and ʿAḍud al-Dawla, sovereign of Persia and Iraq. He would ride on horseback in full Bedouin attire, with distinctive regalia, a train of pages, and an imposing bearing. His father had been a water-carrier in Kufah, known as ʿAbdān.

Those who transmitted his verse include: Abū al-Ḥusayn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Maḥāmilī, ʿAlī ibn Ayyūb al-Qummī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn Bākawayh, Abū al-Qāsim ibn Ḥubaysh, Kāmil al-ʿAzāʾimī, and al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī al-ʿAlawī.

It is said that he once sat in a bookseller’s shop and lingered over a work by al-Aṣmaʿī. The proprietor asked, “Sir, do you intend to memorize it?” He replied, “And what if I already have?” The man answered, “Then I will give it to you.” He thereupon recited the book from memory until he had finished—it comprised thirty folios (1).

Al-Tanūkhī reports that al-Mutanabbī went to the tribe of Kalb, stayed among them, claimed descent from the Prophet’s household, and then claimed prophethood. Exposed and disgraced, he was imprisoned for a long time, came within a hair’s breadth of execution, and then repented. Another account says that he made his prophetic claim in the desert of al-Samāwa, where Luʾluʾ, the governor of Homs, captured him after battle (2).

His poetry earned him immense wealth: it is said that he received 30,000 dinars from Ibn al-ʿAmīd, and an equal sum from ʿAḍud al-Dawla. He was waylaid near al-Naʿmāniyya (3), fought back, and was killed there along with his son Muḥassad (4) and his servant in—