Ḥumayd b. Mālik b. Ribʿī al-Arqaṭ (fl. c. 85/704) is one of the most famous and important poets writing in rajaz , which is the oldest poetic metre, from which other metres developed. He was of the Rabīʿa b. Mālik b. Zayd Manāt tribe (a branch of the Tamīm). Al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/868), the celebrated Arab prose writer and scholar from Basra, denies that the sobriquet "al-arqaṭ" (lit., "the leper") indicates that the poet was in fact a leper (al-Jāḥiẓ, al-Burṣān , 112). The Tamīm tribe