Guillaume--Life of Muhammad.pdf - Radical Truth

4 22 The Life of Muhammad
When hearts are moved by fear,
Advancing and encouraging us so that we should not be disobedient,
Like the full moon that cannot lie.
When he appeared we followed him and held him true.
They called him liar so we are the happiest of the Arabs.
They wheeled and we wheeled, they did not reform or return
While we followed them in unwearying pursuit.
The two armies had nothing in common,
God's party and the men of polytheism and idols (65 1 ).'
'Abdullah b. Rawal,la said (652):
My eye wept and right well it did so
(But what avails weeping and lamentation),
For God's lion on the day that they saId
'Is that slain man l:iarnza?'
All the Muslims were distressed thereat;
The apostle too suffered.
o Abu Ya'la,' your pillars were shattered,
You the noble, just, bounteous onc.
God's peace on you in paradise
With everlasting felicity!
o Hashim, the best men, be steadfast
Whose every deed is fine and laudable. 3
God's apostle is patient, noble,
Whenever he speaks 'tis by God's command.
Will someone tell Lu'ayy for me
(For after today war's fortune will change,
And previously they have known and tasted of
Our fighting in which vengeance was slaked),
You have forgotten our blows at Badr's pool
When swift death came to you t
The morn that Abii Jahllay prostrate,
The vultures wheeling and circling over him.
'Utba and his son fell together
And Shayba whom the polished sword bit.
We left Umayya stretched on the ground,
A huge lance in his belly.
Ask the skulls of Banii Rabi'a,
For our swords were notched by them.
Weep, 0 Hind, grow not weary,
For you are the bereaved one in tears for a lost son.
I These two poems are in sharp contrast. The first is a fine example of the old Arabian
spirit; the second belongs to the large category of the spurious, and clearly dates from a
lat~r;:.kunya of l;Iamza. 3 cr. Suras 38. 47. 8; u. 18. 83·
The Life of Muhammad
Show not joy at ljamza's death, 0 Hind,
For your boasting is contemptible.
Ka'b b. Malik said:
Say to Quraysh despite their distance,
Do you boast of what you have not won?
You boast of the slain on whom the favours
Of Him who grants the best favours have fallen.
They dwell in gardens and have left waiting for you
Lions who protect their cubs,
To fight for their religion, in their midst
A prophet who never recedes from the truth.
Ma'add attacked him with infamous words
And the arrows of enmity unceasingly (653).
Oirar b. al-Khanab:
What ails thine eye which sleeplessness affects
As though pain were in thine eyelids?
Is it for the loss of a friend whom you hold dear
Parted by distance and foes?
Or is it because of the mischief of a useless people
When wars blaze with burning heat?
They cease not from the error they have committed.
Woe to them! No helper have they from Lu'ayy.
We adjured them all by God,
But neither kinship nor oaths deterred them;
Till finally when they determined on war against us
And injustice and bad feeling had grown strong,
We attacked them with an army
Flanked by helmeted strong mailed men
And slender horses sweeping along with warriors
Like kites, sO smooth was their gait;
An army which ~akhr' led and commanded
Like an angry lion of the jungle tearing his prey.
Death brought out a people from their dwellings,
We and they met at Ul,lud.
Some of them were left stone dead
Like goats which the hail has frozen to the cold ground.
Noble dead, the Banii'l-Najjar in their midst
And Mu~'ab with broken pieces of our shafts around him
And I:Iarnza the chief, prostrate, his widow going round him.
His nose and liver had been cut away. It was
As if when he fell he bled beneath the dust
Transfixed by a lance on which the blood had dried.
I
i.e. Abu Sufyin.