Quote by Al-Khansa: “My eye weeps, and will weep forever; good reason has it to weep.”

Some grief is so legitimate and deep that it does not need to justify itself or stop. Al-Khansa is saying that her tears are not weakness — they are an appropriate, ongoing response to a real and devastating loss.

Al-Khansa composed her most famous elegies in the years surrounding the rise of Islam in Arabia, a period of dramatic social transformation across the Arabian Peninsula. Her grief poetry was so admired that the Prophet Muhammad reportedly praised her work.

Pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arab poet born around 575 CE in the Najd region of Arabia, considered the greatest female poet in classical Arabic literature. She is best known for her elegies mourning her brothers Sakhr and Muawiya, which set the standard for the genre of Arabic lamentation poetry.