from Ḥuṣn, through his grandfather Ḥumayd ibn Munhib, who said:

I heard my grandfather Khuraym ibn Aws ibn Ḥārithah ibn Lām say: I emigrated to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ when he was returning from Tabūk. I then heard al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib say, “O Messenger of Allah, I would like to recite some lines in your praise.” The Messenger of Allah ﷺ replied, “May Allah never break a tooth in your mouth.” So he said:

(from the metre al-munsariḥ)

Before all this you were already pure, sheltered in the shade,
in a secure abode where leaves were sewn together for cover.
Then you came down to the earth—still no human being,
not yet a morsel of flesh, not yet a clot of blood;
Rather, a drop that sailed upon the Ark
when Noah’s people and the tyrant flood were muzzled and drowned.
You were borne from loin to womb; whenever one world passed away,
another era rose to take its turn.
Until the Protector gathered you in the loftiest line of Khindif,
beneath whose eminence noble tongues would speak.
And when you were born, the earth shone bright,
and by your light the horizons gleamed.
Within that radiance and that light we journey still,
cleaving our way along the paths of guidance.

Al-Bayhaqī also transmits the report through another route, from Abū al-Sukayn Zakariyyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Ṭāʾī, in a separate booklet narrated from him. He adds:

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ then said, “The gleaming white city of al-Ḥīrah has been shown to me, and there is Shaymāʾ daughter of Buqaylah al-Azdiyyah, riding a dapple-gray mule, her head wrapped in a black veil.”

I asked, “O Messenger of Allah, if we enter al-Ḥīrah and find her exactly as you describe, will she be mine?” He said, “She is yours.”

When the Ridda (apostasy) erupted, not a single man of the tribe of Ṭayyʾ fell away. We fought the Arab tribes around us in defense of Islam: we fought Qays, in whose ranks was ʿUyaynah ibn Ḥiṣn; we fought Banū Asad, among whom was Ṭulayḥah ibn Khuwaylid. Khālid ibn al-Walīd would praise us, and among the verses he composed about us were:

(from the metre al-ṭawīl)

May Allah reward the people of Ṭayyʾ in their homeland
with the finest recompense won where heroes clash.
They are the bearers of banners of generosity and liberal giving
whenever the east wind bends each and every tent.
They struck Qays for the sake of the faith after they
had answered a caller to darkness and blind confusion.

Khālid then marched against Musaylimah the Liar and we went with him. Once Musaylimah was dealt with, we headed toward the region of Basrah. At Kāẓimah we encountered Hormuz leading an army larger than ours; no one on earth was more hostile to the Arabs and to Islam than Hormuz. Khālid rode out, invited him to single combat, met him, and killed him. He dispatched the news to al-Ṣiddīq, who granted him Hormuz’s personal spoils. The value of Hormuz’s helmet alone was one hundred thousand dirhams—for when a man attained high rank among the Persians, they fashioned his helmet worth a hundred thousand.

We then took the route of al-Ṭaff toward al-Ḥīrah. The first person to meet us on entering was Shaymāʾ daughter of Buqaylah—just as the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had described: “riding a dapple-gray mule, her head wrapped in a black veil.” I seized hold of her and said, “This one—the Prophet granted her to me.”