Shiblí Nu'mání next deals with the poet's “fragments” (muqaṭṭa'át), or occasional verses, which, as usual with this class of verse, are connected with various incidents in his life, and therefore have a more personal note than the odes (ghazaliyyát) and elegies (qaṣá'id), but which are unfortunately omitted from the Bombay lithographed edition.

On one occasion the King gave Salmán a black horse, which he did not like and wished to exchange for one of another colour, but the Master of the Horse apparently would not permit this. Thereupon he wrote as follows to his patron:

<text in Arabic script omitted> <text in Arabic script omitted>

“O King, thou didst promise me a horse: no further discussion is
possible about the word of Kings.
They gave me an old, black horse, and I am of opinion that no more
aged black is to be found in the world.
I gave back that horse so that I might get another in such wise that
none should have knowledge of this secret.
I gave back a black horse, but they would not give me one of another
colour; yes, indeed, ‘There is no colour beyond black!’”*

Salmán further satirized this unfortunate horse as follows:

<text in Arabic script omitted>

“O King, I had hopes that, through thy good fortune, I might mount
a tall, young and ambling horse.
They give me an old, lazy, undersized horse, not such a horse as I
can ride.
It is a horse black, feeble and lean as a pen: it would be the height
of folly to mount such a beast.
In truth it must be thirty years older than myself, and it is dis-
respectful to sit upon one's elders.”

In another fragment Salmán excuses his absence from the Court on the plea that his eyes are bad, and that though the dust of the King's threshold is a collyrium, yet the evil eye must be kept far from him:

On another similar occasion he pleads the pain in his feet (probably gout), to which he elsewhere alludes in his poems, as the cause of his absence, wittily observing that foot-ache prevents him from giving the King headache, which in the Persian idiom means trouble:

Finally Shiblí Nu'mání speaks of the innovations intro- Shiblí's summing up of Salmán's talents duced by Salmán, and especially of his skilful use of the figure called íhám or “ambiguity.” The general conclusion seems to be that Salmán deserves to be ranked amongst the great panegyrists and qaṣída-writers; that he was an ingenious, skilful and to a certain extent original poet, but that he lacks the fire, passion and conviction which make a poet great and famous beyond the limits of his own time and country.