If a man should laud you but once, (1)
That praise alone spares him the bother of further appeal.
He (Umayyah) composed other panegyrics for him as well.
ʿAbd Allāh ibn Judʿān (2) was one of the renowned paragons of liberality and generosity. He owned a great serving-bowl so wide that a mounted rider could eat from its rim without dismounting, such was its breadth and the abundance of food it held. He would fill it with the finest wheat porridge blended with honey and clarified butter. He freed slaves and assisted people in times of trial.
ʿĀʾishah once asked the Prophet ﷺ, “Will that benefit him?” He answered, “Never, in all his life, did he say, ‘My Lord, forgive me my sin on the Day of Judgment.’” (3)(4)
Among Umayyah’s exquisite verses are these:
[al-Kāmil]
They do not poke the earth in timid supplication, (5)
As beggars scour the ground with sticks in need;
Rather, they lift their faces, and when they ask
You see upon them the fairest hues indeed.
If a destitute man should lodge within their tents,
They send him off the master of bawling herds and singing-maids;
And when you call on them for every grave misfortune,
They blot the very sunlight out with ranks of horse-blades. (6)
End of the biography of Umayyah ibn Abī al-Ṣalt. (7)
(1) His Diwan, pp. 333–335.
(2) This hadith was previously transmitted from Ibn Jud‘ān.
(3) In manuscript B: the expression “he never said ‘on any day of eternity’” is omitted.
(4) Its isnād (chain of transmission) was given above in the biography of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jud‘ān.
(5) Nukāt: the act of probing the earth with a stick; in verb form it appears as mufakkir mahmūm.
(6) His Diwan, pp. 500–502.
(7) In the margin of manuscript B—at the end of the ninth volume of the Musannaf—the following notable addition, cited by Ibn ʿAsākir in his biography of Ṣufwān ibn Umayya, is recorded. Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār narrated from Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan, from Naṣr ibn Muzāḥim, from Maʿrūf ibn Kharrabūdh (may Allah have mercy on him), that Ṣufwān ibn Umayya al-Jadd was one of the ten men, each representing one of the ten leading Qurayshite clans whose nobility peaked in the Jahiliyya and who later embraced Islam: Hashim, Umayya, Nawfal, Asad, ʿAbd al-Dār, Taym, Makhzūm, ʿAdī, Saḥm, and Jumḥ. From each clan came in turn: al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, the pilgrims’ water-bearer; Abū Sufyān ibn Ḥarb; al-Ḥārith ibn ʿĀmir (later corrected by al-Zubayr); ʿUthmān ibn Abī Ṭalḥa; Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq; Yazīd ibn Zumʿa; Khalīd ibn al-Walīd ibn al-Mughīra; ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb; al-Ḥārith ibn Qays; and Ṣufwān ibn Umayya. Ibn Kharrabūdh added that Qurayshite leadership in the Jahiliyya was not hereditary but decided by lot among the male chiefs for battle. On the Day of al-Fijār the lot fell on Saḥm al-ʿAbbās, a youth, who was then set on horseback. When Abū Ṭālib accompanied him they prevailed, but in his absence Kinanah gained the upper hand; they therefore insisted he never be absent, since he “had no father.”