LessonsZuhayr ibn Abī Sulmā: Ḥuṣayn ibn Ḍamḍam, Revenge and the Cost of Bloodshed (Verses 33–42)Quiz

فَشَدَّ فَلَمْ يَفْزَعْ بُيُوتًا كَثِيرَةً ۞ لَدَى حَيْثُ أَلْقَتْ رَحْلَهَا أُمُّ قَشْعَمِ
He charged without alarming many households, reaching the place where “Mother Qashʿam”—death—had made her lodging.

Fa-shadda conveys a forceful charge, while fa-lam yafzaʿ suggests that many households were not generally alarmed beforehand. Umm Qashʿam is a conventional epithet for death, not a literal woman. By making death “set down her travelling equipment,” the verse personifies an otherwise abstract outcome.

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Verse 36: The sudden attack

Zuhayr ibn Abī Sulmā: Ḥuṣayn ibn Ḍamḍam, Revenge and the Cost of Bloodshed (Verses 33–42)

فَشَدَّ فَلَمْ يَفْزَعْ بُيُوتًا كَثِيرَةً ۞ لَدَى حَيْثُ أَلْقَتْ رَحْلَهَا أُمُّ قَشْعَمِ
He charged without alarming many households, reaching the place where “Mother Qashʿam”—death—had made her lodging.

Fa-shadda conveys a forceful charge, while fa-lam yafzaʿ suggests that many households were not generally alarmed beforehand. Umm Qashʿam is a conventional epithet for death, not a literal woman. By making death “set down her travelling equipment,” the verse personifies an otherwise abstract outcome.