I counseled you on the Day of Dhī Ṣanʿāʾ with advice whose right path was evident;
I urged you to fear God and to pursue the good you had pledged.
You set out, carried away by empty wishes, like a donkey deceived by the bray of its mate.
You hoped to confront me astride a steed whose rider is a lion,
While I was clad in a coat of mail like a swelling river whose waters run clear after the torrent.
It turns back the spear with its tip bent, deflecting repeated, well-aimed thrusts.
Had you faced me, you would have met a lion beneath his matted mane;
You would have met a savage beast, thick-clawed, its shoulders jutting.
He matches any rival—should an opponent draw near, he seizes him;
He grabs him, lifts him high, flings him down, and splits him apart;
He smashes his skull, shatters him, pulverizes him, then swallows him—
A tyrant, pagan in his cruelty, toward all that his fangs and hands seize.
Ibn Isḥāq continues: ʿAmr ibn Maʿdi-Karib remained among his people, the Banū Zubaid, under the authority of Farwah ibn Musayk. When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ passed away, ʿAmr ibn Maʿdi-Karib apostatized along with those who apostatized, and he lampooned Farwah ibn Musayk, saying—in the wāfir metre:
(1) Tataʿaddahu: equivalent to taltazimuhu.
(2) In Muḥaqqiq al-Shiʿr (p. 87), quoting al-Maimānī: “This is a proverb: ‘ʿayr ʿārah wa-tidduh—ʿārah: he destroyed it.’ The origin of the proverb is that a man, pitying his donkey, tied it to a stake; a predator then attacked it, preventing it from fleeing, and killed it with the very thing meant to protect it.”
(3) al-Mufāḍah: the broad shield. al-Nahī (with kasrah on n and fatḥ on h): a pool of water. al-Judūd: firm ground. The poet likens the shield to the pool in its smoothness and evenness.
(4) ʿAwāʾir: things scattered in flight. al-Qasd (pl. quṣūd): fragments broken off a spear.
(5) In Muḥaqqiq al-Shiʿr (p. 88), quoting al-Khashnī: “al-Shanab: that which remains attached to its base. ‘Shaʾn’: thick fingers. al-Birāthn: in beasts what fingers are in humans. Nāshiz: elevated. al-Kand (with fatḥ on t and kasrah on d): the part between the shoulders.”
(6) Yaʿtaḍiduhu: he seizes him under the arm to bring him down.
(7) Yaqtaṣiduhu: he kills him.
(8) Yadmaghu: he strikes his skull; yakhḍimuhu: he devours him; yuzirdahu: he swallows him.
(9) There are five additional verses by ʿAmr that the author did not include.
(10) Sīrah Ibn Hishām, vol. 2, pp. 584–585.
(11) Poetry of ʿAmr ibn Maʿd Yakrib, p. 123, with a variant reading; also in Sīrah, vol. 2, p. 585, and its commentary by Abū Dharr al-Khashnī (pp. 444–445).