I wash my hands of blaming Ibn Asmāʾ—before Allah I repent of every slight against him.
He is a man whom no mother could bring to shame, and on our side his fathers are the honored, the excellent. (1)

Musʿab ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Zubayrī related: ʿĀʾishah bint Ṭalḥah once said to Kutheyyir ʿAzzah, “What moves you to recite all that poetry about ʿAzzah when she is not possessed of the beauty and grace you portray? Had you said it of me and my peers— for I am nobler, worthier, and fairer than she—” (2)
She only meant to test and probe him.

He answered with these verses:
His heart has come to its senses, O ʿAzzah—or else is near distraction;
by dawn he longs either to cut the bond or somehow change it.
How could one who truly loves ʿAzzah—no idle speaker, no wanton—ever wish to sever?
If a friend renews ties with us only to displace us, we refuse and say, “The Ḥājibiyyah were first!”
We shall repay you with kindness, should you seek our union, and to those same Ḥājibiyyah we are yet more firmly bound.
The tale-bearers told her I had abandoned her; their words loaded her anger upon the howdah. (3)

ʿĀʾishah retorted, “You have made me a confidante, and I am no confidante to you. Why did you not speak as Jamil did? By Allah, he is a better poet than you, when he says:
O Lord, how often one has offered us her company,
blending earnest purpose with the banter of the playful!
I answered her—though first I kept it hidden—
‘My love for Buthaynah keeps me from your union.
Were there in my heart so much as a fingernail’s breadth of space,
I would have come to you, or my letters would have reached you.’” (4)

He replied, “By Allah, I do not deny Jamil’s merit; I am but a single good deed among his good deeds,” and he was embarrassed.

Among the poems Ibn al-Anbārī cited from Kutheyyir ʿAzzah are these lines:
May my father and mother be your ransom, beloved whose foe bewitched her and altered her state!
Women came to me faulting ʿAzzah—may Allah turn their cheeks into sandal-soles!
Allah knows: were they all gathered and she set forth beside them, I would choose her likeness without a moment’s thought.
And if ʿAzzah were to contend with the sun of the forenoon over beauty, any impartial judge would surely rule in her favor. (5)