“Indeed, Khūrasān is now crushing my head; however, once I used to be far from its two gates/ If I were to be rescued, I would never come back even if you promised me all the wonders of the world,” sighs Mālik b. al-Rayb in his self-elegy anticipating his own death, in Khūrāsān, far from his home nearby Baṣra. Mālik was a famous Umayyad brigand poet, imprisoned for theft in Mecca. Then, he was either lured by the promise of regular pay or persuaded by the call for jihād and joined the Muslim army marching to Khūrāsān. As the verse above suggests, he later deeply regretted this decision. Mālik’s life story is not unique. Collections such as Abū al-Faraj’s al-Aghānī and Yāqūt’s Muʿjam al-Buldān record many verses of poets trapped on the margins of society. This paper analyzes their poetry, focusing on the two kinds of marginal existence epitomized by Mālik’s life – geographical and social. Stationing troops on distant frontiers (tajmīr al-buʿūth) led to such frustration that it has been sometimes considered to be the reason behind Ibn al-Ashʿath’s rebellion that almost toppled the Umayyad caliphate. With the fast pace of the Muslim conquests, the Arabs serving in the armies found themselves suddenly far from their homes and families on the peripheries of the Islamic "oikoumene" and their sentiments gave a rise to an independent literary genre of ḥanīn ilā al-awṭān, the yearning for the homeland. However, one did not have to be removed to the edge of the world to feel estranged in the Umayyad age. Another great tension of the period stemmed from the dichotomy between the muhājirūn and the aʿrāb. The hijra in this time had acquired a military and organizational meaning as the act by which one abandoned his tribe and joined the Muslim army, and thus effectively became a part of the state. Despite a massive migration to the garrison cities, many preferred the traditional Bedouin life, even if on the edge; others, once muhājirūn, decided to return to this Bedouin existence (taʿarrub). The fact that taʿarrub was considered apostasy reveals the matter’s seriousness. This paper will examine the poetry of these two groups, for both shared this yearning for the return to the Bedouin life. While the socially marginal poets pursued this yearning in deeds, deliberately choosing their unstable existence, the geographically marginal poets took refuge in the idealized Bedouin world of their poetry.