ent for his daughters, and
bade them make lamentation over him. We possess traditional accounts of
these funeral songs; they are representative of the wild rhetorical
eloquence of the poetry of the day. They lose immensely in translation,
and even in reading with the eye instead of hearing, for they were never
meant to find immortality in the written words, but in the speech of men.

"When in the night season a voice of loud lament proclaimed the sorrowful
tidings I wept, so that the tears ran down my face like pearls. I wept
for a noble man, greater than all others, for Sheibar, the generous,
endowed with virtues; for my beloved father, the inheritor of all good
things, for the man faithful in his own house, who never shrank from
combat, who stood fast and needed not a prop, mighty, well-favoured,
rich in gifts. If a man could live for ever by reason of his noble
nature--but to none is this lot vouchsafed--he would remain untouched of
death because of his fair fame and his good deeds."

The songs furnish ample evidence as to the high position which Abd al
Muttalib held among the Kureisch. His death was a great loss to his
nation, but it was a greater calamity to his little foster-child, for it
brought him from ease and riches to comparative poverty and obscurity
with his uncle, Abu Talib. None of Abd al Muttalib's sons inherited the
nature of their father, and with his death the greatness of the house of
Hashim diminished, until it gave place to the Omeyya branch, with Harb at
its head. The offices at Mecca were seized by the Omeyya, and to the
descendants of Abd al Muttalib there remained but the privilege of caring
for the well Zemzem, and of giving its water for the refreshment of
pilgrims. Only two of his sons, except Abu Talib, who earns renown
chiefly as the guardian of Mahomet, attain anything like prominence.
Hamza was converted at the beginning of Mahomet's mission, and continued
his helper and warrior until he died in battle for Islam; Abu Lahab (the
flame) opposed Mahomet's teaching with a vehemence that earned him one of
the fiercest denunciations in the early, passionate Suras of the
Kuran:

"Blasted be the hands of Abu Lahab; let himself perish;
His wealth and his gains shall avail him not;
Burned shall he be with the fiery flame,
His wife shall be laden with firewood--
On her neck a rope of palm fibre."

Mahomet, bereft a second time of one he loved and on whom he depended,
passed into the