12 – ʿAbbās ibn Hishām ibn Muḥammad related to me, from his father, from his grandfather, from Abū Ṣāliḥ, who said:

Oppression was once mentioned in the presence of Ibn ʿAbbās. He said, “The first person whom oppression destroyed after the son of Adam was Iyād ibn Nizār, together with two clans ⦗59⦘ of the Ashʿarites. One of the two was called al-Aysar—namely, al-Hunayk ibn al-Jamāhir ibn al-Ashʿar ibn Adad—and the other was Dhukhrān ibn Nāḥiya ibn al-Jamāhir ibn al-Ashʿar.”

He continued, “Al-Aysar lived to a great age, until he fathered twenty sons, and every one of those sons in turn fathered twenty sons. Dhukhrān ibn Nāḥiya, the nephew of al-Hunayk, reached seventy years of age without a single child being born to him.

“Dhukhrān once sat with al-Hunayk in silence. Al-Hunayk said to him, ‘By Allah, you have no offspring; your years have slipped away, and you are left with no posterity.’ Dhukhrān rose, angered and deeply stung by al-Hunayk’s words, and he composed the following couplet:

[Baṣīṭ metre]
If al-Aysar now enjoys abundant wealth,
I, the son of Nabt, possess no share of riches.

“Later Dhukhrān was visited in a dream and was asked, ‘Make a wish.’ He replied, ‘I wish for many sons, and for valour to run in my line.’ He lived on until twenty sons were born to him, and each of those sons fathered twenty sons. Meanwhile the sons of al-Hunayk died out, and posterity remained with the descendants of Dhukhrān.”

Hishām added, “The Ashʿarite was nicknamed Nabt; hence Dhukhrān’s words:

‘I, the son of Nabt, possess no share of riches.’