I am informed by al-Husayn ibn Yahya, on the authority of Hammad, that Hammad's father said:
Malik ibn Abi al-Samh was staying in Mecca, at the home of a man of the Banu Makhzum who had a weaver for his slave. Someone came along and asked: "Have you heard your weaver's song?"
"No!" the man said. "Does he sing?"
"Yes," he was told, "with lyrics by Abu Dahbal al-Jumahi."
The man sent for the weaver and told him to sing it. "It's no good unless I'm at my loom," the weaver said. So his master brought Malik to the weaver's room, where the weaver sat at his loom and sang (meter: ṭawīl):
This night goes on too long. It is not lifting.
[I am harried and dragged down by worry with no relief.
All night long, angst rides me. It's like
being stubbed in the ribs with a glowing coal.]
Malik learned the song, and when he sang it, everyone took it for his composition. "By God," he would say, "it was not I. It was none but a weaver who came up with this song."
From the Book of Songs
