among the Arabs. He resided in Wādī al-Qurā and the surrounding region ⦗1⦘. Jamil was chaste, circumspect, devout, and stout-hearted—a poet of striking eloquence, indeed one of the most articulate poets of his age. Kuthayyir ʿUzzah was his rāwiyah (the one who preserved and recited his verse), while Jamil himself transmitted lines from Hudbah ibn Khushram, who drew from al-Ḥuṭayʾah, from Zuhayr ibn Abī Sulmā, and from Zuhayr’s son Kaʿb.
Kuthayyir ʿUzzah said, “Jamil was the finest poet of the Arabs when he declared:
Eight informants ⦗2⦘ have told me that Taymāʾ is a home
for Laylā whenever summer lets fall its anchors.
Now the summer months have slipped away from us;
why, then, does separation still shoot its shafts at a prize already won? ⦗3⦘
Among his other verses are:
And you have not ceased, O Buthaynah, until—were I ⦗4⦘
to make the doves weep from longing—they would weep for me.
The tale-bearers have only increased my passion,
and the many who forbid me have but made me persist the more.
The distance forced between us has brought no forgetfulness,
nor have the long nights bred any aversion ⦗5⦘.
Do you not know, sweet-lipped one, that I remain parched
whenever I fail to behold your face?
I fear that death may come upon me unawares
while needs I have of you stay just as they are.
Al-Qāḍī Ibn Khallikān records for him in al-Wafayāt ⦗6⦘ the following lines:
I surely keep your secret, and it delights me—would that you knew—⦗7⦘
whenever you are mentioned for something good.
A day may come when no messenger from you reaches me,
or when we meet and the day seems to me as long as months.
Would that I might meet sudden death
if the day of our meeting is not destined!
My heart will love you as long as I live; and should I die,
my echo will follow your echo among the graves.
I look to you for the promise you made
the way a pauper looks to a wealthy, generous patron ⦗8⦘.
The promise you offer is but like the lightning
of a rain-cloud that never pours.
He also said:
A poem has been transmitted from ʿUmar ibn Abī Rabīʿah, as quoted by Ibn ʿAsākir ⦗9⦘: