al-Nadira bint al-Dayzan

Al-Nadira daughter of al-Dayzan, the daughter of the king of al-Hadr. The sources relate her story with Shapur. ¹

Al-Mas'udi relates that she looked down from the fortress at Shapur and his beauty pleased her, so she sent to him offering to show him how to take the fortress if he married her. She told him to scatter straw on al-Tharthar and to follow it where it entered, and he took the fortress. She made her father drunk, in hope of marrying Shapur. ¹

On the night of the wedding Shapur found a leaf of myrtle between the folds of her dress, and asked her what her parents had fed her on. She said on butter, salt, ice, honey and the pure wine. He said she was deserving of not being kept, and he tied her by her plaits to two unbroken horses and cut her in two. Adi ibn Zayd al-Ibadi recited his well-known poem about her. ¹