Al-Mutanabbi
Arab poet regarded as one of the greatest in the Arabic language; court poet of the Hamdanid emir Sayf al-Dawla in Aleppo
The Kufa-born poet who "filled the world and occupied people's minds" — and was killed over a poem.
Abu al-Tayyib Ahmad ibn al-Husayn, known as al-Mutanabbi, was born in 915 CE in the al-Kinda quarter of Kufa (in modern Iraq), the son of a water-carrier, to a family claiming descent from the Yemeni tribe of Kindah. He was educated in Damascus and lived for a time among the Bedouin.
In his youth he joined a revolt in Syria in 932 CE in which he claimed prophethood — hence his nickname "the would-be prophet" — and was jailed for some two years before resuming the life of a wandering court poet.
His most celebrated period came at the court of the Hamdanid emir Sayf al-Dawla in Aleppo (948–957 CE), where he composed his finest panegyrics and descriptions of the emir's campaigns against the Byzantines, in which he sometimes took part. After quarrels with court poets and scholars he left for Egypt, praising its ruler Kafur al-Ikhshidi in hope of a governorship; disappointed, he savagely satirized him and fled.
He was killed in 965 CE near Baghdad by kinsmen of Dabbah al-Asadi, avenging a satirical poem. Tradition holds that as he was about to flee, a companion reminded him of his own verse — "The steeds, the night and the desert know me..." — so he stood and died fighting, with his son and his servant.
Many critics regard al-Mutanabbi as the greatest of all Arabic poets. His diwan of some three hundred poems spans pride, panegyric, wisdom and battle description; countless lines have become proverbs still quoted today, and his poetry has been translated into more than twenty languages.
