Poetry in those days ran in families. The family which had the greatest skill in the art was that of Hassan Ibn Abi Hafsa, for it produced six persons, in succession, all of them poets. These were: Said, his father Abd Ar-Rahman, his father Hassan, his father Thabit, his father Al-Mundir, and his father Hizam. Abd Ar-Rahman began very young. It is related that having been stung by a wasp, he went crying to his father, who asked what was the matter. He replied: "I have been stung by a flying thing, dressed, as it were, in a double cloak of striped cloth." "By Allah!" exclaimed the delighted father, recognizing a chip of the old block, "thou hast there pronounced a verse." The family of Abi Hafsa came next to that of Hassan in poetical gifts. The reason was, according to one statement, that they could "all touch the point of their nose with their tongue, and this denotes a talent for speaking with elegance and precision." "God knows," Ibn Khallikan adds, "how far that may be true!" It was Marwan Ibn Abi Hafsa, of this family, who made such a mistake (in a poet depending on the beneficence of the exalted) as to commit himself to the sweeping statement, in his elegy on the death of Maan, the Emir, that patronage had died with him. "It is said," Ibn Khallikan relates, "that Marwan, after composing this elegy, could never gain anything by his verses, for, as often as he celebrated the praises of a khalif or of any other person less elevated in rank, he to whom the poem was addressed would say to him: 'Did you not say, in your famous elegy: _Whither should we go, since Maan is dead? Presents have ceased and are not to be replaced?_' So the person he meant to praise would not give him anything nor even listen to his poem." But once--having the persistency of the needy--Abi Hafsa scored. The story goes that, entering into the presence of the khalif Al-Mahdi with a number of other poets, he recited to him a panegyric. "Who art thou?" said the khalif. "Thy humble poet, Marwan, the son of Abi Hafsa." "Art thou," said the khalif with great presence of mind, remembering the poet's useful indiscretion, "not he who said: _Whither should we go, since Maan is dead?_ and yet thou hast come to ask gifts from us! _Presents have ceased_; we have nothing for thee. Trail him out by the leg!" They trailed him out by the leg, but, twelve months later, Marwan once more contrived to gain admittance with the other poets, who, at that time, were allowed to enter into the khalif's presence once a year. He then stood before him and recited the kasada which begins thus: _A female visitor came to thee by night; salute her fleeting image._ Al-Mahdi at first listened in silence, but as the poet proceeded, he became gradually more and more agitated, till at length "he rolled on the carpet with delight." He then asked how many verses were in the poem and, on being answered, "One hundred," he ordered the author a--present of one hundred thousand pieces of silver.