See the whole piece in Chenery’s Al-Hariri (p. 360), from which this note is borrowed.  At last uncle and nephew fled from ruin to the Court of ’Amru bin Munzir iii., King of Hira, who in the tale of Al-Mutalammis and his wife Umaymah (The Nights, vol. v. 74) is called Al-Nu’uman bin Munzir but is better known as ’Amru bin Hind (his mother).  The King, who was a derocious personage nicknamed Al-Muharrik or the Burner, because he had thrown into the fire ninety-nine men and one woman of the Tamim tribe in accordance with a vow of vengeance he had taken to slaughter a full century, made the two strangers boon-companions to his boorish brother Kabus.  Tarafah, offended because kept at the tent-door whilst the master drank wine within, bitterly lampooned him together with ’Abd Amru a friend of the King; and when this was reported his death was determined upon.  Amru, the King, seeing the anxiety of the two poets to quit his Court, offered them letters of introduction to Abu Karib, Governor of Al-Hajar (Bahrayn) under the Persian King and they were accepted.  The uncle caused his letter to be read by a youth, and finding that it was an order for his execution destroyed it and fled to Syria; but the nephew was buried alive.  Amru, the King, was afterwards slain by the poet-warrior, Amru bin Kulthum, also of the “Mu’allakat,” for an insult offered to his mother by Hind:  hence the proverb, “Quicker to slay than ’Amru bin Kulsum” (A.P. ii. 233).

[FN#193] See vols. i. 192; iii. 14; these correspond with the “Stathmoi,” Stationes, Mansiones or Castra of Herodotus, Terps. cap. 53, and Xenophon.  An. i. 2, 10.

[FN#194] In text “Ittika” viiith of waka:  the form “Takwa” is generally used = fearing God, whereby one guards oneself from sin in this life and from retribution in the world to come.

[FN#195] This series of puzzling questions and clever replies is still as favourite a mental exercise in the East as it was in middle-aged Europe.  The riddle or conundrum began, as far as we know, with the Sphinx, through whose mouth the Greeks spoke:  nothing less likely than that the grave and mysterious Scribes of Egypt should ascribe aught so puerile to the awful emblem of royal majesty—­Abu Haul, the Father of Affright.  Josephus relates how Solomon propounded enigmas to Hiram of Tyre which none but Abdimus, son of the captive Abdaemon, could answer.  The Tale of Tawaddud offers fair specimens of such exercises, which were not disdained by the most learned of Arabian writers.  See Al-Hariri’s Ass. xxiv, which proposes twelve enigmas involving abstruse and technical points of Arabic, such as:  “What be the word, which as ye will is a particle beloved, or the name of that which compriseth the slender-waisted milch camel!” Na’am = “Yes” or “cattle,” the latter word containing the Harf, or slender camel.  Chenery, p. 246.

[FN#196] For the sundry meanings and significance of “Salam,” here=Heaven’s blessing, see vols. ii. 24, vi. 232.