīd what gift you have granted us by striving against us, aloof like a sly deceiver.
You were once a man whose judgment sustained life, whose mercy reached us—you are no ignoramus.
So, ‘Utbah, pay no heed to the words of a spiteful backbiter—jealous, lying, hateful, and full of guile.
Abū Sufyān likewise passed me by in disdain, like a haughty chieftain strutting with grand boasts,
fleeing to Najd and the coolness of its waters, all the while claiming that I have not turned a blind eye to you.
(1) In manuscript Ḥ and in Ibn Hishām’s Sīrah it appears as fahm (“mercy”). The reading thaml is the one attested in Ḥ.
(2) Asīd is the son of Abū al-ʿIyāṣ ibn Umayya ibn ʿAbd Shams, and Bukrah is his son ʿAtāb, as recorded in Ibn Hishām, Sīrah (vol. 1, p. 282).
(3) “al-shāʾ wa-al-shawā” is a collective noun analogous to al-bāqir and al-baqīr; no singular is formed directly from its root. When referring to a single sheep, they say shāh, which is unrelated to this root—evidenced by the diminutive shawayha and the plural shiyāh. Likewise, al-jāmil is a collective noun like al-bāqir. (al-Rawḍ, 2/26)
(4) In manuscript Ṭ it reads khāʾil with an emphatic khāʾ; the reading is confirmed by Ḥ and by Ibn Hishām’s Sīrah. al-ḥāʾil means the barrier or partition between two things.
(5) Manuscript Ḥ reads harshab; the reading is attested in Ṭ and in Ibn Hishām’s Sīrah. By akhshub he intended al-akhāšib (the mountains of Mecca) but wrote akhshab as with ajbāl, although nouns may pluralize by omitting extra letters (as in its diminutive). al-majādil, the plural of mijdal (“palace”), apparently alludes to those between Mecca’s mountains and the palaces of Syria or Iraq. The fāʾ in famajādil denotes continuity, unlike wāw—for example, one says “we rained between Mecca fa-al-Madīnah” to express rain extending from one to the other; a wāw would not convey this. (al-Rawḍ, 2/26–27)
(6) Manuscript Ḥ reads bisāʿika fī tafrīqinā kal-mukhātil; this is confirmed by Ṭ and by Ibn Hishām’s Sīrah.
(7) al-daghāwil: “the disasters” (al-dawāhī); it has no singular form, nor does al-ghawāʾil. Cf. Taj al-ʿArūs (under ghawl).
(8) Manuscript Ḥ reads yahunnu ilā Najd (“he yearns for Najd”).