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Prominent Murder Victims of the Pre- and Early Islamic Periods
Including the Names of Murdered Poets
Copyright © 2021. BRILL. All rights reserved.

section one

The Near and Middle East

Edited by

Maribel Fierro (Madrid)

M. Şükrü Hanioğlu (Princeton)
Renata Holod (University of Pennsylvania)
Florian Schwarz (Vienna)

volume 150
Copyright © 2021. BRILL. All rights reserved.

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ho1

Muḥammad Ibn Ḥabīb (d. ah 245/ad 860)

Introduced, Edited, Translated from the Arabic, and Annotated by

Geert Jan van Gelder

leiden | boston

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Muḥammad ibn Ḥabīb, -860, author. | Gelder, G. J. H. van, editor. |

Muḥammad ibn Ḥabīb, -860. Asmāʼ al-mughtālīn.
Title: Prominent murder victims of the pre- and early Islamic periods including
the names of murdered poets / by Muḥammad Ibn Ḥabīb (d. ah 245/ad 860) ;
introduced, edited, translated from the Arabic, and annotated by Geert Jan van
Gelder.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2021. | Series: Handbook of Oriental studies.
Section one, The Near and Middle East, 0169-9423 ; 150 | Includes
bibliographical references and indexes. | Bilingual Arabic edition of Asmāʼ
al-mughtālīn with English translation.
Identifiers: lccn 2020052769 (print) | lccn 2020052770 (ebook) |
isbn 9789004446342 (hardback) | isbn 9789004446359 (ebook)
Subjects: lcsh: Islamic Empire–Biography–Early works to 1800. | Murder victims–
Islamic Empire–Biography–Early works to 1800. | Poets, Arab–Islamic
Empire–Biography–Early works to 1800.
Classification: lcc ds38.4.a2 m83513 2021 (print) | lcc ds38.4.a2 (ebook) |
ddc 362.88/293092256–dc23
lc record available at https:///lccn.loc.gov/2020052769
lc ebook record available at https:///lccn.loc.gov/2020052770

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface.

issn 0169-9423
isbn 978-90-04-44634-2 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-44635-9 (e-book)

Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
Copyright © 2021. BRILL. All rights reserved.

without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be
addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Preface vii

Introduction 1
1 The Author 1
2 Sources on Ibn Ḥabīb 5
3 Works 6
4 The Book on Prominent Murder Victims and Poets Who Were Killed 9
5 Editions 21
6 The Translation 25
7 Transliteration 26
8 Abbreviations in the English 27
9 Abbreviations in the Notes to the Arabic Text 27

Text and Translation 29

Bibliography 347
List of Sections 362
Index of Persons, Tribes, Nations, Groups 366
Geographical Index 378
Index of Rhymes ‫ فهرست القوافي‬381
Copyright © 2021. BRILL. All rights reserved.

Having collaborated happily and fruitfully with others for many years—with
Gregor Schoeler and the editors of the Library of Arabic Literature on Abū l-ʿAlāʾ
al-Maʿarrī’s Risālat al-ghufran (The Epistle of Forgiveness), with Emily Selove on
Abū l-Muṭahhar al-Azdī’s Ḥikāyat Abī l-Qāsim al-Baghdādī (The Portrait of Abū
l-Qāsim al-Baghdādī), with Emilie Savage-Smith and some six others on Ibn
Abī Uṣaybiʿah’s ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ (A Literary History of Medicine)—I deemed the
time had come to work on some other text wholly, or almost wholly, by myself.
This has obvious advantages and equally obvious disadvantages that need not
be spelled out. Where some scholars (notably American ones) profusely thank
scores of individuals (including extended family and sometimes pets) by name
in their prefaces, forewords, and acknowledgements (once I counted 99 per-
sons), I name only a handful. My wife, Sheila Ottway, read and corrected my
English; Anna Livia Beelaert (Leiden), very helpfully tried to make sense of an
obscure, garbled verse in some kind of Persian. During a brief visiting profess-
orship at Leiden University I had the privilege and pleasure to contribute to
a course for ma students designed and taught by Peter Webb, whose work on
brigand poets (ṣaʿālīk, futtāk) naturally overlapped with mine on murderers
and their victims.
It should not be necessary to justify the choice of Muḥammad ibn Ḥabīb’s
book, written at some time in the middle of the ninth century. Murder is a
perpetually fascinating subject. Ibn Ḥabīb’s entertaining book, although occa-
sionally used by historians, is not very well known, even though it is among the
earliest Arabic sources, and it has never been translated. It is full of interesting,
often lively stories, replete with incident, oddities, pithy sayings, and poetry.
Unencumbered by long, scholarly chains of authority, free of over-ornate lan-
guage or tedious and tendentious moralising, it is a work of literature as well as
of history.
I thank Kathy van Vliet-Leigh (Brill) for her encouragement since the
moment I told her about my work on the book; Abdurraouf Oueslati (Brill)
for pleasant and effective email contact; an anonymous reader for some useful
Copyright © 2021. BRILL. All rights reserved.

suggestions; and Cas Van den Hof (TAT Zetwerk) for his expert and meticulous
typesetting.

Geert Jan van Gelder

Haren, the Netherlands, December 2020

1 The Author

Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Ḥabīb was born at an unknown date probably in
Baghdad and he died in Samarra (on the Tigris some 125 km north of Bagh-
dad), for a while the residence of the Abbasid caliphs during the third/ninth
century, on 23 Dhū l-Ḥijjah of the year 245 of the Hijra, corresponding with
21 March 860.1 Some sources have a slightly longer lineage for him: Muḥammad
ibn Ḥabīb ibn Umayyah ibn ʿUmar (or ʿAmr),2 but others say that Ḥabīb was not
his father but his mother.3 Being called after one’s mother is somewhat unusual,
in Arabic or English (there are Johnsons and Harrisons but no Janesons or Har-
rietsons), but in Arabic, though uncommon, it is not exactly rare.4 It could
mean that his father was unknown or a nobody. Ibn Ḥabīb was a muʾaddib
(tutor) and an expert in genealogy (ansāb), historical accounts (akhbār), lexico-
graphy (lughah), poetry, and tribal history. A much earlier Ibn Ḥabīb, a prom-
inent grammarian and philologist from Basra, Yūnus ibn Ḥabīb, who died at
an advanced age c. 182/798, is also said to have been called Ibn Ḥabīb after his
mother.5
Although he obviously knew a lot about Arab tribes, we do not know if he
himself belonged to one; he is called a mawlā, client or freedman, attached
to a branch of the Abbasid dynasty, the family of al-ʿAbbās ibn Muḥammad
ibn ʿAlī,6 so it is possible that he was not ethnically an Arab. Ḥabīb (which
means “Beloved”, male or female) can be a woman’s name as well as a man’s

1 The year ah 245 is given by all sources that give a death date, except Ibn Shākir, ʿUyūn al-
tawārīkh, 405 who gives 250 (ad 864–865).
2 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist (Sayyid), i, 327–329; Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, xviii, 113; al-Suyūṭī, Bugh-
yah, i, 73.
3 Abū l-Ṭayyib al-Lughawī, Marātib, 152; Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist (Sayyid), i, 328; Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-
udabāʾ, xviii, 112 and other sources. Abū l-Ṭayyib adds that Ḥabīb, being a feminine name, is
of the so-called diptote declination (lā yuṣrafu, implying that the fully inflected form would
Copyright © 2021. BRILL. All rights reserved.

be Ibnu Ḥabība rather than Ibnu Ḥabībin if Ḥabīb had been the father).
4 See Levi Della Vida, “Muḥammad Ibn Ḥabīb’s ‘Matronymics of Poets’ ”.
5 Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, vii, 248, al-Ṣafadī, Wāfī, xxix, 382. On Yūnus ibn Ḥabīb (a mawlā, like
Muḥammad ibn Ḥabīb) see ei2, s.v. (R. Talmon), Sezgin, Geschichte, viii, 57–58, ix, 49–51, xvi,
271–272.
6 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist (Sayyid), i, 328 mentions the Banū l-ʿAbbās ibn Muḥammad (i.e., the
sons of al-ʿAbbās ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-ʿAbbās, the last one being the
eponymous ancestor of the dynasty); on this al-ʿAbbās ibn Muḥammad, who died in 185/801
or 186/802, see al-Ṣafadī, Wāfī, xvi, 638.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004446359_002

name (as, for instance, in the case of his contemporary, the Andalusian scholar
ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Ḥabīb, who died in Cordova in 253/853), but one is temp-
ted to believe the view that Ḥabīb was Muḥammad’s mother and not his
father. This would go some way towards explaining his extraordinary interest in
mothers. Among his shorter works are Man nusiba ilā ummihī min al-shuʿarāʾ
(“Poets Who are Traced to their Mother”); Alqāb al-shuʿarāʾ wa-man yuʿrafu
minhum bi-ummih (“Nicknames of Poets and Those of them who are Known by
their Mother’s Name”); Ummahāt al-Nabī (“The Prophet’s Female Ancestors”);
Ummahāt aʿyān Banī ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (“The Female Ancestors of the Lead-
ing Members of the Banū ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib”); Ummahāt al-sabʿah min Quraysh
(“The Female Ancestors of the Seven of Quraysh”). His book al-Muḥabbar also
has many sections on women, such as wives, mothers, and female relatives of
famous men.7
Generally, a muʾaddib or tutor had a higher status than a muʿallim, a school-
teacher. In an anecdote about Ibn Ḥabīb, however, it seems that he equates
himself, self-deprecatingly, with the despised muʿallim:8

Ibn Ḥabīb said, “If you ask a man, ‘What’s your job?’ and he answers,
‘Schoolteacher (muʿallim)’, then box his ears!”; and he quoted:
A schoolteacher always remains a schoolteacher
even if “he taught Adam all the names”.9
Whoever teaches infants is made infantile by them,
even sons of caliphs and princes.

In al-Qifṭī’s al-Inbāh this anecdote is told by a certain Abū Ruʾbah, who says,
“I went over to Ibn Ḥabīb in Mecca, while he was teaching the children of al-
ʿAbbās ibn Muḥammad. He said ‘If you ask a man …’ ” There are, however, no
indications that Ibn Ḥabīb ever taught in Mecca and it appears that fī Makkah
is a copyist’s or editor’s error for fī maktabihī, “in his school”, or “classroom”, as
in the versions of Yāqūt’s Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, Ibn Shākir’s ʿUyūn al-tawārīkh, and
al-Ṣafadī’s Wāfī.
Copyright © 2021. BRILL. All rights reserved.

7 See Lichtenstädter, “Muḥammad Ibn Ḥabîb and his Kitâb al-Muḥabbar”, 13–14.
8 Al-Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas, 321; the anecdote is also in Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, xviii, 112;
Ibn al-Qifṭī, Inbāh, iii, 121; Ibn Shākir, ʿUyūn al-tawārīkh, 405; al-Ṣafadī Wāfī, ii, 326. The verb
anshada (“he recited” or “he quoted”) leaves it undecided whether he quoted someone else or
was himself the poet. The former is perhaps more likely, since no other poetry by Ibn Ḥabīb
is known, despite his great knowledge of poetry. A different version of the two lines is quoted,
also anonymously, at the court of caliph al-Wāthiq (r. 227–232/842–847), see al-Iṣfahānī, Agh-
ānī, ix, 236, al-Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas, 223.
9 cf. Q al-Baqarah 2:31.

Perhaps his works, including his book on murder victims, Asmāʾ al-mughtā-
līn, were commissioned by his Abbasid patrons, as education for their sons.
The books on horses (al-Khayl) and plants (al-Nabāt) are lost but it is likely
that they were lexicographical, as was his work on obscure words in the Hadith
(Gharīb al-Ḥadīth), also lost. His short lexicographical monograph Khalq al-
insān (Human Anatomy), however, is extant and has been published; it is a
pioneering work in its use, apparently for the first or almost the first time, of
an alphabetical arrangement.10
Apart from being a private tutor, he also taught larger circles. Thaʿlab, a fam-
ous grammarian who died in 291/904 at the age of almost 90, relates that he
attended a session (majlis) of Ibn Ḥabīb and was surprised that he did not dic-
tate his material:11

I said, “Come on, dictate! Why don’t you?” But he didn’t, and in the end
I left. By God, he was someone who had memorized a great deal and he
was trustworthy. Yaʿqūb [Ibn al-Sikkīt] was more knowledgeable than Ibn
Ḥabīb, but the latter knew more about genealogy and historical accounts.

A different account of the same is related by Abū l-Ṭayyib al-Lughawī (d. 351/
962):12

Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid told us: Thaʿlab told us: Once I came past a
session of Ibn Ḥabīb in the Friday Mosque. I went to join it and sat down,
while he was dictating. But when I was seated he stopped dictating. “Go
on,” I said, “with what you were doing!” But he replied, “With you present?
By God, I shall not!”

A yet fuller version is offered by al-Zubaydī (d. 379/989):13

Abū l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā [Thaʿlab] said, I went to Muḥammad ibn
Ḥabīb, for I had heard that he was dictating the poetry of Ḥassān ibn
Copyright © 2021. BRILL. All rights reserved.

10 Baalbaki, The Arabic Lexicographical Tradition, 151, 155–156, 330–331.

11 Thaʿlab, Majālis, 131; also quoted in al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Madīnat al-Salām, iii, 88–89, Ibn
al-Qifṭī, Inbāh, iii, 120.
12 Abū l-Ṭayyib al-Lughawī, Marātīb, 153.
13 Al-Zubaydī, Ṭabaqāt, 139–140, also in Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, xviii, 114–115, al-Qifṭī, Inbāh,
iii, 120. The anecdote continues with Ibn Ḥabīb being asked a question about an expres-
sion in a line of poetry, which he was unable to answer properly, unlike Thaʿlab who
proffered an explanation. After this, Ibn Ḥabīb gave up his sessions.

Thābit.14 But when he became aware I was present he stopped dictating. I

left and then returned; I was friendly to him and he dictated. He used not
to sit in the Friday Mosque and I reproached him for that, but he refused.
It was only after my persisting that he had sessions in the Friday Mosque,
where people gathered.

His reputation is generally high, yet there is at least one report of his unscru-
pulous attitude as a scholar. Although Muḥammad ibn ʿImrān al-Marzubānī
(d. 394/993), quoted by Yāqūt, calls Ibn Ḥabīb’s books “sound” (ṣaḥīḥah),15 he
also relates: “It is said that Ibn Ḥabīb raided other people’s books and claimed
them as his, omitting their names”.16 A gross example of such plagiarism is
given, involving the wholesale copying and appropriating of a work by the
obscure Ismāʿīl ibn Abī ʿUbayd Allāh. Al-Marzubānī continues:

I do not know of any scholar who did such a thing, or who would deem it
right to lower himself to this ugly level. I think that what brought him to
this was the fact that the book by Ismāʿīl was not often transmitted and
not widely in the possession of literate people, so that Ibn Ḥabīb guessed
that his doing would not be revealed and his plagiarism would obliterate
his colleague’s name.17

Very little about his personal life is known. That he is called Abū Jaʿfar shows
that he had at least one son.18

14 Ḥassān ibn Thābit was the first major poet who supported the prophet Muḥammad.
Copyright © 2021. BRILL. All rights reserved.

15 Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, xviii, 112.

16 Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, xviii, 113; Ibn al-Qifṭī, Inbāh, iii, 121; al-Ṣafadī, Wāfī, ii, 326; al-
Suyūṭī, Bughyah, i, 73.
17 Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, xviii, 113.
18 Ḥājjī Khalīfah, Kashf al-ẓunūn, col. 167–168 mentions “Abū Muḥammad Jaʿfar ibn Muḥam-
mad ibn Ḥabīb al-Baghdādī, who died in ah 245” as the author of a work on proverbial
sayings on the pattern afʿal. But this work is ascribed to Muḥammad ibn Ḥabīb in other,
older sources such as Ibn al-Nadīm’s Fihrist (see below), and this Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad
ibn Ḥabīb may be spurious.

2 Sources on Ibn Ḥabīb19

The following is a list, arranged chronologically, of the main sources about Ibn
Ḥabīb and his works, indicating whether or not his book on murder victims
(here abbreviated as am) is mentioned.

Abū l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā Thaʿlab (d. 291/904), al-Majālis [The Sessions],
131.
ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Muʿtazz (d. 296/908), Ṭabaqāt al-shuʿarāʾ [The Classes of
Poets], mentions him as a source on Abbasid poets, 341, 359, 417.
Abū l-Ṭayyib al-Lughawī (d. 351/962), Marātib al-naḥwiyyīn [The Ranks of Gram-
marians], 152–153 (no mention of am).
Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī (d. c. 363/972), al-Aghānī [(The Book of ) Songs], quotes
Ibn Ḥabīb many times as a source.
Abū Bakr al-Zubaydī (d. 379/989), Ṭabaqāt al-naḥwiyyīn [The Classes of Gram-
marians], 139–140 (no mention of am).
Ibn al-Nadīm (d. c. 380/990), al-Fihrist [The Catalogue] (ed. Flügel) 106–107, (ed.
Sayyid) i, 327–329, in the chapter on historians (akhbāriyyūn) and genealo-
gists (nassābūn); see below for the book list given for Ibn Ḥabīb. am is listed
as Maqātil al-fursān.
al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (d. 463/1071), Tārīkh Madīnat al-Salām [The History of
Baghdad], iii, 87–88 (no mention of am).
Yāqūt (d. 626/1229), Muʿjam al-udabāʾ [Dictionary of Literary Men], xviii, 112–117,
quoting al-Marzubānī,20 al-Zubaydī, and Ibn al-Nadīm (lists am as Maqātil
al-fursān).
Ibn al-Qifṭī (d. 646/1248), Inbāh al-ruwāh ʿalā anbāʾ al-nuḥāh [Informing Trans-
mitters about the Accounts of Grammarians], iii, 119–121 (no mention of am).
Ibn Shākir al-Kutubī (d. 764/1364), ʿUyūn al-tawārīkh (ah 219–250) [Highlights
of Histories], 405–406 (lists am as Maqātil al-fursān).

19 Modern sources on Ibn Ḥabīb include: ei2, vii, 401–402 (Ilse Lichtenstädter); Brockel-
mann, Geschichte, i, 106, Supplement, i, 165–166; Sezgin, Geschichte, i (mentioning him as
Copyright © 2021. BRILL. All rights reserved.

source of Aghānī: 80, 250, 179, 180n; 310); idem, Geschichte, ii (see index); idem, Geschichte,
vii, 347; idem, Geschichte, viii, 90–92; idem, Geschichte, xvi, 154–158 (158 on am), 280–
281; Lichtenstädter, “Muḥammad Ibn Ḥabîb and his Kitâb al-Muḥabbar”; Levi Della Vida,
“Muḥammad Ibn Ḥabīb’s ‘Matronymics of Poets’”; Bray, “Lists and Memory: Ibn Qutayba
and Muḥammad b. Ḥabīb” (see pp. 221–226 on Ibn Ḥabīb’s al-Muḥabbar; she mentions
am, calling it a “booklet”, in a note, 230–231); Tayyara, “Ibn Ḥabīb’s Kitāb al-Muḥabbar and
its Place in Early Islamic Historical Writing” (it does not mention am).
20 Yāqūt is quoting no doubt from al-Marzubānī’s al-Muqtabas, which is preserved only in
its abridged form entitled Nūr al-qabas, in which Ibn Ḥabīb does not have an entry.

al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1363), al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt [The Completion of the Obituaries],

ii, 325–327 (lists am as Maqātil al-fursān).
al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), Bughyat al-wuʿāh fī ṭabaqāt al-lughawiyyīn wa-l-nuḥāh
[The Desire of the Attentive: On the Classes of Lexicographers and Grammari-
ans], i, 73–74 (lists am as Maqātil al-fursān).
Ḥājjī Khalīfah (d. 1068/1657), Kashf al-ẓunūn ʿan asāmī l-kutub wa-l-funūn [Dis-
pelling Doubts about the Names of Books and Disciplines], col. 1778–1779
(Maqātil al-fursān).
ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Baghdādī (d. 1093/1682), Khizānat al-adab wa-lubb lubāb lisān
al-ʿArab [The Treasury of Erudition and the Prime of the Pith of the Arabic Lan-
guage], mentions and quotes from K. al-Maqtūlīn ghīlatan i, 24, 53 (on ʿĀmir
ibn Juwayn, am §79), ii, 271–272 (on Ṭasm and Jadīs, am § 3), xi, 270–271 (on
ʿAmr ibn Masʿūd and Khālid ibn Naḍlah, am § 13), and from K. Man qutila min
al-shuʿarāʾ ii, 104 (on Suḥaym ʿAbd Banī l-Ḥasḥās, am § 118), 217 (on ʿAbīd ibn
al-Abraṣ, am §81), iv, 441 (on Bishr ibn Abī Khāzim, am § 83).

3 Works

Among Muḥammad ibn Ḥabīb’s books are several important historical sources,
notably his al-Muḥabbar and al-Munammaq, both of which have been pre-
served and have been published. The latter is devoted to the members of
Quraysh, the tribe of the Prophet. Al-Muḥabbar is essentially a book of lists,
of genealogy and categories of people, with sections on the most diverse pre-
Islamic and early Islamic topics. Ibn Ḥabīb is not afraid to include lists that
contain only one member, as was observed by Albrecht Noth and Julia Bray:21
an extreme case that does not apply to the present book about murderers. Ibn
al-Nadīm’s al-Fihrist (The Catalogue) lists the following titles by Ibn Ḥabīb:

al-Amthāl ʿalā afʿal wa-yusammā l-Munammaq [on proverbial expressions of

the form “more so-and-so than …”; obviously not the work published as al-
Munammaq. Partly published in Majallat al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿIrāqī 4 (1956)
by Muḥammad Ḥamīd Allāh (not seen)]
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al-Nasab [on genealogy]

al-Suʿūd wa-l-ʿUmūr [“Saʿds and ʿAmrs”. The editions by Flügel and Sayyid have
al-Suʿūd wa-l-ʿumūd, of uncertain meaning, which is copied by Yāqūt and

21 Noth, The Early Arabic Historical Tradition (tr. Michael Bonner), 97, mentioned in Bray,
“Lists and Memory”, 227 note 4.

al-Ṣafadī. I follow Sezgin, Geschichte, xvi, 157 in taking it to be about tribal

names involving the two very common names Saʿd and ʿAmr.22]
al-ʿAmāʾir wa-l-Rabāʾiʿ23 [ fī l-nasab] [on genealogy; it may be a similar work on
two common names. The singular of ʿAmāʾir could be ʿAmīrah or ʿUmārah,
that of Rabāʿiʾ is Rabīʿah]
al-Muwashshaḥ [subject unknown]
al-Muʾtalif wa-l-mukhtalif [ fī l-nasab] [On genealogy; probably an excerpt of
K. al-Qabāʾil al-kabīr. Published by F. Wüstenfeld in 1850 and by Ibrāhīm al-
Abyārī in 1980]
al-Muḥabbar [published by Ilse Lichtenstädter]
al-Muqtanā [subject unknown]
Gharīb al-Ḥadīth [on strange words in the Hadith]
al-Anwāʾ [on the “rain stars” and traditional Arab meteorology]
al-Mushajjar [subject unknown]24
al-Muwashshā [subject unknown]
Man ustujībat daʿwatuh [on those whose prayers (or summons?) were an-
swered]
al-Mudhahhab fī akhbār al-shuʿarāʾ wa-ṭabaqātihim [on the lives of poets]
Naqāʾiḍ Jarīr wa-ʿUmar ibn Lajaʾ [the flytings of Jarīr and ʿUmar ibn Lajaʾ]
Naqāʾiḍ Jarīr wa-l-Farazdaq [the flytings of Jarīr and al-Farazdaq, transmitted
from Abū ʿUbaydah; published by A.A. Bevan]
al-Mufawwaf [subject unknown]
Tārīkh al-khulafāʾ [history of the caliphs]
Man summiya bi-bayt qālahū [on those called after a verse they composed]
Maqātil al-fursān [on the killings of heroes]. This is clearly the book presented
here, which is in fact a combination of two works: Asmāʾ al-mughtālīn min
al-ashrāf fī l-Jāhiliyyah wa-l-Islām [The Names of Prominent Murder Victims
of the Pre- and (Early) Islamic Periods] and Asmāʾ man qutila min al-shuʿarāʾ
[The Names of those Poets who were Killed].
Alqāb al-shuʿarāʾ [wa-man yuʿrafu minhum bi-ummih] [on the nicknames of
poets and those called after their mother; published by ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn]
Copyright © 2021. BRILL. All rights reserved.

22 On ʿUmūr and Suʿūd as possible plurals of ʿAmr and Saʿd, both extremely common per-
sonal names, see Sībawayh, Kitāb, ii, 96–97. Compare e.g. Ibn Ḥabīb, Munammaq, 148,
where someone asks, “Who are the Saʿds (al-Suʿūd)? Saʿd of Tamīm, Saʿd of Hawāzin, Saʿd
of Hudhaym, Saʿd of Bakr?”
23 Thus ed. Flügel and Yāqūt; Sayyid’s edition of al-Fihrist has al-rawābil, in al-Ṣafadī, Wāfī it
is al-r.bāʿ, and in Ibn Shākir, ʿUyūn it is al-riyāḥ.
24 The term mushajjar, derived from shajarah, “tree”, is sometimes used for works written
in tree format. Rosenthal, History of Muslim Historiography, 97, thinks Ibn Ḥabīb’s work
could have been an early example of a genealogical book in tree format.

Kunā l-shuʿarāʾ [wa-man ghalabat kunyatuhū ʿalā ismih] [on the paedonymics
(names beginning with Abū) of poets and those whose paedonymic pre-
vailed over their given name; published by ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn]
al-ʿAql [The usual sense of ʿaql is “intelligence, reason”, but in view of Ibn
Ḥabīb’s interests a less common meaning, “bloodwit”, seems more likely.]
al-Simāt [on brand marks25]
Ummahāt al-Nabī [on the female ancestors of the Prophet; facsim. of ms pub-
lished by Ḥasan ʿAlī Maḥfūẓ]
Ayyām Jarīr allatī dhakarahā fī shiʿrih [on the tribal “battle days” mentioned by
Jarīr in his poetry]
Ummahāt aʿyān Banī ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib [on the female ancestors of the promin-
ent offspring of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, the Prophet’s grandfather]
al-Muqtabas [subject unknown]
Ummahāt al-Sabʿah min Quraysh [on the female ancestors of the “Seven of
Quraysh” (it is not clear who these seven are)]
al-Khayl [on horses]
al-Nabāt [on plants]
al-Arḥām allatī bayn Rasūl Allāh wa-bayn aṣḥābihī siwā l-ʿaṣabah [on the Proph-
et’s kinship with his Companions, other than those in the male line]
Alqāb al-Yaman wa-Rabīʿāh wa-Muḍar [on the nicknames among the tribes of
al-Yaman (South Arabs) and Rabīʿah and Muḍar (North Arabs)]
al-Alqāb wa-yashtamilu ʿalā alqāb al-qabāʾil [on nicknames, including tribal
ones]
Kitāb al-Qabāʾil al-kabīr wa-l-ayyām [the great book of tribes and battle days]

To these can be added:

al-Munammaq fī akhbār Quraysh [on the tribe of Quraysh; published by Khūr-

shīd Aḥmad Fāriq]
Man nusiba ilā ummihi min al-shuʿarāʾ [on poets called after their mother, pub-
lished by G. Levi Della Vida in Journal of the American Oriental Society, 65
(1942), 156–171, and by ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn]
Khalq al-insān [a lexicographical work on human anatomy; published by Khalīl
Copyright © 2021. BRILL. All rights reserved.

Ibrāhīm al-ʿAṭiyyah]
Several redactions of and commentaries on Dīwāns, such as those of Jarīr [pub-
lished by Nuʿmān Muḥammad Amīn Ṭāhā]; Ibn al-Dumaynah [published by

25 On the importance of brand marks, simāt, of camels and other livestock see e.g. al-Jāḥiẓ,
Ḥayawān, i, 161.

Aḥmad Rātib al-Naffākh]; and Ruʾbah ibn al-ʿAjjāj [preserved in ms]. Yāqūt
mentions among Ibn Ḥabīb’s works Kitāb dīwān Zufar ibn al-Ḥārith; Kitāb
shiʿr al-Shammākh; Kitāb shiʿr al-Uqayshir; Kitāb shiʿr al-Ṣimmah; and Kitāb
shiʿr Labīd al-ʿĀmirī.26

4 The Book on Prominent Murder Victims and Poets Who Were

Killed

Several of Ibn Ḥabīb’s books have florid titles, such as were becoming frequent
in his time. They include the two major works that have been published: al-
Munammaq could be translated as The Adorned (Book) and al-Muḥabbar as The
Variegated (Book) or (The Book) Woven with Stripes. There are at least five more
such titles ascribed to him,27 but one should not conclude that these meta-
phors reflect the author’s style in the works themselves. In none of his extant
works does Ibn Ḥabīb use ornate language and he eschews any rhetorical dis-
play such as rhymed prose or striking figurative speech. This is also the case
in Asmāʾ al-mughtālīn, his book on murder victims together with the second
part, on poets who were killed: the style is straightforward and the only “liter-
ary” elements in it are the poetry that is quoted and the occasional utterances
in rhymed prose (sajʿ). His great interest in poetry is evident from this book
and from his many other works on poets and their works; yet he was not a poet
himself.
His accounts are also markedly concise and one often finds longer and more
detailed versions of the murder stories in other, multi-volume sources, such
as al-Balādhurī’s Genealogies of Prominent People, al-Ṭabarī’s History, and al-
Iṣfahānī’s Book of Songs. But there are many details in some stories, some grue-
some and some even funny, as when a Persian called Fayrūz sneaks into the
bedroom of his victim, al-Aswad ibn Kaʿb, at night but cannot see him in the
dark, and when the victim’s colluding wife helpfully points out where her hus-
band is sleeping, the murderer discovers he has left his sword outside (§ 28).
Almost grotesque is the highly dramatic story of Hudbah and Ziyādah, which
involves no fewer than three noses that are cut off (§ 110).
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26 Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, xviii, 116–117.

27 Al-Muwashshaḥ, al-Muwashshā, al-Mushajjar, al-Mufawwaf, al-Mudhahhab fī akhbār al-
shuʿarāʾ wa-ṭabaqātihim. He seems to have been fond of the passive participle pattern
mufaʿʿal for he titles of his major books (cf. Tayyara, “Ibn Ḥabīb’s Kitāb al-Muḥabbar”, 393
note 10).

As is shown in the list of sources given above, Ibn Ḥabīb’s book is sometimes
given a different title: Maqātil al-fursān (“Killings of Knights, or Heroes”),28
perhaps in order to align it with a quite extensive literature on maqātil in
Arabic,29 a well-known example being Maqātil al-Ṭālibiyyīn by Abū l-Faraj al-
Iṣfahānī, on Shi’ite and ʿAlid martyrs. Works called Maqātil al-fursān (Killings
of Heroes) are also attributed to Abū ʿUbaydah,30 al-Qālī,31 Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭay-
fūr,32 and al-Khaṭīb al-Tibrīzī.33 Al-Masʿūdī mentions Abū ʿUbaydah’s Maqātil
fursān al-ʿArab (Killings of Arab Heroes) and a work by himself called Maqātil
fursān al-ʿAjam (Killings of Non-Arab Heroes).34 A work entitled Maqātil al-
ashrāf (Killings of Nobles) is attributed to Abū ʿUbaydah35 and a book called
Maqātil al-shuʿarāʾ (Killings of Poets) is attributed to Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr.36
The author could have called his book simply Kitāb al-mughtālīn, “the Book
of Murder Victims”. Instead, he chose to entitle it Kitāb asmāʾ al-mughtālīn, “the
Book of the Names of Murder Victims”. But although names, lineages, and tri-
bal affiliations abound and are undoubtedly important to the author, they are
not the main concern of the book. The general reader may be put off by the
large number of Arabic names, some of which are inordinately long by modern
standards, going back many generations (even as many as twelve). Asmāʾ al-
mughtālīn is largely unencumbered, however, by isnāds, chains of authority at
the beginning of each khabar or report.37 Unlike many similar texts, including
his other books al-Muḥabbar and al-Munammaq, the author does not mention
his sources.38 One can surmise that they were present in the original but were
left out by a transmitter or copyist more interested in storytelling than in schol-
arly accuracy and reliability—not that an isnād guarantees historical truth, of

28 See the entries on Ibn Ḥabīb in Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist (Flügel) 106–107, (Sayyid) i, 327–329;
Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, xviii, 112–117; al-Ṣafadī, Wāfī, ii, 325–327; al-Suyūṭī, Bughyat al-
wuʿāh, i, 73–74.
29 On the genre see Günther, “Maqātil Literature in Medieval Islam”; it deals mostly with the
deaths of members of the Prophet’s family and does not mention Ibn Ḥabīb.
30 Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, xix, 161, Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, v, 239.
31 Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, vii, 29, Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, i, 226.
32 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist (Sayyid), i, 452, Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, iii, 91.
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33 Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, xx, 28, Ibn al-Anbārī, Nuzhat al-alibbāʾ, 271.
34 Al-Masʿūdī, Tanbīh, 102.
35 Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, xix, 161–162, Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, v, 239.
36 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist (Sayyid), i, 452, Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, iii, 91.
37 There are some exceptions: see e.g. §§37, 39, 51, 73.
38 In other works, where he does mention sources, he is not always careful (Lichtenstädter,
“Muḥammad Ibn Ḥabîb”, 27: “Ibn Ḥabîb’s carelessness in quoting his sources is somewhat
astonishing at a time when his contemporaries are very careful to quote their authorities
in full …”).

course. That such chains of authority were part of the original text at least in
some cases can be seen from quotations, as when Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī opens
the story of al-Jassās ibn Murrah (am §11) as follows:39

ʿAlī ibn Sulaymān al-Akhfash [d. 315/927] informed me: al-Ḥasan ibn al-
Ḥusayn al-Sukkarī [d. 275/888 or 290/903] informed us: Muḥammad ibn
Ḥabīb [d. 245/860] told us, on the authority of Ibn al-Aʿrābī [d. 231/846],
on the authority of al-Mufaḍḍal [d. after 163/780], on the authority of Abū
ʿUbaydah [d. 209/824–825], that the last person to be killed in the war of
Bakr and Taghlib was Jassās ibn Murrah ibn Dhuhl ibn Shaybān. He is the
one who killed Kulayb ibn Rabīʿah …

The chronology seems odd, in that al-Mufaḍḍal died long before Abū ʿUbaydah,
but the latter is said to have been born in 110/728, so he could easily have been
al-Mufaḍḍal’s source.
The entry on ʿAbd Allāh ibn Mūsā al-Hādī (§ 71) has a parallel in Aghānī,
x, 197 with the following isnād: akhbaranī ʿAlī ibn Sulaymān al-Akhfash fī kitāb
al-mughtālīn qāla ḥaddathanā Abū Saʿīd al-Sukkarī ʿan Muḥammad ibn Ḥabīb
qāla …; Sezgin remarks40 that Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī used a book entitled
Asmāʾ al-mughtālīn by ʿAlī ibn Sulaymān al-Akhfash (d. 315/927), which via al-
Sukkarī goes back to a book by Ibn Ḥabīb, not identical with the printed text,
because the fragments in Aghānī, ii, 97–105, 105–126, 133, 140–146 are much
longer. A source of Ibn Ḥabīb’s book is a work by Ibn al-Aʿrābī.41 The absence
of sources in Asmāʾ al-mughtālīn may therefore be attributed to copyists or an
unknown redactor. One cannot, however, be wholly certain that this is always
the case.
Many of the murders are part of the ayyām al-ʿArab, “the Battle Days of the
Arabs”, an extensive genre of stories with poetry about the pre-Islamic tribal
feuds and wars.42 These stories were avidly collected by historians, genealogists,
and philologists. Among Ibn Ḥabīb’s many lost works is Kitāb al-qabāʾil al-kabīr
wa-l-ayyām (“The Great Book of Tribes and Battle Days”), apparently his mag-
num opus. Ibn al-Nadīm says that he compiled it for al-Fatḥ ibn Khāqān, a high
Copyright © 2021. BRILL. All rights reserved.

39 Al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, v, 60–61.

40 Sezgin, Geschichte, ii, 179, in the entry on ʿAdī ibn Zayd.
41 Al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, ii, 97, 133, 140.
42 On the ayyām al-ʿArab see e.g. Caskel, “Aijām al-ʿArab: Studien zur altarabischen Epik”;
Meyer, Der historische Gehalt der Aiyām al-ʿArab; ei2, “Ayyām al-ʿArab” (E. Mittwoch);
ei3, “Ayyām al-ʿArab” (Alan Jones); al-Qāḍī, “La composante narrative des «Journées des
Arabes» (Ayyām al-ʿArab)”.

official and close companion of caliph al-Mutawakkil; both were murdered

together in 247/861. Ibn al-Nadīm continues:43

I have seen, in the presence of al-Qāsim ibn Abī l-Khaṭṭāb ibn al-Furāt,44
this selfsame copy, written on Ṭalḥī paper,45 some twenty volumes but
incomplete, indicating that it may have comprised some forty volumes,
each volume containing two hundred folios or more. This copy had an
index of tribes and battle days mentioned in the book in the handwrit-
ing of al-Sindī ibn ʿAlī, the bookseller, of some fifteen folios, in an inferior
handwriting.

It is possible that the stories in Asmāʾ al-mughtālīn were taken, perhaps in

shortened form, from this much larger work. Sayyid Kasrawī Ḥasan, in the
introduction to his edition of the book, thinks that Ibn Ḥabīb may never have
finished it and that what we have is a musawwadah, a draft.46 The time of com-
position is unknown but it was written after his al-Munammaq, because on one
occasion (§26) he refers to it, as Akhbār Quraysh, for more details.
The word mughtāl is ambiguous: it can be both an active and a passive par-
ticiple of the verb ightāla (“to murder, assassinate”). One notices, incidentally,
that many murderers were themselves murdered. Nevertheless, it is clear that
in the title and elsewhere in the book mughtāl has a passive sense, “murdered”.
The words most often used for “killer” or “murderer” are qātil or fātik. There is a
difference between the verbs qatala and ightāla, or between books on maqātil
and on mughtālūn: the former is about any kind of killing, any violent death, the
latter more precisely is about being murdered or assassinated, excluding being
killed in battle or by execution; the victim is usually unaware until the last.
Ightiyāl (the verbal noun) and its synonym ghīlah imply guile and cunning.47

43 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist (ed. Sayyid), i, 329, (ed. Flügel), 107, quoted in Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-
udabāʾ, xviii, 116.
44 The son of Abū l-Khaṭṭāb al-Faḍl ibn Jaʿfar ibn al-Furāt (d. 327/938), a high official and
vizier.
45 Quality paper made of cotton, called after the Ṭāhirid ruler of Khorasan, Ṭalḥah ibn Ṭāhir,
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see Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, i, 48, ei2, “Kāg̲ h̲ad” (Cl. Huart & A. Grohmann).
46 skḥ, 12–13.
47 Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab (GhWL): ightālahū: ahlakahū wa-akhadhahū min ḥaythu lam
yadri; … qatala fulānun fulānan ghīlatan ay fī ghtiyāl wa-khufyah wa-qīla huwa an yakhdaʿa
l-insān ḥattā yaṣīra ilā makān qad istakhfā lahū fīh man yaqtuluhū. There is some uncer-
tainty about the root of the verb, because there are similar definitions under GhYL: al-
ghīlah bi-l-kasr: al-khadīʿah wa-l-ightiyāl, wa-qutila fulān ghīlatan ay khudʿah wa-huwa an
yakhdaʿahū fa-yadhhaba bihī ilā mawḍiʿ fa-idhā ṣāra ilayhi qatalahū … al-ghīlah fī kalām al-
ʿArab īṣāl al-sharr wa-l-qatl ilayhi min ḥaythu lā yaʿlamu wa-lā yashʿuru … qatalahū ghīlatan

Nevertheless, some deaths in the book are better described as executions than
as murders; the dividing line between the two is often indistinct. Murders and
assassinations are committed by proxy, ordered by those in power wishing to
conceal their evil intentions. But such murders sometimes come out. The verb
dassa, “to scheme, plot, to send someone secretly, to administer (a poison) sur-
reptitiously, etc.”, is used in twelve chapters by Ibn Ḥabīb in connection with
such murders.48 The story of Ṭarafah (§82) offers the Arabic equivalent of the
motif of the letter that condemns the bearer, known from Hebrew (Uriah),
Greek (Bellerophon), and English (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern).
The book is in fact two texts, perhaps originally separate but joined together,
one on prominent murder victims (al-mughtālīn min al-ashrāf ) and one on
poets who were killed (man qutila min al-shuʿarāʾ). The former title uses the
verb ightāla, “to murder, assassinate”, the second uses the verb qatala, “to kill”,
which of course is not the same as “to murder”. This is reflected in the text. As
some poets were actually murdered (and poets often are prominent people), a
number of them are found in the first part, with a cross-reference in the second:
“He has already been mentioned among the murder victims” (§§ 84, 90, 92, 98,
111, 115).
Although the verb ightāla has a connotation of stealth, all murderers in
the book are known by name and their identity is at most only temporarily
hidden. In one case a revelation brought by the angel Gabriel to the Prophet
Muḥammad was necessary to identify the killer (§ 27 note 324), but most per-
petrators do not take much trouble to remain unknown after the act. The Jewish
woman who prepared a shoulder of mutton for the Prophet and a companion
even asked beforehand which part of the sheep the Prophet liked best before
she put lots of poison in it.
Ibn Ḥabīb’s interest in murder stories is also apparent in his al-Muḥabbar,
which has sections on futtāk al-jāhiliyyah (The Reckless Men [or Killers] of
the Pre-Islamic Period) (192–216), futtāk al-Islām (The Reckless Men of Islam)
(212–232) and sundry shorter sections: aʿraq al-ʿArab fī l-qatl (Those Arabs Most
Rooted in Killing)49 (189); tasmiyat alladhīna qatalū Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf (Naming
Those Who Killed Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf ) (282); alladhīna qatalū Ibn Abī l-Ḥuqayq
(Those Who Killed Ibn Abī l-Ḥuqayq) (282–283); alladī qatala l-ʿAṣmāʾ bint Mar-
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wān (The Man Who Killed al-ʿAṣmāʾ bint Marwān) (283). The word fātik (pl.

idhā qatalahū min ḥaythu lā yaʿlamu, wa-fataka bihī idhā qatalahū min ḥaythu yarāhu. The
frightening shape-shifting demon called ghūl (which is found in English as ghoul and in
the name of the eclipsing binary star Algol) likewise moves between the same two roots.
48 §§36, 42, 48, 51, 52, 54, 56, 67, 68, 69, 71, 74.
49 This is about sequential killings: A kills B, C kills A, D kills C …

futtāk) is often used for “murderer” but it does not always involve killing: the
verb also means “to act boldly or recklessly” and may even have positive con-
notations: “courageous”.50
One notes that “assassination”, common in English and other European lan-
guages especially for murders driven by politics or religion, has an Arabic ety-
mology going back to the sect of the “Assassins”, the “Hashish-eaters”, a derog-
atory name allegedly given to a Shi’ite movement called the Nizārīs. In fact, one
does not find the word (al-Ḥashshāshiyyah or al-Ḥashshāshiyyūn) in classical
Arabic texts about the Nizārīs.
A fascination with murder and killing is, one supposes, found in any culture,
language, or civilisation, and I do not wish to convey the impression that the
Arabs are more prone to writing or reading about murder than others, or indeed
more prone to commit murder. In the West we seem not just fascinated but
positively obsessed with murder and we watch and read detective stories and
thrillers in large quantities. Bookshops will have a usually quite large “crime sec-
tion” and when zapping on tv one regularly comes across channels that seem
to specialise in “real crime”, usually involving murder, preferably of the more
spectacular or gruesome kind. Judith Flanders writes on 19th-century fiction in
her The Invention of Murder,51 and one thinks of Thomas De Quincey’s satirical
essay “On murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts”, of 1827.
But fascination with murder and killing is of course not a 19th-century
invention. For centuries readers have relished the accounts of the horrible
deaths of Christian martyrs, whether under the Romans, the Catholics, or the
Protestants. The classics of western literature abound with killings: the Old
Testament, the Iliad, Roman history, and dramatic works by Shakespeare and
contemporaries spring to mind. The western world has often credited “Ori-
ental” nations—Arabs, Turks, Chinese, Japanese—with more than ordinary
cruelty and bloodthirst. A perhaps trivial matter may be remotely related to
this attitude. When I studied Semitic Languages in Amsterdam in the 1960s the
standard grammar books for Arabic (by Carl Brockelmann in German, William
Wright in English) and Hebrew (Lettinga in Dutch, Bauer—Leander in Ger-
man) all used the verb qatala (Arabic) or qāṭal (Hebrew), both meaning “to
kill” for paradigms illustrating the standard regular verb. This was not a reflec-
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tion of Mediaeval Arabic or Hebrew scholarship, because the old grammarians

writing in Arabic or Hebrew used the perfectly neutral “dummy” verb “to do”,

50 See e.g. the often-quoted line by Bashshār ibn Burd: Man rāqaba l-nāsa lam yaẓfar bi-
ḥājatihī | wa-fāza bil-ṭayyibāti l-fātiku l-lahijū (Bashshār, Dīwān, ii, 56). On the word fātik
see Webb, Arab Thieves, 27–29.
51 Flanders, The Invention of Murder.

faʿala/paʿal for their conjugation paradigms. One can understand why this verb,
with its laryngeal consonant, was deemed unsuitable for beginning non-Arab
learners but I have never understood why qāṭal/qatala was chosen by western
Hebraists and Arabists in its stead.52
Most works on categories, ṭabaqāt, such as works on poets, Companions of
the Prophet, jurists, Hadith scholars, grammarians, robbers, Sufis, physicians,
etc., are about groups of people who have a characteristic in common. The
murder victims in Ibn Ḥabīb’s book, however, do not share any specific traits
apart from meeting a violent end. Yet one can say that they all were prominent
in some way, either as leaders, poets, or both: they count as ashrāf, as the title
indicates. Some are better known than others, but no one is an obscure nobody.
If there is a moral, it is that being prominent goes with risks to one’s life. Ashrāf
is one of the plural forms of sharīf, literally “exalted”, also “noble, eminent”. I
have not translated ashrāf as “noble men” or “noblemen”, for by no means all
victims belong to the “nobility” in the sense of people of rank and birth, the
aristocracy. It is true that sharīf often refers, as a technical term, to descend-
ants of the Prophet, especially those of his daughter Fāṭimah and her husband
ʿAlī, but it also has a much broader meaning, such as head of a prominent clan
or family, a person of importance and distinction. It is this sense that it has in
Ibn Ḥabīb’s work. I thought about “eminent” instead of “prominent” but chose
the latter because “eminent” often implies excellence, distinction, and being
outstanding in something, which cannot be said of all our murder victims.
Some prominent murder victims are absent. One may wonder why the third
caliph, ʿUthmān, is not given a section. He was killed by rebels in his own house
while he was reading the Qur’an and one could easily describe his death as
murder. Of the four first, “rightly guided” caliphs only one, Abū Bakr, died a
natural death, and even he is said to have been killed by the Jews with a slow
poison (summ sanah) in some sources;53 but this is not in Ibn Ḥabīb’s book. It
is likely to be an invention of anti-Jewish sentiments.
Among poets who were killed one misses, for instance, Bashshār ibn Burd,
“father of the modern poets”, and the first non-Arab who was a major poet. He
was beaten to death on the orders of the caliph al-Mahdī in 167/783, allegedly
for heresy, as was Ṣāliḥ ibn ʿAbd al-Quddūs, executed either by al-Mahdī per-
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52 The Latin grammar of Arabic by Thomas van Erpe, or Erpenius, in 1617 used faʿala, not
qatala, and A.S. Tritton’s Teach Yourself Arabic (from which I taught myself the basics of
Arabic grammar before entering University) uses kataba, “to write”.
53 e.g. al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, i, 2127–2128, tr. The History, xi, 129, Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, ʿIqd, iv, 263, vi,
276.

sonally or somewhat later, under Hārūn al-Rashīd.54 A violent death was also
the fate of the Umayyad caliph al-Walīd ibn Yazīd (r. 125–126/743–744), who was
a bad ruler but a talented poet. Among absent minor poets are Zayd ibn ʿAmr
ibn Nufayl, murdered some five years before the Prophet began to preach;55
Abū Jildah al-Yashkurī, said to have been executed by the governor al-Ḥajjāj;56
Jaʿfar ibn ʿUlbah al-Ḥārithī, implicated in a murder case, executed in Mecca
by the governor of al-Manṣūr57—not mentioning several who fell in battle on
various occasions.
Not surprisingly, almost all murderers and murder victims in the book are
men. There are nevertheless a few female murderers, or women who incited to
murder: al-Zabbāʾ, the Arabic guise of the 3rd-century Palmyran queen Zenobia
(§1), who avenged her father’s death; Bilqīs, the Arabic name of the Queen of
Sheba (§7), who had her tyrant predecessor killed; and Zaynab bint al-Ḥārith,
the Jewish woman who poisoned the prophet Muḥammad if the story in § 23
is to be believed. An unnamed wife of al-Aswad “the Liar” al-ʿAnsī is an accom-
plice to his murder (§28). Ḥabbah, the wife of the caliph Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam,
smothered her husband with a pillow after he had insulted her son and herself
(§45). Women, by their behaviour (ʿUfayrah, § 3, the sister of Mālik ibn al-ʿAjlān,
§15) or with their poems calling for revenge (the daughter of Tamīm ibn al-
Akhtham, §112, the mother of Muzāḥim al-Salūlī, § 116), can effectively make
sure a perpetrator is killed or executed. Female relatives lament their killed
fathers or brothers in elegies (§§38, 85, 102) but elegies are by no means an
exclusively female genre. Among the murder victims there is one woman, the
poet Ghaḍūb (§121).
The sequence of stories is basically chronological, with some discrepancies.
Ḥassān ibn Tubbaʿ’s killing (§2) precedes the section in which he is alive to
massacre Jadīs (§4). The section on poets (§§78–120) starts again the with pre-
Islamic period, but the chronology is somewhat haphazard: the penultimate
section (§120) is about Qays ibn al-Khaṭīm, who died shortly before the Hijra,
while Sudayf ibn Maymūn (§117) died in early Abbasid times in 147/764. The
most recent event described, in the section (§ 76) on those who killed their
kinsfolk, between the two main parts, is the death in 223/838 of al-ʿAbbās, a son
of caliph al-Maʾmūn, during the reign of al-Muʿtaṣim. This was in Ibn Ḥabīb’s
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lifetime.

54 Sezgin, Geschichte, ii, 461.

55 Sezgin, Geschichte, ii, 271.
56 Sezgin, Geschichte, ii, 375: “soll von al-Ḥaǧǧāǧ hingerichtet worden sein”.
57 Sezgin, Geschichte, ii, 451.

It is impossible to determine the extent to which the stories are fact or fic-
tion. There are many studies on historicity and fictionality in Arabic literature58
and I shall not contribute to the subject here. It is obvious that many of the
murders and killings reported by Ibn Ḥabīb took place in reality, especially
those in Islamic times, even though the details and the dialogues, given in dir-
ect speech, are clearly invented by the transmitters as plausible and necessary
elements. It is equally obvious that stories from a nebulous past are mostly or
wholly fictional, such as the stories about Jadhīmah and al-Zabbāʾ (§ 1) and
Bilqīs (§7). Ibn Ḥabīb does not comment on the matter of fact vs. fiction, a
dichotomy that he would not have acknowledged.
A book with stories about violence, bloodshed, cruelty, revenge, passion,
betrayal: one would expect a Muslim author or compiler to use them to drum in
a moral. The Qur’an is full of stories, mostly short, that have a clear and usually
explicit point. Al-Muḥassin al-Tanūkhī (d. 384/994) wrote his entertaining book
al-Faraj baʿd al-shiddah (Relief after Distress) to demonstrate God’s providence,
even though he often seems to let the entertainment factor prevail over the eth-
ical. The prolific historian, theologian, and preacher Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1201)
wrote three slim volumes with tales about clever, stupid, and witty people. He
never fails to point a moral. Ibn Ḥabīb’s book could not be more different, for
he refrains from explicit moral commentary. Lessons may be drawn but they
are not drummed in. The book does not contain a study of murder, its forensic,
technical or psychological aspects, a science one might jestingly call “phono-
logy” (with short first o, from Greek phŏnos, “murder”). There is no introduction
justifying the compilation, for instance by saying that he was asked to do so, or
an exposition explaining the topic; the text begins starkly and drily with Min al-
mughtālīn Jadhīmah al-Abrash (“One of those who were murdered is Jadhīmah
al-Abrash”). He never condemns a murderer explicitly. And this while by any
standards many of these murderers, from ordinary people to caliphs, could be
called villains. He does not even curse Ibn Muljam, the murderer of the univer-
sally beloved caliph ʿAlī (§34), or Abū Luʾluʾah, the assassin of the great caliph
ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (§30). In fact, the only person he wishes a descent into
Hell is a victim, not a murderer: Abū Muslim, the great architect of the Abbasid
revolt, who was killed by the caliph al-Manṣūr as soon as the dynasty’s power
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58 See, for instance, Bonebakker, “Nihil obstat”; Drory, “Three Attempts”; Vogt, Figures de
califes entre histoire et fiction; Egbert Meyer, Der historische Gehalt der Aiyām al-ʿArab; sev-
eral studies in Leder (ed.), Story-telling in the Framework of Non-fictional Arabic Literature,
among them Leder, “Conventions of Fictional Narration” and Kilpatrick, “The Genuine
Ashʿab”; and several studies in Kennedy (ed.), On Fiction and Adab in Medieval Arabic Lit-
erature, including Leder, “The Use of Composite Form”.

was secured (§63). There are a few instances of very noble victims who, dying,
say that their assassin should not be killed. The Prophet Muḥammad, said to
have been poisoned, forgives the woman poisoner who did it, in one version
(§24). ʿAlī’s son al-Ḥasan refuses to divulge the name of the person who may or
may not have poisoned him, because he does not want to be responsible for the
death of an innocent man (§37). ʿUmar ibn al-ʿAzīz, the “good” Umayyad caliph,
finds out that a slave has been given one thousand dinars, a very tempting sum,
to poison him, but on his death-bed he lets the man escape after demanding
back the dinars, which he puts into the treasury (§ 51). Again, although such
noble behaviour is mentioned, Ibn Ḥabīb refrains from praising it explicitly.
He is generally neutral, which no doubt is an admirable attitude for a histor-
ian.
It is sometimes said that Arab Muslim historiography is generally about sal-
vation, imbued with religion, showing God’s will and His favour to the com-
munity of Islam, and so on.59 That is not my impression, certainly not in the
case of Ibn Ḥabīb, who does not discuss religious ideas at all. If God is men-
tioned it is almost always in formulas, such as the opening basmalah formula
(“In the name of God …”), pious expressions such as raḥimahu llāh, “God have
mercy on him”, for a deceased person, “God bless and preserve him” for the
Prophet, or exclamations such as wa-llāhi, “By God!” On some two occasions,
in accounts of the battles of the early Muslims, God is said to have routed the
unbelievers. There are very few quotations from the Qur’an or pious quotations
of Hadith. Quite often a short poem or a few lines from a poem commenting on
the events is quoted. All in all, Ibn Ḥabīb does not seem to have had an obvious
agenda. His book is refreshingly free from it. He differs in this from, for example,
his great contemporary al-Jāḥiẓ, whose works almost invariably have an agenda
or several agendas. His entertaining book on misers, al-Bukhalāʾ, condemns
misers and miserliness and it also seems to condemn non-Arabs, especially Per-
sians. In addition it has been argued there is an underlying theological debate,
as there is in his great work on animals and living beings, al-Ḥayawān, and even
his book on eloquence, or “Clarity and Clarification” (al-Bayān wa-l-tabyīn) is
ultimately about religion and theology according to James Montgomery.
So why did Ibn Ḥabīb compose his book? Perhaps, being a tutor of his
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patrons’ children, he was commissioned to do so, or he thought it would be

a useful educational tool, combining information and entertainment. Or he
just liked listing things. It is possible that his work began as merely a list of
names, hence the title, that begins with Asmāʾ, “Names of”. There is at least one

59 See e.g. Robinson, Islamic Historiography, Ch. 7 “God and models of history”, 124–142.

such work that consists of names only: al-Haytham ibn ʿAdī (d. c. 821) made
a list of people with physical defects (blind, one-eyed, squint-eyed, blue-eyed,
and afqam, “having an underbite”).60 Ibn Ḥabīb’s book al-Muḥabbar has many
chapters that are merely lists of names, such as “Prominent Lepers” (al-Burṣ al-
ashrāf ) and “Prominent One-Eyed people” (al-ʿŪrān al-ashrāf ) and many such
chapters begin with Asmāʾ, “the names of” or Tasmiyat, “Giving the names of”.
But listing only the names of murder victims is unsatisfactory because they cry
for the stories. His readers would no doubt have known many of these stor-
ies already, but there would be no harm in repeating them, even in shortened
form, to remind the reader. As a proper historical source his book is not very
useful; there is a striking absence of dates, for there is only one instance that
mentions a year, in the section on Ḥumayd al-Ṭūsī who is said to have died in
ah 220 (§70).61 Striking, too, is the almost complete absence of that ubiquit-
ous element of Arabic historical discourse, the isnād: as said before, Asmāʾ al-
mughtālīn is not encumbered with those long chains of authorities that intend
to authenticate a report.
All stories end in death, an unhappy ending, at least for the victim. The
theme of the book contrasts with a genre on happy endings called in Arabic
al-faraj baʿd al-shiddah, “Relief after Distress”, or “All’s Well that Ends Well”, the
most famous and most readable book in this category being al-Faraj baʿd al-
shiddah by al-Muḥassin al-Tanūkhī, mentioned above. In modern crime fiction
and detective stories the murder is often the beginning of the story, followed
by detection and identification of the perpetrator, the chase to find him or her,
and retribution. This provides a certain suspense followed by a sense of a happy
ending or at least a feeling of justice having been done. All or most of this is
lacking in Ibn Ḥabīb’s stories, where the murder comes at the end (sometimes
quite abruptly) and that is that. Retribution occasionally follows but it is not a
fixed element. Detective stories are rare in Arabic (for a case of detection see
the note at §23).62 There are, at least, many cases—too many to enumerate
here—that offer a sense of justice being done, when murderers are themselves
murdered or executed, even though their deaths may not be directly linked to
the murder they committed.
Among the common motives for murder and killing in the book are ven-
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geance or retaliation, for instance in a blood feud, or defending one’s honour

after an insult (§110 Ziyādah ibn Zayd, §118 ʿAbd Banī l-Ḥasḥās, § 121 Ghaḍūb).

60 See the appendix to al-Jāḥiẓ, Burṣān, 564–570.

61 In §76 he refers to “the year Amorium was captured” but he does not give the year.
62 See also Malti-Douglas, “The Classical Arabic Detective”.

Political intrigue, eliminating potential rivals, often involving betrayal, is an-

other motive. Passion and sexual jealousy are rare. A caliph kills his wife’s
lover (§119), but the motif is the noble avoidance of scandal rather than the
revenge of an enraged cuckolded husband. Innocent people get killed in cold
blood by raiding robbers such as the famous pre-Islamic brigand poet Taʾabbaṭa
Sharrā, who is himself killed afterwards (§85). There are no random murders,
by madmen or psychotics, no sexual murders. Some victims clearly deserve
a sticky end, at least by the standards of popular and literary, even poetic,
justice. Many others may not deserve being murdered perhaps, but at least
provoked it by their too powerful and overbearing behaviour. Decidedly harsh
and unjust, according to our modern views, is the murder of the only female,
the poet Ghaḍūb, merely because of some invective verses she composed
(§121), but the power of poetry in Arab culture and history is well known
and a lampoon could destroy someone’s honour, with dire consequences. A
poet may be executed by a ruler for his invective, for instance Aʿshā Ham-
dān, executed by the Umayyad governor al-Ḥajjāj (§ 113). Rulers who execute
opponents or have them murdered (“Will no one rid me of this turbulent …”)
are of all times. Readers may be reminded of a notorious case of a gruesome
murder of an Arab journalist in 2018; to a large extent, modern journalists
have taken over the role of poets in premodern times. It has already been
mentioned that poems can kill, as when relatives of murder victims, often
women, incite to vengeance (§§112, 116). The first Abbasid caliph, al-Saffāḥ,
killed some members of the defeated Umayyad Dynasty after hearing incen-
diary poems by Sudayf ibn Maymūn (§117, the poems are not quoted by Ibn
Ḥabīb). The book also mentions a bungled murder, when the wrong man was
killed (§35).
The murder victims are said to be prominent, min al-ashrāf. In many cases
they are certainly more prominent than their murderers. The caliphs ʿUmar and
ʿAlī are more prominent, of course, than Abū Luʾluʾah and Ibn Muljam. The tyr-
ant ʿImlīq, in legendary pre-Islamic times, is killed by a subject, as is the ruler of
the South-Arabian Sabeans, Zuhayr ibn ʿAbd Shams, another legendary tyrant.
He is killed by a woman called Bilqīs, who becomes queen after him and who
is better known to us as the Queen of Sheba. However, there are very many
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murder cases in which the murderer, or at least the one ultimately respons-
ible for it, is more prominent than the victim. Muʿāwiyah, the founder of the
Umayyad dynasty, a strong ruler known for his cunning but also for his ḥilm
(“forbearance, self-control, wisdom”), has several rivals or opponents killed
(§§33, 36, 38, 39). Another caliph, the Abbasid al-Maʾmūn, whom we know as
being interested in Aristotle, philosophy, and theology, is said to have instig-
ated several murders, too, those of two sons of the caliph al-Hādī (§§ 69, 71)

and of his trusted general Ḥumayd al-Ṭūsī (§70). Possibly he was also respons-
ible for the murder of his able vizier al-Faḍl ibn Sahl (§ 68), although, as is
told in other sources, he displayed grief at al-Faḍl’s death, had the four actual
murderers executed, and their heads sent to al-al-Faḍl’s brother al-Ḥasan, who
succeeded him as vizier. Al-Maʾmūn’s father, Hārūn al-Rashīd, is said to have
been behind the death of an uncle of his (§74). No motive is given, and no
other source seems to mention it. One wonders if Ibn Ḥabīb, who was a mawlā
of the victim’s sons, had picked up a family rumour.
The means of killing are many. Most often the deed is done with a sword or
a knife, sometimes a lance or spear is used (§§35, 109). Several times the vic-
tim is shot with one or more arrows (§§4, 25, 70, 83, 87, 96, 97, 102, 109, 114).
Bloodless killings come in many forms. Poison is often used: §§ 13, 24, 31, 33, 34
(a poisoned sword), 36, 37, 39, 51, 52, 65 (a poisoned dagger), 66, 67, 70, 71, 74.
Other methods are smothering with a pillow or cloth (§§ 45, 56, 57, 116, and
see §19 note); twisting and breaking the neck (§ 52); putting into quicklime
(§57); flogging or beating to death (§§69, 76c); pummelling with a sandbag
(§116); deprivation of water (§78); choking to death in a hammam (§ 108);
and burying alive (§119, and see §117 note). In a few cases someone is killed
because a building collapses, which does not sound like murder unless the
collapse was intended, as is clearly implied (§§ 62, 110). Two deaths were pos-
sibly suicide (§§53, 54), but these may have been falsely reported by the real
killers.
Parallel texts are numerous especially for the most famous victims; they
are given in notes at the beginning of each section but not exhaustively, nor
will there be a systematic discussion of the relationship and interdepend-
ency of these parallels. Major sources of such parallels are Ibn Hishām’s al-
Sīrah al-nabawiyyah; his al-Tījān; al-Balādhurī’s Ansāb al-ashrāf, al-Wāqidī’s al-
Maghāzī; al-Ṭabarī’s Tārīkh; Ibn Saʿd’s Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-kabīr; Abū l-Faraj al-
Iṣfahānī’s al-Aghānī; and Ibn Ḥabīb’s own works, al-Muḥabbar and al-Munam-
maq. It is tempting to give translations of the fuller stories in notes or appen-
dices, but it would swell the present volume inordinately. Only occasionally
is an interesting detail or variant mentioned in the annotation. There are,
however, several stories that are only found in the present book and for which
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no parallels have been found (see §§6, 17, 48, 54, 55, 70, 72, 96, 99, 103).

5 Editions

Ibn Ḥabīb’s Asmāʾ al-mughtālīn has been edited twice. The text was first edited
by the renowned scholar and editor of numerous classical Arabic texts, ʿAbd al-

Salām Hārūn (1909–1988) in his collection Nawādir al-makhṭūṭāt (Rare Manu-

scripts), 2 vols. Cairo: Maktabat Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1972–1973, ii, 105–278
(text: 111–275). It was first published in 1954–1955.63
The editor explains in his introduction (pp. 110–111) that his edition is based
on a unique manuscript of 140 folios preserved in Maktabat ʿĀshir in Istanbul,
no. 873,64 a photocopy of which is in Dār al-Kutub in Cairo (no. 2606 tārīkh).
The copyist, Yūsuf ibn Muḥammad known as Ibn al-Wakīl al-Mallawī,65 fin-
ished his copy on 18 Jumādā i 1114 (10 October 1702), adding that he copied
from a manuscript written bi-l-Kūfī bi-khaṭṭ muḥarraf, i.e., in Kufic script, which
suggests an old manuscript. I suspect muḥarraf means “slanting” here, which
often applies to Kufic. Hārūn, however, seems to take it to mean “corrupt”, since
he speaks of the “bad corruption (taḥrīf shadīd) which the copyist attemp-
ted to correct” and it is indeed obvious that the original manuscript used
by Ibn al-Wakīl contained many errors. In 1296/1879 the well-known scholar
Muḥammad Maḥmūd al-Shinqīṭī (or al-Shanqīṭī, 1816–1904) made a copy of
this manuscript, correcting some of its mistakes. The copy is preserved in Dār
al-Kutub (57 adab). Hārūn used this copy and refers to its emendations in his
critical apparatus.
The text as edited by ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn in 1972–1973 has been used as
basis (its pagination is added in the margins). It contains a few errors, which
have been corrected with appropriate notes. On many occasions Hārūn emends
an obviously faulty or incomprehensible reading by adopting a reading from
a parallel text such as al-Iṣfahānī’s Aghānī, explaining this in a note. In the
present edition such notes have not been copied in every case. A curious fea-
ture of Hārūn’s text is the occasional use of anna or annahū, “that (he)” without
a preceding “qīlā” (“it is said”), ḥaddathanī (“I was told”), or kāna sabab qatlihī

63 See Mélanges, Institut dominicain d’études orientales du Caire, 2 (1955) 296–297 (G. Ana-
wati).
64 Hārūn has “872”; it is in fact no. 873 in the catalogue of Maktabat ʿĀshir Afandi, p. 55 (Istan-
bul, n.d., accessible at https://ia800205.us.archive.org/35/items/defterikt00ista/defterikt0
0ista.pdf).
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65 He is the Egyptian adīb Ibn al-Wakīl al-Mallawī (the nisbah is spelled variously), author
of Bughyat al-musāmir wa-ghinyat al-musāfir, a collection of stories. He is also the copy-
ist of al-Ṣūlī, Adab al-kuttāb (see the colophon, 259). Brockelmann, Geschichte, ii, Suppl.,
414 calls him Yūsuf ibn al-Wakīl al-Mīlawī; in al-Ziriklī, Aʿlām, viii, 252 he is called Yūsuf
ibn Muḥammad al-Mīlawī (al-Mawlawī) Abū l-Ḥajjāj Ibn al-Wakīl, and in Winter, “His-
toriography in Arabic during the Ottoman Period”, 175 he is called “Yūsuf al-Mallawānī,
also called Ibn al-Wakīl”, author of a chronicle, Tuḥfat al-nuwwāb bi-man malaka Miṣr min
al-mulūk wa-l-nuwwāb. He died after 1114/1702 according to al-Ziriklī; c. 1719 according to
El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality, 28, and in 1131/1719 according to Winter.

(“the cause of his being murdered was”). In such cases I have changed anna to
inna.66 I have also replaced the “Egyptian” undotted final yāʾ with dotted yāʾ
when standing for -ī.
A second edition by Sayyid Kasrawī (or Kisrawī)67 Ḥasan was published in
Beirut (Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 2001, 293 pp.). This edition is obviously based
on the earlier one by Hārūn. Rather than correcting its errors it adds very many
new errors (all recorded in notes to the Arabic text, below). Apparently in the
belief that explicit sexual references are much worse than reporting murder
most foul, he also bowdlerises some passages, for instance when he distorts a
verse in the story of al-Sulayk (p. 227, §93), by replacing nīkat with the unmet-
rical nukiḥat, adding in a patronising note that he thought it fit to change the
word but has left the more obscure words that the common people would not
understand. He omits a line by Muzāḥim al-Salūlī (p. 273, § 116) because, as he
explains, “my pen was too chaste to quote it”, and five obscene rajaz lines by Ziy-
ādah ibn Mālik (p. 263, §110) are expurgated without even an acknowledgment,
making the text incoherent. The edition contains some useful notes, including
many very lengthy quotations of parallel sources, often in footnotes of more
than one page. It has an appropriately lurid cover with dripping blood and a
brandished sword.
The Arabic text offered in the present volume may be considered a some-
what improved version of ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn’s edition. I did not make an
effort to find the original manuscript and al-Shinqīṭī’s copy, partly to save me
trouble but also because al-Shinqīṭī and Hārūn, both excellent Arabists and the
latter an experienced and very prolific editor, can be trusted to have done a
good job with the text generally. They made many obviously correct emenda-
tions, carefully recorded in Hārūn’s critical apparatus. Therefore I took Hārūn’s
edition as a good substitute for the manuscript. That I was able, nevertheless,
to correct a good many errors is because I clearly had more time to spend on
the text and I was greatly helped by modern search engines, enabling me to
compare Ibn Ḥabīb’s text with many parallel texts. The notes to the Arabic text
mostly concern textual matters, including some emendations and discrepan-
Copyright © 2021. BRILL. All rights reserved.

66 §5: wa-annahū shariba …; §28 wa-anna l-Aswad …; § 50 wa-annahū wafada …; § 60 wa-

anna Dāwūd …; §72 wa-anna Nafīs …, wa-anna Aḥmad amara …, wa-anna Aḥmad tanā-
wala …; §73 wa-annahū saqaṭa …; §74 wa-anna l-ʿAbbās …; § 86 wa-anna Abā Thawr …;
§97 wa-annahū qatala …, wa-anna Banī Salāmān …, wa-annahū marra …, wa-anna raju-
lan …; §99 wa-anna l-Ḥārith …; §103 wa-anna Ḥumrān …
67 The former seems to be more common, even though Kisrawī is the standard “classical”
form. At the end of his introduction (skḥ, 25) he signs his name in classical style as Abū
Islām Sayyid ibn Kasrawī ibn Ḥasan.

cies between the two earlier editions; for matters of interpretation and back-
ground information the reader is referred to the English translation. For the
division into paragraphs, see below, on the English translation. I have followed
ʿAbd al-Salām Hārun and Sayyid Kasrawī Ḥasan in not cluttering the Arabic
text with editorial insertions indicating the metres of verse, as is done in many
modern editions. For the metres the interested reader is referred to the Arabic
rhyme index, fihrist al-qawāfī.

6 The Translation

The translation must be read in tandem with the annotation. The notes are
indispensable to a non-specialist reader, who will not know many facts, per-
sons, and backgrounds that were familiar to Ibn Ḥabīb and his mediaeval read-
ers. Ibn Ḥabīb’s stories are very concise compared with the often longer and
more detailed parallels found in other sources written in his time or in the
following centuries, such as al-Ṭabarī’s Tārīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk (History of
Prophets and Kings) or Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī’s Kitāb al-Aghānī (The Book of
Songs). Even specialists will not have all the necessary facts at their fingertips
and may benefit from the notes, which provide explanations of what may not
be readily known and give references to parallels in primary sources and to
some modern secondary literature. Entries in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, both
the second (ei2) and the still incomplete third edition (ei3), are often men-
tioned. Since tribal affiliations are so important in pre-Islamic and early Islamic
Arab history, there are many references to Werner Caskel’s arrangement, in tree
format and in transliteration, of Ibn al-Kalbī’s genealogical work, with an index
volume (ǧn, for Ǧamharat an-nasab).
Readers not used to classical Arabic works may be put off by the bewildering
abundance of names, often long ones, many of which are easily confused, espe-
cially because there are so many ʿAbd Allāhs, ʿAlīs, ʿAmrs, and Muḥammads.
There is the additional difficulty in that a person could be mentioned by several
different names. The second Abbasid caliph, who founded Baghdad, is usually
called al-Manṣūr, which is his regnal name, but his given name was ʿAbd Allāh
Copyright © 2021. BRILL. All rights reserved.

and in our text he is often called by his paedonymic (a name referring to one’s
child), Abū Jaʿfar. To mitigate possible confusion I could have decided to stick
to one name, al-Manṣūr, but I have stayed true to the original Arabic and have
occasionally added a clarifying note.
Conversely, premodern Arabic narrative texts often omit names where we
would expect them. There is a profusion of “he”, “him”, and “his” and it is not
always immediately clear who is who or whom is whom. In my translation I

have made pronouns explicit where it seemed helpful, which unfortunately has
added to the number of names but at least helps the understanding, one hopes.
Pious formulas are regularly found in the Arabic after the names of the
Prophet and his family or other early Muslims. They are a hindrance to the
non-Muslim reader of a translation because they interrupt the flow, but omit-
ting them altogether seems wrong. In the translation they have been abbre-
viated as “(ṣ)”, for ṣallā llāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam (“God bless and preserve him”,
the standard formula referring to the Prophet Muḥammad) or “(r)”, for raḍiya
llāhu ʿanhu/ʿanhā (“God be pleased with him/her”, etc., used for members of
the Prophet’s family or prominent early Muslims); they are often abbreviated
in Arabic too, though they are written out in full in the present text.
Very often the Arabs in our text emphasise their words by using the expres-
sion wa-llāhi (just as they do today). One could argue that in ordinary English
it is the equivalent of “really” or a similar emphatic term, but I decided to use
the more literal “By God” or “I swear by God”. I have not, however, rendered the
common expressions wayḥak and waylaka with the customary but too archaic
“Woe unto you!”, but I have attempted to find utterances that suited the con-
text. Arabists often seem to think that every word present in Arabic must be
rendered with an English word, translating Yā Aḥmad as “O Aḥmad!” and inna
(a fronting particle) as “Indeed” or “Verily”. But in normal English, unlike mod-
ern or Classical Arabic, people are not addressed with “O”, and inna does not
normally have the force of “indeed”, let alone “verily”.
The division of the Arabic text and the English translation into numbered
paragraphs is mine. It is not identical with the numbering used in the edition
by Sayyid Kasrawī Ḥasan (hereafter skḥ), who allots two numbers to a section
involving two victims (e.g. §13 below, on ʿAmr ibn Masʿūd and Khālid ibn Naḍ-
lah, numbered 13 and 14 respectively in skḥ’s edition, or § 110 on Ziyādah and
Hudbah, numbered 117 and 118 by skḥ), whereas I have merely used a num-
ber whenever the text begins with wa-minhum (“and among them is/are …” or
“and another is …”). As in the Arabic text, the pagination of Hārūn’s edition is
supplied in the margin in the translation.
Copyright © 2021. BRILL. All rights reserved.

7 Transliteration

For the transliteration of Arabic words and names the system of the third edi-
tion of the Encyclopaedia of Islam is used, with a few minor differences: the
Arabic pausal feminine ending is -ah instead of -a; compound personal names
with Allāh are not written as one word (ʿAbdallāh, ʿUbaydallāh) but as two
(ʿAbd Allāh, ʿUbayd Allāh), as in Arabic orthography, just as all other compound

names beginning with ʿAbd. An apostrophe is used to distinguish a combin-

ation of two consonants (e.g. d’h as in ad’hān, “oils”) from a digraph (e.g. dh
as in adhān “call to prayer”). In many standard works, including the Encyclo-
paedia of Islam, “ibn”, “son (of)”, especially when occurring between names, is
often abbreviated to “b.”. This is not done in the present translation, for it may
encourage the common (and spreading) solecism of using “bin”, which is found
in modern names such as Bin Laden but must never be used for classical Arabic
names. It is only in the index, to save space, that I have used “b.” (and “bt” for
bint, “daughter of”) when occurring between two names.

8 Abbreviations in the English

am Asmāʾ al-mughtālīn al-ashrāf

ʿash ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn’s text of am in Nawādir al-makhṭūṭāt
eal Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey (eds), Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature
ei2 Encyclopaedia of Islam, New [= Second] Edition
ei3 Encyclopaedia of Islam, Third Edition
ǧn Ibn al-Kalbī / Wernel Caskel, Ǧamharat an-nasab (vol. i containing genealo-
gical trees and vol. ii the index of tribal and personal names)
Q Qur’an (Qur’anic quotations are given between guillemets). Qur’anic transla-
tions are by me unless indicated otherwise.
(r) raḍiya llāhu ʿanhu/ʿanhā/ʿanhum (“God be pleased with him/her/them”), pi-
ous formula on mentioning members of the Prophet’s family or his Compan-
ions
(ṣ) ṣallā llāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam (“God bless and preserve him”), pious formula on
mentioning the Prophet Muḥammad
skḥ edition of am by Sayyid Kasrawī (or Kisrawī) Ḥasan
wkas Wörterbuch der klassischen arabischen Sprache

9 Abbreviations in the Notes to the Arabic Text

‫كـ‬ edition of am by Sayyid Kasrawī (Kisrawī) Ḥasan

‫هـ‬ ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn’s text of am in Nawādir al-makhṭūṭāt

ibn, abb (d. AH 245/AD 860), Muammad. Prominent Murder Victims of the Pre- and Early Islamic Periods Including the Names of
Murdered Poets : Introduced, Edited, Translated from the Arabic, and Annotated, BRILL, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/no
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Title: Catching of the whale and seal

or, Henry Acton's conversation to his son William on the
whale and seal fishery

Author: Anonymous

Release date: February 3, 2024 [eBook #72862]

Language: English

Original publication: Salem, MA: Ives and Jewett, 1838

Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
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Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CATCHING

OF THE WHALE AND SEAL ***
DANGERS OF THE WHALE FISHERY.

CATCHING
OF THE
WHALE AND SEAL;
OR,
HENRY ACTON’S CONVERSATION TO HIS SON
WILLIAM
ON THE
Whale and Seal Fishery.
WITH PLATES.

Salem:
PUBLISHED BY IVES AND JEWETT.
NEW YORK: GOULD AND NEWMAN.
1838.

ANDOVER:
Gould & Newman, Printers.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
the different and most remarkable species of the whale
tribe, &c.
CHAPTER II.
food of whales, and their manner of obtaining it, &c.
CHAPTER III.
the taking of a whale with her young, &c.
CHAPTER IV.
boats—hand harpoon—blubber lance—gun harpoon—
accidents—dangers of the northern fishery, &c.
CHAPTER V.
proceedings after a whale is killed.
CHAPTER VI.
the different species of seals—the fishery on the islands
of the pacific, &c.
NATURAL HISTORY OF THE WHALE.
CHAPTER I.
THE DIFFERENT AND MOST REMARKABLE SPECIES OF THE WHALE
TRIBE.

“Nature’s strange work, vast Whales of different form,

Toss up the troubled flood, and are themselves a storm.
Uncouth the sight, when they, in dreadful play,
Discharge their nostrils, and refund a sea.”

You recollect, my son, that some time since in a morning’s walk

you pointed out to me an enormous arch over a field gate, which I
told you was formed of the jaw-bones of the whale, and I then
promised you an account of these enormous fishes. Among the
numberless tribes of living animals that people the northern seas, the
class of whales are by far the largest, and although living in the
water, they are in many respects similar to quadrupeds; they not only
bring forth their young alive, but suckle them as do the land animals;
they have also a thick layer of fatty substance, called blubber,
surrounding their whole body, beneath the skin, and it is by this
covering, my son, that Providence enables them to defy the most
dreadful extremities of cold even under the ice at the Poles. Although
they are the “mightiest animals that swim the ocean stream” their
bulk has been often exaggerated, they being rarely more than 60
feet long, which implies a weight of 70 tons, being nearly that of 300
fat oxen. The tail is the most active limb of this mighty animal; its
power is tremendous; a single blow throws a large boat with its crew
into the air. There are several varieties of the whale. The most
dangerous one is the Razor Back, which is longer than the Common
Black or Right Whale, and although smaller in circumference, is a
more powerful animal, swimming at the rate of twelve miles an hour,
and has been known to run off 480 fathoms of line with a harpoon
attached to him in one minute. They are difficult to obtain, often
obliging the sailors to cut the line in order to escape destruction; but
as this species contains only ten or twelve tons of oil of an inferior
quality, the whalers generally shun his encounter; sometimes
however they mistake him in the water for the common one. The
other species of whale eagerly sought after by man, is the Cachalot
or Spermaceti; this animal is almost invariably found in large herds of
from 150 to 200.
CHAPTER II.
MODE OF LIVING—MANNER OF TAKING THEIR FOOD, &c.

The Spermaceti as well as the Common Whale feeds on the

smallest insects or animalcula of the ocean, its capacious mouth with
the vast fringes of whalebone attached to the inside of its mouth is a
most excellent filter, enabling it to receive a large quantity of water at
a mouthful, and to separate the sea-weed and gravel from it, even of
the size of a pin’s head. This substance, called whalebone, is taken
from the upper jaw of the animal, and is very different from the real
bones, which resemble those of great land animals. When we reflect,
my son, that the same almighty power, whose will has formed the
immense whale, has also given animation and senses to the
smallest sea insects which are the food of this marine monster, how
must our pride be lowered, while we are so unable to comprehend
the mechanism which puts them in motion, and much less that
intelligence and power which has given them life. Let us then
exclaim in astonishment and gratitude with the sweet singer of Israel,
“O Lord, how inscrutable are thy ways, how magnificent thy works!”
As the whale must rise to the surface of the sea to breathe, its tail is
placed horizontally, to enable it to ascend and descend more quickly.
This animal is dull of hearing, although its sense of seeing is acute.
They will discover one another in clear water when under the surface
at an amazing distance; when at the top of the water however they
do not see far. They have no voice, but in breathing or blowing they
make a very loud noise; they throw the water through their blow
holes, which are situated upon the head, many yards high, which
looks at a distance like a puff of smoke; and, when the whale is
wounded, is often red with blood. Although this animal is so large, it
will sometimes descend perpendicularly after being harpooned, at
the astonishing velocity of eight miles an hour; their usual rate of
swimming when not pursued is never more than half that number.
They are seldom found asleep; they are however occasionally found
sleeping in calm weather among the ice in northern latitudes. When
the whale feeds, it swims pretty swiftly with its mouth open just below
the surface of the sea. This animal has but one young at a time,
which is from ten to fifteen feet long at its birth; it goes with its
mother for at least one year, until it is supposed that the whalebone
or filter has grown sufficient to enable it to procure its own food. The
love of the whale for its young is great, so that whalers, whenever
they can harpoon them, are pretty sure of getting its parent; for
whenever the young rises to the surface of the water to breathe, the
old whale will join and encourage it to swim off, and will often take it
under her fin, and seldom deserts it while life remains. I will give you,
William, to-morrow, an incident which took place in 1811, on board of
a Northern Whaler.
CHAPTER III.
THE TAKING OF A WHALE WITH HER YOUNG—ITS ENEMIES, &c.

In the spring of 1811, on board of Capt. Scoresby’s ship, one of

the harpooners struck a young whale, with the hope of its leading to
the capture of its mother. Presently she arose close by his boat and
seizing its young one dragged out nearly 100 fathoms of line with
amazing swiftness. Again she arose to the surface, darted furiously
on and appeared in great agony, seemingly regardless of the danger
which surrounded her. At length one of the boats came near enough
to throw a harpoon which hit, but did not hold; a second harpoon
failed also, but the third was fastened; still she did not attempt to
escape, but allowed other boats to approach so that in a few minutes
three more harpoons were fastened, and in the course of an hour
afterwards she was killed. Is it not extremely painful, William, to
destroy an animal of so much affection for its young? There are also
two enemies to the whale found in the sea, the Sword Fish and a
cetaceous animal called by our fishermen the Killer. At the sight of
the former the whale seems agitated in an extraordinary manner,
leaping from the water as if with affright; wherever it appears, the
whale perceives it at a distance, and flies from it in an opposite
direction, and having no instrument of defence except its tail, it
endeavors to strike it; but the Sword Fish is as active as the other is
strong, and easily eludes the blow. It often cuts the whale in such a
manner as to colour the water all around with blood. The Killer is a
more destructive enemy, with strong and very powerful teeth. A
number of these fish are said to surround the whale, some attacking
it with their teeth behind, others before, till at last he dies from the
loss of blood; and what is singular, my son, it is said that the tongue
of the whale is the only part they devour. The whale is naturally a
timid animal, for it is said that the Northern Petrel, a bird of the genus
of the Mother Cary’s Chicken of our coasts, will sometimes alight
upon its back, and set it off in great agitation and terror. It is also
frequently annoyed by the larger species of Sharks, as the wounds
sometimes found upon their tails evidently show. The flesh of the
whale is highly prized by the Esquimaux, who not only eat the very
fattest part, but will drink the oil with great relish; the children, also,
devour the skin raw. Capt. Lyon, who was present at a feast in an
Esquimaux village, says: “the houses were all lighted up with lamps,
all the pots were filled with flesh, and the women, while cooking, pick
out and devour the most dainty morsels. One man takes up a large
piece, applies it to his mouth, and severs with his teeth as much as
his mouth can possibly hold, then hands it to his neighbor, and he
passes it to the next, till all is eaten; a new piece is then supplied,
and thus it continues till they are completely gorged. A young man
named Toolooak received into his stomach in 21 hours upwards of
ten pounds of flesh and a gallon and a pint of water.” The obtaining
of their food is so precarious, my son, that for many days after this
they may not have a single morsel to eat.
INSTRUMENTS FOR TAKING THE WHALE.

No. 1. Hand Harpoon. No. 2. Blubber Lance. No. 3. Gun Harpoon.

CHAPTER IV.
BOATS—HAND HARPOON—BLUBBER LANCE—GUN HARPOON—MANNER
OF TAKING THE WHALE, &c.

“As when enclosing harpooneers assail,

In wintry seas, the slumbering Whale;
Soon as the harpoons pierce the scaly side,
He groans, he darts impetuous down the tide;
And rack’d all o’er with lacerating pain,
He flies remote beneath the flood in vain.”

The first and principal thing, my son, in the whaling ships, are the
boats, which are made to float lightly upon the water; their bow and
stern are made sharp, and they are capable of being rowed with
great speed, and readily turned round,—and are of such size as to
carry six or seven men and seven or eight hundred weight of whale-
lines. The instruments used in the capture are the harpoon and
lance; besides these they have used occasionally the harpoon-gun,
which is a kind of swivel. This gun was invented in the year 1731:
being however difficult and somewhat dangerous in its application, it
is now seldom used. One of the most essential particulars in the
Dutch whale ships is the “Crow’s Nest,” a sort of sentry box made of
canvass or light wood, pitched on the main-top-mast head. This is
the post of honor, where the master or officer of the watch often sits
for hours provided with a spy glass, a speaking trumpet, and a rifle
gun. As soon as they have arrived in those seas which are the haunt
of the whale, the crew are keeping watch day and night;—seven
boats are kept hanging by the sides of the ship ready to be launched
in a few minutes. The captain or some principal officer, seated in the
crow’s nest, surveys the waters, and the instant he sees the back of
the huge animal, gives notice to the watch who are stationed upon
the deck, part of whom leap into the boat, and are followed by a
second boat, a harpooner being in each. Owing to those mighty
fields and mountains of ice, the dangers of the Northern or
Greenland whale fishery is ten times greater than are those of this
country, as our whale ships take these fish upon the coast of Japan,
in the Pacific Ocean, and upon the Brazil Banks, and always in the
open sea. There are several rules among whalers which are
observed in approaching this fish, to prevent as far as possible the
animal from taking the alarm. As the whale is dull of hearing, but
quick in sight, the boat steerer always endeavors to get behind it.
Smooth, careful rowing is always requisite, and sometimes sculling
is practised. Whenever a whale lies on the surface of the water,
unconscious of the approach of its enemies, the hardy fisher rows
directly upon it; and an instant before the boat touches it, buries his
harpoon in its back: the wounded whale, in the surprise and agony of
the moment, makes a convulsive effort to escape; then, my dear
son, is the moment of danger. The boat is subjected to the most
violent blows from its head or its fins, but particularly from its
ponderous tail, which sometimes sweeps the air with such
tremendous fury, that both boat and men are exposed to one
common destruction. The head of the whale is avoided, because it
cannot be penetrated with the harpoon; but any part of the body
between the head and tail, will admit of the full length of the
instrument. The utmost care is necessary in every person in the
boat, while the lines are running out—fatal consequences having
sometimes arisen from the entanglement of the line while the whale
is going with amazing swiftness. A sailor from Greenock, in 1818,
happening to step into the centre of a coil of running rope, had his
foot entirely carried off; another belonging to the ship Henrietta had
carelessly cast some part of the line under his feet, when a sudden
dart of the fish made it twist round his body, and he had but just time
to cry out, “Clear away the line! O dear!” when he was cut almost
asunder, dragged overboard and never more seen. The immense
distances to which whales will run is very surprising; a harpoon was
thrown from the boat of the ship Resolution, in 1812, into one, which
run out 10,440 yards, or about six miles of line.
CATCHING WHALE IN THE ARCTIC SEAS.

Every boat fast to a living whale carries a flag, and the ships to
which such boats belong, also wear a flag, until the whale is either
killed or makes its escape. These signals serve to indicate to
surrounding ships the exclusive title of the “fast ship” to the
entangled whale, and to prevent their interference, excepting in the
way of assistance in the capture. A full grown whale generally
occupies the whole of the boats belonging to one ship in its capture,
which sometimes takes the whole day; they have been taken in half
an hour from the throwing of the harpoon. The ease with which some
whales are killed, is truly surprising; but with others it is equally
astonishing that neither line nor harpoon can effect their capture.
Some escape with four or five harpoons, while others equally large
have been killed with a single harpoon; indeed, my son, whales have
been taken by the entanglement of a line, without any harpoon at all.
One was taken by the crew of the ship Nautilus, in 1814, by its
accidentally having taken the line into its mouth, and by the
compression of its lips, they having cut the end of the line from a
whale which they had just killed; and as it was sinking in the water,
another one engaged in feeding was advancing with its mouth wide
open, accidentally caught this line between its extended jaws, which
induced it to shut its mouth and grasp the line so firmly as to effect
its capture.
A whale sometimes causes danger by proving to be alive after
having exhibited every symptom of death. Capt. Scoresby mentions
the instance of one which appeared so decidedly dead, that he
himself had leaped on the tail, and was putting a rope through it,
when he suddenly felt him sinking from beneath him. He made a
spring towards a boat that was some yards distant, and grasping its
side was drawn on board. The fish then moved forwards, reared his
tail aloft, and shook it with such prodigious violence, that it could
have been heard for several miles off. After a few minutes of this
violent struggle he rolled on his side and expired.
The many accidents which have taken place in the Greenland and
Spitzbergen whale fishery, even under the direction of the most
experienced mariners are lamentable and manifold; and I will now,
William, relate to you some of the many which have occurred to the
English and Dutch whalers. The most common is that of a ship being
beset and sometimes dashed to pieces by the collision of those
mighty masses or mountains of ice with which northern seas are
continually filled. The Blecker, Capt. Pitt, was driven against the ice
with such violence that in an instant all her rigging was dashed in
pieces; the crew, however, escaped upon the ice, and after a few
days were taken off by a Dutch ship. Capt. Bile, some years
afterwards, lost a ship richly laden, which went down suddenly; after
which the crew wandered in boats over the sea for fourteen days
before they were taken up. Thirteen other vessels perished the same
year in those seas. Three years afterwards, Capt. Bile lost a second
ship, the crew having just time to save themselves on the ice.
William here asked his father if whale ships were not sometimes
lost at sea? Yes, my son, many fishing-ships as well as
merchantmen have foundered at sea, and have never been heard
from since their departure. I remember, father, says William, a piece
of poetry which aunt Mary learnt me a long time since on the loss of
a vessel.

Deep in the silent waters,

A thousand fathoms low,
A stately ship lies perishing,
She foundered long ago.

There were blessings poured upon her,

When from her port she sailed,
And prayers and anxious weeping,
Went with her o’er the sea.

But how that fine ship perished,

None knew, save him on high;
No island heard her signal,
No other bark was nigh.

We only know from Boston

She sailed, far o’er the main;
We only know to Boston
She never came again.

You will find, my son, by referring to Irving’s Sketch Book, a most

thrilling description of a wreck at sea.
The whale-fishery is not more distinguished for examples of
sudden peril and besetment than for unexpected deliverance from
the most alarming situations.
“Three Dutch ships, after having completed a rich cargo on the
northern coast of Spitzbergen, were at once so completely beset,
that the crews in general urged the necessity of proceeding over the
ice, and endeavoring to reach some other vessel. The captain of one
of the three, however, strongly urged the obligation of doing all in
their power to preserve such valuable property, and they agreed to
make a further trial; when, in twenty days, the ice opened, and they
had a happy voyage homeward.

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Prominent Murder Victims of The Pre and Early Islamic Periods Including The Names of Murdered Poets Muammad Ibn Abb (D. Ah 245/ad 860) Download PDF

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Meantone Temperaments on Lutes and Viols Publications

Anime Impact The Movies and Shows that Changed the

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of

The Political Economy of Higher Education Finance The

Sungura Aliyetishika na Mwisho wa Dunia The Scared

In the arms of the elite C

The Feynman Lectures on Physics including Feynman s

The Near and Middle East

Maribel Fierro (Madrid)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ho1

Muḥammad Ibn Ḥabīb (d. ah 245/ad 860)

Introduced, Edited, Translated from the Arabic, and Annotated by

Geert Jan van Gelder

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Muḥammad ibn Ḥabīb, -860, author. | Gelder, G. J. H. van, editor. |

Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Text and Translation 29

Geert Jan van Gelder

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004446359_002

A yet fuller version is offered by al-Zubaydī (d. 379/989):13

10 Baalbaki, The Arabic Lexicographical Tradition, 151, 155–156, 330–331.

Thābit.14 But when he became aware I was present he stopped dictating. I

15 Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, xviii, 112.

2 Sources on Ibn Ḥabīb19

al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1363), al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt [The Completion of the Obituaries],

al-Amthāl ʿalā afʿal wa-yusammā l-Munammaq [on proverbial expressions of

al-Nasab [on genealogy]

al-Ṣafadī. I follow Sezgin, Geschichte, xvi, 157 in taking it to be about tribal

To these can be added:

al-Munammaq fī akhbār Quraysh [on the tribe of Quraysh; published by Khūr-

4 The Book on Prominent Murder Victims and Poets Who Were

26 Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, xviii, 116–117.

39 Al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, v, 60–61.

official and close companion of caliph al-Mutawakkil; both were murdered

It is possible that the stories in Asmāʾ al-mughtālīn were taken, perhaps in

tion of Mediaeval Arabic or Hebrew scholarship, because the old grammarians

54 Sezgin, Geschichte, ii, 461.

patrons’ children, he was commissioned to do so, or he thought it would be

geance or retaliation, for instance in a blood feud, or defending one’s honour

60 See the appendix to al-Jāḥiẓ, Burṣān, 564–570.

Political intrigue, eliminating potential rivals, often involving betrayal, is an-

Salām Hārūn (1909–1988) in his collection Nawādir al-makhṭūṭāt (Rare Manu-

66 §5: wa-annahū shariba …; §28 wa-anna l-Aswad …; § 50 wa-annahū wafada …; § 60 wa-

names beginning with ʿAbd. An apostrophe is used to distinguish a combin-

8 Abbreviations in the English

am Asmāʾ al-mughtālīn al-ashrāf

9 Abbreviations in the Notes to the Arabic Text

‫كـ‬ edition of am by Sayyid Kasrawī (Kisrawī) Ḥasan

Title: Catching of the whale and seal

Release date: February 3, 2024 [eBook #72862]

Original publication: Salem, MA: Ives and Jewett, 1838

Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CATCHING

“Nature’s strange work, vast Whales of different form,

You recollect, my son, that some time since in a morning’s walk

The Spermaceti as well as the Common Whale feeds on the

In the spring of 1811, on board of Capt. Scoresby’s ship, one of

No. 1. Hand Harpoon. No. 2. Blubber Lance. No. 3. Gun Harpoon.

“As when enclosing harpooneers assail,

Deep in the silent waters,

There were blessings poured upon her,

But how that fine ship perished,

We only know from Boston

You will find, my son, by referring to Irving’s Sketch Book, a most

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