the very same gift he had given the rest of the delegation.

When ʿAmr ibn al-Ahtam learned that Qays had spoken of him in derision, he answered with the following lampoon (basīṭ metre):

You spent the day sprawled on a rough-haired mat, reviling me
before the Prophet—yet you neither spoke the truth nor hit the mark.
We left your vaunted glory limp and motionless,
while your glory, bared of its teeth, now crouches upon its tail.

Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Bayhaqī relates—through the chain of Yaʿqūb ibn Sufyān, Sulaymān ibn Ḥarb, Ḥammād ibn Zayd, and Muḥammad ibn al-Zubayr al-Ḥanẓalī—that:

Al-Zibrīqān ibn Badr, Qays ibn ʿĀṣim, and ʿAmr ibn al-Ahtam came to the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him. The Prophet said to ʿAmr, “Tell me about al-Zibrīqān; as for this one”—meaning Qays—“I do not need to ask you,” for he already knew Qays.

ʿAmr replied, “He is obeyed by those near him, formidable when opposed, and a shield for those behind him.”

Al-Zibrīqān objected, “He has spoken, yet he knows I am greater than what he described.”

ʿAmr retorted, “By Allah, I have only known you to be niggardly in virtue, narrow-spirited, the son of a fool and the nephew of a base man.”

Then he added, “O Messenger of Allah, I spoke the truth in both instances: when he pleased me I said the best I knew of him; when he angered me I said the worst I knew.”

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ remarked, “Indeed, some eloquence is a kind of magic.”

In this chain the report is mursal. Al-Bayhaqī adds: it has also been transmitted with a connected chain. Abū Jaʿfar Kāmil ibn Aḥmad al-Mustamlī informed us; Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿUthmān al-Baghdādī narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥasan al-ʿAllāf of Baghdad narrated to us; ʿAlī ibn Ḥarb al-Ṭāʾī narrated to us; Abū Saʿd al-Haytham ibn Maḥfūẓ reported to us, from Abū al-Muqawwim Yaḥyā ibn Yazīd al-Anṣārī, from al-Ḥakam [ibn ʿUtaybah], from Miqsam, from Ibn ʿAbbās, who said: “He sat…”