You loosed lions upon jet-black dogs; their scattered runaways now wander the earth, broken and undone.

So drink in happiness—may the crown rest easily upon your head—and make for yourself, on Ghamdān’s summit, a dwelling firmly established.

Drink again with delight, for their fortune has flown; to-day let the hems of your twin robes sweep the ground.

Such are true deeds of nobility, not two bowls of milk thinned with water, only to end up, later on, as nothing but waste.

It is said that Ghamdān is a palace in Yemen, built by Yaʿrub ibn Qaḥṭān, completed after him, and later occupied by Wāʾilah ibn Ḥimyar ibn Sabaʾ. It is also reported that it rose twenty stories high—Allah knows best.

Ibn Isḥāq said: ʿAdī ibn Zayd al-Ḥimyari—who belonged to Banū Tamīm—recited:

Ever since Sanaʿa’s day none has dwelt there
but governors of a realm whose bounty is unstinting.

He who built it raised it to graze the ragged rain-clouds,
and musk-scented are the chambers within.

Ringed by mountains, beyond the reach of plotters—
no climber can master its soaring crests.

Within its walls the singer’s voice finds friendship
when, toward evening, the reed-player answers him.

Destiny brought to it the armies of the freeborn;
its horsemen arrived in serried companies.

Pack-mules, laden with doom, were sent ahead,
while their drivers urged them on;

until the chieftains saw it from the rim of al-Manqal—
its columns a single, verdant mass.