Note 129 — HATIM OF THE TRIBE OF TAYY.

A noble tribe of Badawin that migrated from Al-Yaman and settled in Al-Najd. Their Chief, who died a few years before Mohammed’s birth, was Al-Halim (the “black crow”), a model of Arab manliness and munificence; and although born in the Ignorance he will enter Heaven with the Moslems. Hatim was buried on the hill called Owárid: I have already noted this favourite practice of the wilder Arabs and the affecting idea that the Dead may still look upon his kith and kin. There is not an Arab book nor, indeed, a book upon Arabia which does not contain the name of Hatim: he is mentioned as unpleasantly often as Aristides.