Sulayk set out—that is, al-Sulayk ibn al-Salaka, by name al-Harith ibn ‘Amr [ibn Ka‘b ibn Sa‘d] ibn Zayd Manat ibn Tamim, also called al-Maqānib "The [One-Man] Horde," whose mother was a Black woman [named al-Salaka]. This man was the greatest reprobate of the Arabs, and their greatest poet, whom no one on two legs could match for sheer aggression and horses could not catch. And no one knew their way about the earth better than he. They say that is how he prayed:
"Dear God, Who contrivest whatever You will, whenever You will, for whomever you will: If I were not a man of strength, then slavery would be my lot, dear God in Whom I take refuge from every failing save fear itself, of which I'm innocent." [....]
Sulayk, they say, had fallen on hard times. With nothing left to lose, he set out on foot in hopes of catching some passerby unawares and taking away their camels. It happened on a moonlit winter's night when he had muffled himself tightly in his mantle, winding the end of it around his right arm, and going to sleep, that a man leapt upon him and said, "You are my prisoner!" Sulayk raised his head and, in words that became proverbial, he answered him: "The moon is out, you have all night" [so go find someone else to bother].
"Villain!" cried the man, raining blows on him, "you're my prisoner now!" Annoyed by this, Sulayk freed his arm and seized the man so tightly that he let out a fart. "You fart when you're on top?" said Sulayk, and this too became a proverb, covered in my dictionary under the letter Ḍ.
"Who are you?" Sulayk asked him. "A man who's fallen on hard times," came his reply. "I said to myself, 'I'm setting out and not returning until I gain [someone's] property.'"
"Then come with me," Sulayk said, and the two set off until they encountered another man with the exact same story. The three then formed a company, [and traveled on] until they reached a hollow of Yemen called the hollow of Murad, which at that time was crowded with livestock being pastured there.
Sulayk and his companions feared to launch their raid, lest the tribe catch them in the act of rounding up their camels and driving them away. Sulayk said to the two: "Stay nearby while I mingle with the herders, until I gain intelligence about the tribe and their location and can relay it to you. If they're close by, I'll be right back. If they're far away, I'll convey that to you by means of an allusive declamation, and you can commence the raid."
Off went Sulayk among the herders, to coax information out of them until they let slip that their tribal lords were far away. When pressed, the herders said they did not even know their location. Sulayk then asked them, "May I sing you something?" The herders said: "Go ahead!" And so al-Sulayk sang at the top of his lungs (meter: basīṭ):
O companions twain, there are no tribesmen in the dale,
only enslaved laborers to mind their herds.
Before much time elapses, these people will catch on.
Are you going to wait it out, or will you attack?
The upper hand belongs to the aggressor!
As soon as his companions heard this, they appeared at his side, and the three divided the mass of camels into smaller herds, and drove them away. And no outcry reached the tribe until Sulayk and his companions had fled the scene with their winnings.
From the Dictionary of Proverbs of al-Maydani
