"If ye avenge not him, the son of the best of you, Then fling, fling the sword away and naught but the spindle ply."[464] While still a young man, he was expelled from his native city in consequence of the lampoons which he directed against a noble family of Baṣra, the Banú Nahshal. Thereupon he fled to Medína, where he plunged into gallantry and dissipation until a shameless description of one of his intrigues again drew upon him the sentence of banishment. His poems contain many references to his cousin Nawár, whom, by means of a discreditable trick, he forced to marry him when she was on the point of giving her hand to another. The pair were ever quarrelling, and at last Farazdaq consented to an irrevocable divorce, which was witnessed by Ḥasan of Baṣra, the famous theologian. No sooner was the act complete than Farazdaq began to wish it undone, and he spoke the following verses:--[465] "I feel repentance like al-Kusa‘í,[466] Now that Nawár has been divorced by me. She was my Paradise which I have lost, Like Adam when the Lord's command he crossed. I am one who wilfully puts out his eyes, Then dark to him the shining day doth rise!" 'The repentance of Farazdaq,' signifying bitter regret or disappointment, passed into a proverb. He died a few months before Jarír in 728 A.D., a year also made notable by the deaths of two illustrious divines, Ḥasan of Baṣra and Ibn Sírín. [Sidenote: Jarír.] Jarír b. ‘Atiyya belonged to Kulayb, a branch of the same tribe, Tamím, which produced Farazdaq. He was the court-poet of Ḥajjáj, the dreaded governor of ‘Iráq, and eulogised his patron in such extravagant terms as to arouse the jealousy of the Caliph ‘Abdu ’l-Malik, who consequently received him, on his appearance at Damascus, with marked coldness and hauteur. But when, after several repulses, he at length obtained permission to recite a poem which he had composed in honour of the prince, and came to the verse-- "Are not ye the best of those who on camel ride, More open-handed than all in the world beside?"-- the Caliph sat up erect on his throne and exclaimed: "Let us be praised like this or in silence!"[467] Jarír's fame as a satirist stood so high that to be worsted by him was reckoned a greater distinction than to vanquish any one else. The blind poet, Bashshár b. Burd († 783 A.D.), said: "I satirised Jarír, but he considered me too young for him to notice. Had he answered me, I should have been the finest poet in the world."[468] The following anecdote shows that vituperation launched by a master like Jarír was a deadly and far-reaching weapon which degraded its victim in the eyes of his contemporaries, however he might deserve their esteem, and covered his family and tribe with lasting disgrace.