ʿUrwah, I send you only a reply—
a word that travels a path unlike your own—

a witness that Muḥammad is a servant and Messenger
of a Lord who neither errs nor deals unjustly.

We have found him a prophet like Moses;
set anyone beside him and he proves the better choice.

Wretched indeed was the plight of Banū Qasī at Wajj
when the fates were being divided.

They squandered their cause; yet every people has a chief,
and the wheel of fortune is always turning.

So we came upon them like lions of the thickets,
God’s soldiers advancing in the open plain.

We bore down on the host of Banū Qasī in such wrath
that we were nearly lifted from the earth.

I swear, had they remained, we would have marched on them
with armies, giving them no chance to slip away.

At Layyah we became its lions until we overran it,
and even the vultures yielded before us.

There had been a day before that, at Ḥunayn—
it cleared while blood was still boiling.

Of all days, none like it has ever been heard,
nor have stout-hearted men known its equal.

Amid swirling dust we struck down the sons of Ḥuṭayṭ
beneath their standards while the horses reared.

Dhu’l-Khimār was no true leader for thinking men,
capable of reward or reprimand.

He held them to the very path of death,
though anyone with sight could see what lay ahead.

Whoever escaped did so gashed and bleeding;
a great many of them were slain.

No languid soul can set affairs aright,
nor the tight-fisted, hoarding miser.

He ruined them, and they let him rule their fate,
while the falcons slipped away to safety.

Steeds pranced beneath the sons of ʿAwf—
for them, chaff and barley are an insult.

Had it not been for Qārib and his kinsmen,
farms and palaces would have been parceled out.

Yet leadership was granted them wholesale,
a happy counsel the adviser proposed.

They obeyed Qārib, though they possessed forebears
and ambitions fit to attain true glory.

If they are guided to Islam, they will remain
the foremost of people as long as night talkers converse.

But if they will not submit, they are sounding the trumpet
of war against God, and they shall find no ally.

Just as the clans of Saʿd and Ḥarb once ground down
Banū Ghaziyyah’s party to nothing,

So the sons of Muʿāwiyah ibn Bakr now seem
like a bleating ewe on its way toward Islam.

We said, “Accept Islam, for we are your brothers;
our breasts are purged of rancor.”

Yet when the people came to us,
after the truce they looked half-blind with spite.