of conquest which almost everywhere broke down the old communal organisations, created distinctions of rank and property before which the clansmen often have sunk into serfs, and ultimately displaced sentiments of kinship by mere ties of local contiguity and self-interest.
The communal character of Arab honour is therefore to be carefully distinguished from any bonds of military service; and the poetry of Blood-revenge illustrates the distinction more accurately perhaps than any other. To another and final example of such poetry we accordingly turn—the Moʾallaqah of Zuheyr. This poem has been excellently translated by Mr. C. J. Lyall,[1] and wherever the exact words are offered we shall avail ourselves of Mr. Lyall's translation in the following sketch of its contents:—The pasture-lands which the tribesmen leave at the end of spring are deserted, and over the camping ground of Umm Aufa's tents—those "black lines that speak no word in the stony plains"—roam "the large-eyed kine, and the deer pass to and fro." Umm Aufa was the poet's wife, whom one day in an angry mood he had divorced; since then he had repented and prayed her to return, but she would not. Here where her tents had stood he stands and gazes—twenty years have passed since last he saw the spot—hard was it to find again "the black stones in order ranged in the place where the pot was set, and the trench,[2] like a cistern's root, with its sides unbroken still."
Then the poet turns to the praises of the makers of peace for the clans of ʿAbs and Dubyân, and swears, "by the Holy House which worshippers circle round," the Kaʿbeh, that the work of peacemaking is good. "Busily wrought they for peace when the kin had been rent in
