He replied, “He did not lie; this is indeed that spring of Ḍārij—or Ḍārij, as you call it—right here.” We looked and found the water no more than fifty cubits away. We crawled toward it on our knees, and, just as Imruʾ al-Qays had said, its surface was covered with duckweed while patches of shade drifted over it.

The Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—then said:

“Such a man is renowned in this world yet forgotten in the Hereafter, distinguished here yet insignificant there. In his hand is the banner of the poets, and he will lead them into the Fire.”

Al-Kalbī relates that when Banū Asad killed the father of Imruʾ al-Qays, the latter set out with his standards to fight them. On the way he passed through Tabālah, where the idol Dhū al-Khulaṣah stood and where the Arabs used to seek omens by casting lots. He cast the lots once, twice, and a third time, and each time the arrow of prohibition appeared. Enraged, he smashed the arrows, struck them against the face of Dhū al-Khulaṣah, and cried, “May you bite your father’s manhood! Had it been your father who was slain, you would not have hindered me.” He then raided Banū Asad and slaughtered them mercilessly.

Ibn al-Kalbī adds that no one again sought omens at Dhū al-Khulaṣah until the coming of Islam.

Some report that Imruʾ al-Qays once praised Caesar, the Byzantine emperor, seeking military aid and supplies. When he failed to obtain what he hoped for, he lampooned him instead. It is said that Caesar then had him poisoned, and that death overtook him beside the grave of a woman near a mountain called ʿAsīb. There he wrote:

O neighbour of mine, the visit is surely near,
And I shall remain as long as ʿAsīb stands here.
O neighbour of mine, we are both strangers in this place;
And every stranger to a stranger is akin by grace.

They further relate that the Seven Muʿallaqāt were once suspended upon the Kaʿbah. Whenever an Arab composed a qasīdah, he would present it to Quraysh; if they approved it, they hung it on the Kaʿbah in veneration of its excellence. Thus the Seven Muʿallaqāt came to be gathered.

The first of these is by Imruʾ al-Qays ibn Ḥujr al-Kindī, mentioned above, and it opens with the lines:

Stop, let us weep for the memory of a beloved and a dwelling-place
At the rim of the Liwā, between al-Dukhūl and Ḥawmal.