15 – Al-ʿAbbās ibn Hishām ibn Muḥammad narrated to us; he said: Hishām ibn Muḥammad narrated to me; he said: al-Maʿrūf ibn Kharbūdh narrated to us; he said:

Banū Sahm ibn ʿAmr were the mightiest and most numerous clan in Mecca. They possessed a boulder by a mountain called Muslim. Whenever they meant to embark upon some affair, their herald would cry out, “Yā Ṣabāhāh!” (“O morning raid!”), and they themselves would say, “Night has turned to day.” Quraysh would remark, “What is the matter with these mayāshīm—what do they want?” and that nickname stuck to them.

Among the tribe was a family known as Banū al-ʿAytala, in whom lay both distinction and high-handedness. Al-ʿAytala was the daughter of Mālik ibn al-Ḥārith of Banū Kināna and, further back, of Banū Sabuq ibn Murra. Qays ibn ʿAdī ibn Saʿd ibn Sahm married her, and she bore him al-Ḥārith and Ḥudhāfa. Treachery and oppression were counted among their traits.

On one occasion a man from them killed a snake and was found dead on his bed the next morning. Enraged, they went and slew every snake in the dwelling, only to awaken and find an equal number of their people dead on their beds. They then hunted the snakes through the valleys and ravines and killed them, yet by the following morning the same number of them had perished as the snakes they had slain. A voice among them cried, “Show yourselves to us, O company of jinn!” ⦗64⦘

An unseen caller answered with these lines:

Sahm says: “You slew in arrogance, so we repaid you with sweeping death.
Sahm says: You multiplied and grew insolent, yet death overtakes every lofty one.”

Thereupon they desisted, held back, and their numbers dwindled.