So rise, offer prayer to your Lord, and seek blessing
by the corners of this Sacred House set between the rugged hills. (1)
For you witnessed from it both trial and confirmation
on the morning Abū Yaksum, leader of battalions, drew near. (2)
His vanguard bivouacked on the open plain at nightfall,
while his infantry manned the slingers atop the lofty passes. (3)
Then, when the help of the Lord of the Throne reached you,
the Sovereign’s hosts drove them back with sweeping wind and pelting stones. (4)
They wheeled about in frantic flight, and no Abyssinian returned
to his own people save in scattered bands.
If you perish, we perish as well—and the pilgrimage seasons
by which men live would perish too; this is no lie. (5)

The War of Dāhis (6), mentioned by Abū Qays in his poetry, was a celebrated episode of the pre-Islamic era. Its cause, according to Abū ʿUbaydah Maʿmar ibn al-Muthannā and others, was as follows:

A horse named Dāhis, owned by Qays ibn Zuhayr ibn Jadhīmah ibn Rawāḥah of Ghatafān, was matched in a race against a mare belonging to Ḥudhayfah ibn Badr ibn ʿAmr ibn Jawayyah (7), also of Ghatafān, called al-Ghabrāʾ. Dāhis came in first, whereupon Ḥudhayfah ordered that she be struck on the face. Mālik ibn Zuhayr leapt up and slapped al-Ghabrāʾ; Ḥamal ibn Badr then rose and slapped Mālik. Later Abū Junaydib al-ʿAbsī met ʿAwf ibn Ḥudhayfah and killed him, and a man from Banū Fazārah afterwards encountered Mālik and killed him. War therefore flared between Banū ʿAbs and Fazārah. Ḥudhayfah ibn Badr, his brother Ḥamal ibn Badr, and many others were slain, and a vast corpus of verse was composed about the conflict—too extensive to cite here.

Ibn Hishām (8) states: It is also said that Qays released Dāhis and al-Ghabrāʾ, whereas Ḥudhayfah released al-Khaṭṭār and al-Ḥanāfāʾ, though the first version is the sounder.

He further says: As for the War of Ḥāṭib, it concerns Ḥāṭib ibn al-Hārith ibn Qays ibn Hayshah ibn al-Hārith ibn Umayyah ibn Muʿāwiyah ibn Mālik ibn ʿAwf ibn ʿAmr ibn ʿAwf ibn Mālik of the Aws. He had slain a Jew who was a neighbor of the Khazraj, so Yazīd (9) ibn al-Hārith ibn Qays ibn Mālik ibn Aḥmar ibn Ḥārithah ibn Thaʿlabah ibn Kaʿb ibn [Mālik ibn Kaʿb] (10) came out against him.