The second of the Muʿallaqāt is by al-Nābighah al-Dhubyānī, whose given name was Ziyād ibn Muʿāwiyah—though some say Ziyād ibn ʿAmr ibn Muʿāwiyah ibn Ḍiḍāb ibn Jābir ibn Yarbūʿ ibn Ghayẓ ibn Murrah ibn ʿAwf ibn Saʿd ibn Dhubyān ibn Baghīḍ.
It opens with the couplet:
O dwelling-place of Mayyah, set high on al-ʿAlyāʾ and the slope—
Desolate you lie; long ages have rolled relentlessly over you.
The third is by Zuhayr ibn Abī Sulmā, Rabiʿah ibn Riyāḥ al-Muzanī, and it begins:
Has any trace of Umm Awfā’s camp survived—mute though it be—
At Ḥawmanat al-Darrāj and al-Mutathallam?
The fourth belongs to Ṭarafah ibn al-ʿAbd ibn Sufyān ibn Saʿd ibn Mālik ibn Ḍubayʿah ibn Qays ibn Thaʿlabah ibn ʿUkābah ibn Ṣaʿb ibn ʿAlī ibn Bakr ibn Wāʾil.
Its opening lines are:
For Khawlah there remain ruins at Burqat Thaḥmad,
Gleaming like the faint scars of tattoos on the back of a hand.
The fifth is the Muʿallaqa of ʿAntarah ibn Shaddād ibn Muʿāwiyah ibn Qurād ibn Makhdūm ibn Rabiʿah ibn Mālik ibn Ghālib ibn Quṭayfah of the clan of ʿAbs.
It begins:
Have the poets left me any crumbling haunt unvisited,
Or did you know the dwelling only after uncertain surmise?
(1) Stated by al-Ṭabarīzī in his Sharḥ al-Qaṣāʾid al-ʿAshr, p. 446.
(2) The patronym Ḍabāb is omitted in manuscript B; in manuscript A it reads “ibn Jābir ibn Ḍabāb.” The genealogy of al-Nābigha appears similarly in Ṭabaqāt Fuḥūl al-Shuʿarāʾ (1: 51), al-Shiʿr wa-l-Shuʿarāʾ (1: 163), al-Āghānī (11: 3), al-Muʾtalif wa-l-Mukhtalif (p. 191), and Jamharat al-Nasab by Ibn Ḥazm (p. 253).
(3) In manuscript B the third verse is attributed to ʿAlqama ibn ʿAbda; Zuhayr then resumes with the fourth, and so on.
(4) Umm ʿAwfā: Zuhayr’s wife. al-Dimna: the tracks left by travelers and the darkened ground where they rested. Hawmānat al-Darāj and al-Mutathallim: two place names.
(5) The term ghalib is an addition in manuscript Ṭ, consonant with the commonly cited genealogy of ʿAntarah. See Ṭabaqāt Fuḥūl al-Shuʿarāʾ (1: 152) and al-Shiʿr wa-l-Shuʿarāʾ (1: 250).
(6) Manuscript B appends after this couplet a popular narrative: it portrays ʿAntarah as Arab by his father and Abyssinian by his mother—hence his dark complexion—leading the masses to mistake him for a slave and call his mother Zubaybah. They even invent a brother named Shaybūb, though no historical source mentions him; in Ibn Khālawiyah’s Sharḥ al-Muʿallaqāt al-Sabʿ the only brother recorded is ʿUtbah. His father, famed for bravery, was nicknamed “the horseman of Jurwa” (the name of his mare), while ʿAntarah himself was celebrated for his unmatched valor. Anecdotes recount him rejecting spoils and besting rivals both in battle and in boasting contests, culminating in this poem—his earliest, according to Ibn Khālawiyah—in which he recalls killing Muʿāwiyah ibn Nazzāl and celebrates his beloved ʿAbla bint Umm al-Haytham. Although al-Asmaʿī and Abū ʿUbaydah offer brief authentic notes on his life, popular storytellers later added numerous apocryphal episodes, such as protracted wars between Rustam and Esfandiyār, kings of Persia…