Hind bint al-Khuss

Hind bint al-Khuss al-Iyādiyya (, also Hind ibnat al-Khuss al-Iyādiyya) is a legendary pre-Islamic female poet. While older scholarship supposed that Hind was a real person, recent research views her as an entirely legendary figure. Stories surrounding Hind focus on her eloquent responses to questions, sometimes in verse, sometimes in sajʿ (rhyming prose), and sometimes in prose, regarding gender, marriage, plants, animals or weather. Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr's Balāghāt al-nisāʾ has Hind and Jumʿa visiting the famous fair at ʿUkāẓ. Abū ʿUbayd portrays Hind having an affair with a slave.

Ali ibn Nasr al-Katib's Encyclopedia of Pleasure tells that Hind, known here as al-Zarqāʾ, loved the Christian woman Hind bint al-Nuʿmān, who was the daughter of the last Lakhmid king of Hira in the seventh century. When Hind Bint al-Khuss died, her faithful lover "cropped her hair, wore black clothes, rejected worldly pleasures, vowed to God that she would lead an ascetic life until she passed away". Hind bint al-Nu'man even builds a monastery to commemorate her love for al-Zarqāʾ. This source figures the two characters as the first lesbians in Arab culture.

Works Literature attributed to Hind tends to take the form of clever responses to questions and proverbial wisdom, reported in adab literature and philological treatises. In the words of Kathrin Müller, The structure of these anecdotes is characteristic of texts preserving traditional knowledge of Bedouin life and its lexicographical material. Many questions follow the pattern “what is the best thing?—what is the worst?” Sometimes the questioner begins a sentence with “almost,” and Bint al-Khuss completes it, as in “almost, the ostrich is a bird.”