If unalloyed treachery is what delights you,
then make for al-Rajīʿ and ask about the dwellings of Banū Lihyān.
A people who egg one another on to devour a neighbour—
for dog, monkey, and man to them are all the same.
Were a he-goat to find a tongue one day,
it would rise to address them, honoured among them, held in esteem.

Hassān ibn Thābit likewise lampooned Hudhayl and Banū Lihyān for their betrayal of the men of al-Rajīʿ—may Allah be pleased with them all:

(Tawīl metre)

1. By my life, Hudhayl, son of Mudrik, has been disgraced
   by the stories told of Khubayb and ʿĀṣim.
2. The tales of Lihyān reek with their vileness;
   Lihyān are marauders, doers of the vilest crimes.
3. Within the core of their own folk they rank no higher
   than downy fluff that trails behind the flight-feathers.
4. On the day of al-Rajīʿ they broke their pledged trust,
   betraying a man of chastity and noble qualities.
5. Treacherously they stabbed the envoy of Allah’s Messenger;
   Hudhayl has never shrunk from monstrous violations.
6. Yet they shall taste defeat one day—
   the very one they shield more jealously than their women will be slain.
7. Swarms of fierce hornets hovered over his corpse,
   guarding the flesh of a martyr hardened in great battles.
8. May Hudhayl, for this outrage, behold their own slain,
   corpses in heaps or at least a house of mourning.
9. We will strike them a blow of overwhelming might,
   whose tale riders will carry to the pilgrims of every season.
10. All by the command of Allah’s Messenger; his envoy judged
    with the resolve of a shrewd commander, well versed in Lihyān.
11. A clan to whom loyalty means nothing;
    wronged though they be, they never fend off an oppressor’s hand.
12. When people camp in the open plain you find them
    squatting in the flood-run between the crags.
13. Their dwelling is the abode of ruin, and their counsel,
    when calamity strikes, is the counsel of beasts.

Hassān—may Allah be pleased with him—also praised the martyrs of al-Rajīʿ, naming them one by one, as related by Ibn Isḥāq:

(Kāmil metre)

1. May God send blessings on those who advanced in succession
   on the day of al-Rajīʿ—honoured and rewarded they were.
2. Marthad led the detachment, their commander;
   Ibn al-Bukayr was at their fore, and with them Khubayb.
3. A son of Ṭāriq, and Ibn Dathinah as well—
   his appointed death then overtook him.
4. And ʿĀṣim, slain beside their watering-place at al-Rajīʿ,
   won lofty honours, for honours were ever his prize.
5. He kept the enemy from reaching his back
   while he fought on—truly a man of noble stock.