from his misdeeds; and may Allah pardon him, overlook his faults, and accept from him the hardships he endured while confronting the enemy. He passed away in Farghānah, on the farthest frontier of Khurāsān, in Dhū al-Ḥijjah of this very year, at the age of forty-eight. His father, Abū Ṣāliḥ Muslim, had been killed fighting at the side of Muṣʿab b. al-Zubayr. Qutaybah’s tenure over Khurāsān lasted ten years. One of the poets lamented him—this is the elegy of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Jumānah al-Bāhilī—who said:
It is as though Abū Ḥafṣ Qutaybah had never marched
an army against an army, nor mounted the pulpit;
No banners ever fluttered while the men around him
stood poised, nor did the people behold his hosts arrayed.
Death summoned him; he answered his Lord’s call
and went to the Gardens—chaste and purified.
Since Muḥammad, Islam has not been bereaved
of one like Abū Ḥafṣ—so weep for him, O ʿAbhar! (1)
The poet surely exaggerated in his closing verse; ʿAbhar is the name of Qutaybah’s son.

Ṭirimmāḥ composed the following verses about the battle in which Qutaybah was killed at the hands of Wakīʿ b. Abī Suwd:
Had it not been for the horsemen of Madhḥij—his son (2)
Madhḥij—and the Azd, the ranks would have been shaken and the camp despoiled;
The lands would have been torn apart for them, and not one
would have returned to the folk of Iraq with news;
The bond of unity then swelled in pride (3), disdaining
the caliph’s command and making the forbidden lawful;
They were the people who slew Qutaybah by force
while the horses, neck-deep in dust, bolted beneath them. (4)
On the meadow—the Meadow of China—where
the sons of Muḍar of Iraq learned who was the greater and the mightier;
Rabiʿah, in terror, entered into full alliance,
while Muḍar and all who clung to her were scattered;
The Azd of Iraq and Madhḥij advanced,
gathered for death by their primordial father;
Qaḥṭān struck the head of every mailed warrior,
their swords shielding their sight even as they saw not;
And the Azd know that beneath their banner
lie a royal throne and a crimson death;
By our honor the Prophet Muḥammad was aided,
and by us the pulpit was secured in Damascus. (5)

Ibn Jarīr (6) has recounted this episode in great detail and cited a large collection of poetry concerning it. Al-Qāḍī Ibn Khallikān (7) likewise reports that Jarīr composed an elegy for Qutaybah b. Muslim—may Allah have mercy on him, pardon him, honor his resting place, and forgive him—as follows: