151 – al-Raffāʾ, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Sarī ibn Aḥmad al-Kindī

The accomplished poet Abū al-Ḥasan al-Sarī ibn Aḥmad al-Kindī, a native of Mosul. He composed panegyrics for Sayf al-Dawlah and, in Baghdad, for al-Muhallabī. His collected poems (Dīwān) is well known.

A quarrel of satire and ill-will flared up between him and the two Khalid brothers (1); they injured him so severely that he was driven to earn his living as a copyist, spending his days transcribing his own Dīwān and selling it.

He died in Baghdad in the mid-360s AH.

Among his verses (2):
“The needle, in days gone by,
shielded my face and guarded my poetry;
But now the living it brings is narrow,
as though it trickled through its eye.”

And he also said (3):
“Bounty greets him with a gentle, radiant face,
yet when the two hosts clash, he turns unyielding;
His dwelling is spacious while he stays,
but should he march in his host,
the open plain itself grows tight.”