her beauty being highly extolled before el-Hajjâj, he sought her in marriage, and laid out large sums upon her, and settled two hundred thousand dirhems upon her over and above the dowry. Then he married her, and she went down with him to el-Máárrah, her father's country.[1] And el-Hajjâj remained with her in el-Maʾárrah for a long while, and then set off with her for ʾIrâk, where she abode with him according to the will of God.
And Hind was well-educated and eloquent; and it happened that one day as el-Hajjâj was going to see her, he heard her reciting:
How can Hind, the perfect little Arabian mare,
The daughter of noble blood, have mated with a mule?
Should foal of hers prove thoroughbred—richly has Allâh endowed her,
If mulish be his nature—'tis from the mule his sire.
And when el-Hajjâj heard this, he would have
- ↑ Maʾárrat-en-Nuʾamân lay in the territory of el-ʾAwâsim, a large district in Syria, having Antioch for its capital.
screams. His sister, Hind, who heard his cries, began to weep and lament, whereupon el-Hajjâj divorced her. Whether, however, Hind were the daughter of el-Muhállab, or of en-Nuʾamân, she must have been a woman of great spirit and determination; for she seems to have been the only person capable of coping with such a monster of cruelty as el-Hajjâj is represented to have been.
