Page:The L-poem of the Arabs.djvu/9

 until the latter alighted in a confined spot to drink water one night; he then stood up before Shanfarà and seized him.

"The tribe put Shanfarà to death.

"Long afterwards, one of their number, passing that way, saw the skull of Shanfarà, and kicked it. A splinter of the skull entered his foot; and of the wound he died; so making up the full tale of one hundred killed by Shanfarà. But God knows best as to this matter."

This story, like all the others collected, two or three hundred years after the promulgation of Islām, by the traditionists and folkloremongers of Bagdād, is a mere adaptation, a patchwork of various tales preserved or invented in the desert to account for ancient songs or proverbs current among its inhabitants.

Our poem itself mentions the name of Shanfarà as that of a dire slaughterer of his enemies.

A number of proverbs were picked up, which speak of a Shanfarà and a Sulayk, as also of a male ostrich, a snake, a wolf, a scorpion, the mange, and gaping, as things to surpass which was difficult, in running or in attacking,—. In the first-named three proverbs, the commentators preferred to understand speed in running; in the five last, aggressiveness. They are probably correct; but their conclusions are mere inferences; even if we admit the proverbs to be genuine and ancient.

Shanfarà's poem lends itself to the supposition that he really was swift of foot, by asserting that, when striving to reach some scanty pool of water, he could easily outstrip the sandgrouse birds, though these are said to fly a distance of ten and even twenty days' journey (for an Arab on foot),—say, from one to two hundred miles,—between the earliest day-dawn and the sun's attaining an altitude of a few degrees.

Of course, such speed in Shanfarà is merely poetical exaggeration. But, that a trained man can outrun a horse is a fact well proved in our own times.

The Shanfarà of the poem, and the Shanfarà of the proverb, may therefore be reasonably supposed to refer to the same individual.

But De Sacy, in his notes to the poem, carries this probability much further. He there cites an anecdote, which, if not a mere invention ad hoc, as appears very likely indeed, proves that Shanfarà was a contemporary and a confederate of the poet Ta'abbata-Sharran, who is known, on other grounds, to have lived, as mentioned above, but a short time before Muhammad.

What this last expression may have been intended to mean, is not well defined by De Sacy; and I have not sifted the question myself. "To have lived a short time before Muhammad" may mean, in one sense, to have died not very long before the year 569, in which Muhammad was born;—the Year of the Elephant, the year of Abraha's expedition from Yaman, to destroy the Cubical House of Makka. While, in another sense, it may signify to have died some time during the latter part of the forty years that elapsed between Muhammad's birth and his announcement of himself as charged with a heavenly mission to his countrymen in 609; that is, to have died about the year  600;—several years before Ethelbert, the Saxon king of Kent, was converted to Christianity by the monk Augustine. At any rate, it is universally admitted that Shanfarà and his poem were things of a period anterior to the promulgation of Islām among the tribes of Arabia.

The anecdote given by De Sacy commences thus:

"Ta'abbata-Sharran, Shanfarà, and ‘Umar son of Barrāq, were in league together against the tribe of Bajīla . The tribe placed a party of their men in ambush near a tank to which the three confederates were to come by night, to drink."

Now, as it is not likely the tribe could have had any certain knowledge of this fact, the probability is that the tank was a convenient station between the camping-grounds of the tribe and those of the confederates. The tribe may have been informed that these latter were about to carry out an attack against them in the usual Arab fashion, by surprise, and by night. The tribe could calculate that the raiders would be in