Ibn Isḥāq said: After they had laid him in his grave, his companions set out and travelled on until they reached the territory of Banū ʿĀmir in the winter season. When they arrived, their clansmen came to them and asked, “What news do you bring, Arbad?” He replied, “Nothing at all. By Allah, he summoned us to worship something—if I had it with me right now, I would shoot it with arrows until I killed it this instant!” A day or two after uttering these words, he went out with a camel he meant to sell; whereupon Allah sent a lightning-bolt upon him and upon his camel, and it consumed them both.
Ibn Isḥāq also said: Arbad ibn Qays was a maternal half-brother of the renowned poet Labīd ibn Rabīʿah. Labīd mourned Arbad with the following verses (metre: al-munsariḥ):
Death strips away every soul—
neither a compassionate father nor a child is spared.
I fear the destined ends that hover over Arbad,
not the sinister rising of Simāk or the Lion stars.
O eyes, why did you not weep for Arbad
when we rose, and the women rose, their hearts racked with grief?
If men stir up a tumult, he pays it no heed;
when they seek equity in judgment, he deals it out with perfect justice.
Sweet-natured and discerning—yet in that sweetness
there lies a subtle bitterness deep within the vitals.
O eyes, why did you not weep for Arbad
when the winter winds bent the sturdy boughs,
And the milk-laden she-camel stood dry and barren
once the last traces of plenty had slipped away?
Braver than a well-fed lion in the thicket,
ever eager for lofty deeds and daring assaults.
No eye could encompass all of his aspirations
on a night when the noble steeds returned streaked with sweat.