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Nabigha Dhubyani

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NABIGHA DHUBYANI [Ziyad ibn Mu ` awiyya] (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 600. 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, 1870), and separately by H. Derenbourg (Paris, 1869, a reprint from the Journal asiatique for 1868). (G. W. T.)