Al-Harith ibn Hilliza al-Yashkuri


Al-Ḥārith ibn Ḥilliza al-Yashkurī, the king of al-Hirah in southern Iraq. Ibn Kulthum pleaded the Taghlib's cause by reciting the sixth of the mu'allaqāt. A quarrel then broke out between Ibn Kulthum and al-Nu'man, the Bakr spokesman, as a result of which the king dismissed them both and asked al-Harith to act as spokesman for the Bakr tribe instead of al-Nu'man. Whereupon, al-Harith recited the seventh mu'allaqa. It is said that al-Harith was an old man by this time, and afflicted with leprosy, so that he was required to recite his poem from behind a curtain. He is said to have been of noble birth and a warrior.
Although the mu'allaqa is mostly a plea, interspersed with flattery of King Amr, it begins conventionally in the usual style of a qasida with a brief section of regret for a lost love and a description of a flight by camel. The metre is khafīf.
Of al-Harith's other poems only a few fragments remain.