El-Hajjâj

Lifelink before lifelink was a keyword. Several creatures of this early era gained life equal to damage dealt, and this one took the cleanest shape: a black body that triggers on any damage, combat or otherwise. The triggered-ability template is what marks its age. Modern lifelink is a static ability that modifies the result of a damage event as it happens, handling trample, multiple blockers, and simultaneous damage cleanly; the old wording is a triggered ability that fires once per damage event and goes on the stack, which means it can be responded to, can miss in corner cases, and reads as a sequence of triggers rather than a passive property of the creature. Functionally, the card has been superseded many times over; historically, it sits among the experiments that taught R&D the difference between "gains life when it hits" and "has lifelink," and why the latter needed to become a keyword at all. The flavor pull is the other half of its presence: a 1/1 Human Wizard that turns its modest swing into life, sharing its release with Khabál Ghoul and Juzám Djinn, anchoring the black slice of a setting whose cultural framing the game has never quite returned to.