Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/333

 304 was of noble birth, and as such her son took precedence. The story of this lady has special attraction for the early Arab writers. Amid the courtly luxuries of Damascus, she pined for the freedom of the Desert, and gave vent to her longing in verse, of which the following famous and often translated lines may be taken as a specimen:—

The lady’s verses, coming to Muʿāwiya's ears, displeased him. Like ʿAlī, he had become from luxurious living obese and portly, and felt the taunt of his wife aimed at himself. So he dismissed Yezīd with his mother to the tents of her tribe, the Beni Kelb, where in boyhood he acquired his Bedawi taste for the chase and a roving life.