Jalila bint Murra al-Shaybaniyya

Jalila bint Murra al-Shaybaniyya was a pre-Islamic Arab poet whom Kahhala includes in A'lam al-Nisa'; she was the wife of Kulayb, and her brother Jassas ibn Murra was his killer, so that at the outbreak of the War of al-Basus she stood between a slain husband and a brother who had slain him. ^{1 2}

He relates that when Jassas killed Kulayb the women of the clan told Kulayb's sister, "Send Jalila away from your mourning, for her standing in it is gloating and a disgrace to us among the Arabs"; she told her, "Leave our mourning — you are the sister of the one who wronged us and the full sister of our killer," and Jalila left. ^{1 2}

Her father Murra met her and asked what lay behind her; she said: "Heavy numbers, sorrow forever, loss of a husband and a brother soon to be killed — and between the two, the planting of hatreds and the crumbling of livers." When he asked, "Will not the nobility of pardon and generous blood-money stop it?" she said, "The wish of one deceived, by the Lord of the Ka'ba." ² When she heard that Kulayb's sister had called her departure "the leaving of the aggressor and the parting of the gloater," she replied that a free woman does not gloat over the tearing of her own veil. ²

She then composed a poem telling her reproacher not to hasten to blame before asking, calling Jassas's deed a grave one that broke her back and hastened her end, likening herself to one whose eye was put out by its fellow, saying her slain one had brought down the whole roof of her house, and calling herself "a killer and one killed". ^{2 3} Kahhala takes the story from al-Aghani, al-Qali's Amali, al-Iqd al-Farid, Majma' al-Amthal, Ibn Rashiq's al-Umda and others. ³