NABIGHA DHUBYANT  [Ziyad

ibn Mu' awiyyal (6th and 7th centuries), Arabian poet, was one of the last poets of pre-Islamic times . His tribe, the Bani Dhubyan, belonged to the district near Mecca, but he himself spent most of his time at the courts of Hira and Ghassan . In Hira he remained under Mondhir (Mundhir) III., and under his successor in 562 . After a sojourn at the court of Ghassan, he returned to Hira under Nu`man . He was, however, compelled to flee to Ghassan, owing to some verses he had written on the queen, but returned again about boo . When Nu`man died some five years later he withdrew to his own tribe . The date of his death is uncertain, but he does not seem to have known Islam . His poems consist largely of eulogies and satires, and are concerned with the strife of Hira and Ghassan, and of the Bani Abs and the Bani Dhubyan . He is one of the six eminent pre-Islamic poets whose poems were collected before the middle of the 2nd century of Islam, and have been regarded as the standard of Arabian poetry . Some writers consider him the first of the six . His poems have been edited by W . Ahlwardt in the Diwans of the six ancient Arabic Poets (London, 187o), and separately by H .

Derenbourg (Paris, 1869, a reprint from the Journal asiatique for 1868) . (G . W .