Al-Khansāʾ was born and raised in Najd, Arabia, into a wealthy family of the tribe of Sulaym, and was the daughter of the head of the al-Sharid clan. According to both contemporary as well as later judgement, she was the most powerful poetess of her time. In pre-Islamic society, the role of a female poet, such as al-Khansā', was to compose elegies for the tribesmen who fell in the battlefield. Her extraordinary fame rests mainly on her elegiac poetry composed for her two brothers, Sakhr and Mu‘āwiya, who were killed in tribal skirmishes of Banū Sulaym with Banū Murra and Banū Asad, predating Islam.