I said: By “Sakhīnah” he means Quraysh; the Arabs used to call them by that name because they alone, unlike most people of the desert, could regularly eat hot food. Allah knows best.

Ibn Isḥāq said: Kaʿb ibn Mālik also recited (in the Kāmil metre):

White she-camels, their humps towering, penned in lofty folds,
wide-girthed, their udders running over with milk;

like the lūb breed whose copious yield—pails brimming and bowls heaped—
is lavished on neighbour, cousin, and every passing guest.

Frisky weanlings too, sleek as free-grazing deer,
fattened on barley fodder and freshly-cut forage;

the rib-roasts first were stripped of flesh, then the plump haunches,
backs laid bare, every limb and joint carved clean.

Led in single file, they answer the drovers’ cry at dawn
and, like trained hounds, are brought home at the evening call.

One moment they ring the household herds in guard;
next, they fell the foe and return with captured spoil.

Fiercer than wild beasts, they scatter ranks when battle flares,
grim-visaged, foam-flecked, their noble stock plain to see.

They grazed in quiet pasture till they grew deep-bodied and stout,
yet the tender young remain light of shank and swift.

At dawn they sally forth in double-quilted coats,
carrying spears perfectly trued upon the straightening fire;

keen swords, their polishers having stripped away the sheaths,
and every gallant warrior of illustrious line.

He joins his right hand to a supple, well-balanced shaft,
its deadly thrust entrusted to the smith Khabbāb;

and a bright, blue-tinged lance whose glitter down the shaft
looks in pitch-dark night like a shooting star.

A battalion whose rolling dust conceals its ranks,
whose array turns back the biting barbs of arrows;

a compact, close-packed phalanx whose spears, wherever they mass,
resemble the bristling thickets of a darkened wood.

They rally beneath the banner whose shade, on its straight Khattī pole,
is like the shadow cast by an eagle in flight.

They wearied Abū Karib, they wearied the kings of Tubbaʿ,
and their boldness would not yield to the nomad Arabs.

We have exhortations from our Lord that guide us,
in a radiant tongue clothed in garments of spotless purity;

they were presented to us and we longed to repeat them
after they had been presented to the Confederates;

wisdoms which, in the sinners’ eyes, seem narrow and constricting,
yet people of understanding grasp them with ease.

Sakhīnah came, seeking to contend with its Lord—
but any who challenges the All-Subduer will surely be subdued.

Ibn Hishām said: A reliable source told me, reporting from ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbbād ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr, that when the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, heard this verse, he said to Kaʿb:

“Allah has thanked you, O Kaʿb, for these words of yours.”