Diwan
Homs · 965
A
Al-Mutanabbi
Al-Mutanabbi
c. 915 CE–c. 965 CE · Kufa
Abu al-Tayyib Ahmad ibn al-Husayn, known as al-Mutanabbi, was born in Kufa (southern Iraq) around 915 CE (c. 303 AH), reportedly the son of a water-carrier. Sources agree he showed a precocious gift for Arabic verse from boyhood. His epithet al-Mutanabbi means "the would-be prophet": tradition holds that as a young man he was caught up in the Qarmatian movement (a militant Ismaili Shia current) among the Bedouin of the Syrian desert and made prophetic or messianic claims, for which an Ikhshidid governor imprisoned him at Homs for about two years before he recanted. How literal his "prophecy" was is debated among medieval and modern scholars.
After years as a wandering poet, around 948 he entered the Aleppo court of the Hamdanid emir Sayf al-Dawla, where he composed his most celebrated panegyrics (praise poems) and war odes. Court rivalries drove him to Egypt (then ruled from Fustat by the regent Kafur) around 957; disappointed in his hopes of a governorship, he left around 960 and later lampooned Kafur in biting satire. He subsequently won the patronage of the Buyid ruler Adud al-Dawla in Shiraz.
Returning toward Iraq in 965, he was ambushed and killed near Baghdad — by tradition because he refused to flee rather than disown a boastful verse. His diwan (collected poems) became a cornerstone of Arabic literary education, and he is frequently called, in Arabic tradition, the greatest of Arabic poets.
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Stop 1 of 6915–924Born
Kufa
What they did here
Born in Kufa, southern Iraq, around 915 CE (c. 303 AH), reportedly the son of a water-carrier of South-Arabian (Kindite) descent. He is said to have begun composing poetry as a child.
About Kufa
Kufa, on the Euphrates in central Iraq near Najaf, was a garrison-town (misr) founded by the Muslims around 638 during the conquest of Iraq. It became a major centre of early Arabic grammar, jurisprudence, and Shi'i scholarship, and for a time the capital of the caliph Ali; the traditionist Ibn Abi Shayba (d. 849) and the Twelver scholar Ibn Babawayh al-Saduq (d. 991) are among those connected to it.
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Al-Mutanabbi’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.