22 October 2007

He even stole that...

One of my favorite movie lines (of which I have many) is from Beckett, when the king plaintively asked: "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?"
Seems that ol' Mo used the same line more than once:
Asma bint Marwan was a poetess who belonged to a tribe of Medinan pagans, and whose husband was named Yazid ben Zayd. She composed a poem blaming the Medinan pagans for obeying a stranger (Muhammad) and for not taking the initiative to attack him by surprise. Perhaps in March of 624, when the Allah—inspired prophet heard what she had said, he asked, 'Who will rid me of Marwan's daughter?' A member of her husband's tribe volunteered and crept into her house that night. She had five children, and the youngest was sleeping at her breast. The assassin gently removed the child, drew his sword, and plunged it into her, killing her in her sleep.
[Source: Ibn Ishaq, pp. 675—76 / 995—96.]
Abu Afak, a centenarian elder of Medina, belonging to a group of clans who were associated with the god Manat (though he may have been a Jew), wrote a derogatory poem about Muhammad, extolling the ancestors of his tribe who were strong enough to overthrow mountains and to resist submitting to an outsider (Muhammad) who divides two large Medinan tribes with religious commands like 'permitted' and 'forbidden.' Before the Battle of Badr, Muhammad let him live. After the battle, in April of 624, the prophet queried, 'Who will deal with this rascal for me?' That night, Salim b. Umayr 'went forth and killed him.'
[Source: Ibn Ishaq p. 675 / 995.]

And that'll teach you to write derogatory poetry...

And, while he did say those things well before Shakespeare's time, I doubt the Bard was a big reader of the Qu'ran, so maybe it's just a case of great minds (or great translators, more likely) thinking alike...

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