From the Tales of the Arabs

He lived in an age overrun by impiety and by the woes it draws down upon men, their morals, and their customs; yet withal he was a believer, by his inborn nature, in a Lord he did not know — loving his brothers, the members of humanity, tender toward them, compassionate indeed toward every living creature, be it man or beast. That great man, appalled at the burying alive of infant girls in the pre-Islamic Age of Ignorance, his heart torn with anguish when he saw fathers burying their daughters alive, was certain that this savage practice, contrary to the laws of nature, could not be pleasing to God nor to any human being of complete mental and moral endowments. So he stood between the people and this deed as far as lay in his power, and took to buying the girls with she-camels and camels; and he continued in this course, never hearing of a girl doomed to burial without ransoming her, until Islam came — having ransomed, it is said, three hundred girls. That great man is Sa'sa'a ibn Najiya ibn Iqal, the paternal grandfather of al-Farazdaq, the first to perform this magnificent deed of honor in saving girls from live burial — a deed in which no Arab preceded him, and which moved al-Farazdaq to say in boast:

And my grandfather it was who restrained the buriers
and gave life to the buried child, so she was not buried!

It is related of Sa'sa'a that he passed by a man of his tribe and found him digging a pit while his wife wept at his side. He said to him:

— "What has driven you to this?"

The man answered:

— Poverty.

Sa'sa'a said:

— I will buy her from you for two she-camels, with their young to follow them; you shall live on their milk — and do not bury the little girl.

The man answered joyfully:

— Done!

So Sa'sa'a gave him the two she-camels and the camel he himself was riding.

And he went on giving life to the girls doomed to burial, no one sharing the task with him, until God sent down in the Koran the prohibition of burying alive.

Among those who killed their daughters for fear of disgrace was Qays ibn Asim al-Minqari, one of the notables of his tribe and one of its men of wealth. The cause that drove him to bury his daughters alive was this: when the Banu Tamim withheld from al-Nu'man ibn al-Mundhir the tribute they had been paying him, he sent against them his brother al-Rayyan ibn al-Mundhir together with Bakr ibn Wa'il, who raided them, drove off the herds, and carried away the women and children. The Banu Tamim then came to him in deputation and asked for the women, and al-Nu'man said: "Every woman who chooses her father shall be returned to him; and if she chooses her captor, she shall be left to him." They all chose their fathers, except a daughter of Qays ibn Asim, who chose her captor, Amr ibn al-Musharraj. So Qays vowed that no daughter should be born to him but he would kill her; and with this he excused his burying of his daughters, claiming that it was his jealous honor!

Among the stories truly handed down is that of Ali ibn Abi Talib, may God be pleased with him, who wept and laughed at one and the same time after the Messenger, God's blessings upon him, had read to the Companions the verse forbidding burial alive. When the Messenger asked him what had made him weep and laugh, he answered:

— I wept, O Messenger of God, when I remembered my little daughter, who used to play with me and cling to my hand in fear while I was preparing for her the pit into which I would cast her; she would toy with my beard and say, pleading, "Do not let me die here alone, father! I love you, father." And I laughed, O Messenger of God, for joy at this noble verse which has come to enlighten the minds of men.

After the descent of that noble verse, Sa'sa'a ibn Najiya came to the Prophet in a deputation of the Banu Tamim and said to him: "Counsel me, O Messenger of God." The Prophet answered: "I counsel you concerning your mother and your father, your sister and your brother, and your bondwomen." Then he said:

— Word has reached me of something you have done. What is it?

Sa'sa'a answered:

— I saw men surging this way and that with no direction, and I did not know where the direction of good lay; only I knew that they were not upon it. And I saw them burying their daughters alive, and I knew that their Lord had not commanded them to do that, and never would command them to do it. So I restrained them from the burying and ransomed whomever I could. Is there a reward for me in that?

The Messenger, peace be upon him, answered:

— That is a gate of righteousness, and its reward is yours with God.

Of this, Sa'sa'a's grandson, the well-known poet al-Farazdaq, boasted in several odes of his verse.

And Sa'sa'a lived long, until he joined the Commander of the Faithful, Ali, at Basra, and presented al-Farazdaq to him; most probably he died during the governorship of Ziyad and the reign of Mu'awiya.

Peoples have honored their great men, raised statues to them, written the stories of their lives, and immortalized their names on the pages of history; but Sa'sa'a, the bearer of this humane message, who strove all his life to put an end to the savagery of his contemporaries, has remained unknown to many men and women. It is fitting for us today, at the beginning of our era of independence, to appeal to our governments to revive his memory, if only by naming a street or a school after him, so that his rightful place among the great men of the Arabs may no longer be denied him.

Tripoli, July 4, 1948