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division of the northern tribes between the Persians and Romans, the overthrow of the ancient and once powerful kingdom of Hamyar, and the weakness of the Ethiopian government in the peninsula, had thrown the Arab states between Sabæa and the northern frontiers into a state of tumultuous anarchy. The various chiefs were perpetually at war with each other, and in these wars the powers of Hirah, of Ghassan, and of Yaman, became continually implicated. Their mutual hostilities were carried to such a height as to gain for them from one of their own poets the character of "men, like strong-necked lions, who menace one another with malignant hate, like the demons of Badiya, with feet firmly rivetted in the conflict."

A quarrel about the swiftness of the favourite horses of their chiefs, which were named Dahes and Ghabra, gave rise to a war between the Absites and the Dzobijamites. From the first conflict, the day of Morkateb, which was fought at Dzu'l-Morkateb, a place in the district of Scharabah, and in which the Absites triumphed, to the battle of the marsh,