In early Arabian history, su'luk (Arabic: صعلوك, romanized: ṣuʿlūk, plural صعاليك, ṣaʿālīk) was a term that can be translated as brigand, brigand-poet, or vagabond.
[1] Related terms are sometimes used to describe the sa'alik, including dhu'ban (wolves) and khula'a, singular khali'.
A khali' was an individual who had been cast out of his tribe, but eventually acquired the connotation of "a rebel who makes a conscious decision to practice evil".
[1] Other sa'alik such as Ta'abbata Sharran and Al-Shanfara are sometimes considered to have been aghribat al-Arab as well,[3] but Bernard Lewis argued that this was due to confusion in the early sources between the two groups.
[3] In the early days of Islam, Muhammad offered to spare the lives of the sa'alik if they converted, and allowed them to keep their stolen booty.
They became "quasi-military units composed of Arabs who invested a province, established themselves there and practised brigandage on a major scale, and with such success that garrisons of regular troops were unable to dislodge them.
[9] Poetic production by the sa'alik began in the pre-Islamic era and continued throughout the Umayyad period, but disappeared under the Abbasids.