of Kairouan, the master Qur’an reciter—blind and ranked among the foremost poets. He authored several treatises on the qirāʾāt (variant Qur’anic readings) (1). He praised kings and accepted their gifts; he composed a number of odes for Ibn ʿAbbād, and his verse is at once melodious and vigorous (2).
He died in Tangier in 488 AH.
Al-Muʿtamid ibn ʿAbbād once sent him five hundred dinars, inviting him to visit. He answered with the following lines:
You bid me venture the sea and travel its span;
Let another earn that favour—bestow it on some other man.
You are no Noah whose Ark can bring me to safety,
Nor am I the Messiah that I might walk upon the water. (3)
17 – Ẓahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad al-Rūdhrawarī *
The just vizier, Ẓahīr al-Dīn, Abū Shujāʿ Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn
(1) Among his works is the didactic raʾiyya poem on the reading of Nafiʿ; it contains 209 lines.
(2) He is also the author of the celebrated poem that opens with the lines:
Ya layla l-ṣabbi matā ghaduhu / a-qiyāmu l-sāʿati mawʿiduhu
Raqada l-sammāru fa-araqahu / asafun lil-bayni yuraddiduhu
(O night of the love-stricken one, when will your dawn break? Is the Day of Resurrection its appointed time?
The night-watchers have fallen asleep while he lies awake, his separation-sorrow echoing within him.)
Several poets composed counter-poems to it, among them the “Prince of Poets” Ahmad Shawqi, whose poem begins:
Maḍnāk jafāhu marqaduhu / wa-bakāhu wa-raḥima ʿuduhu
(The one who torments you has abandoned his couch; even his own body weeps for him and has pity on him.)
For a comparison of the two poems, see what Dr. Zaki al-Mubarak has written.
(3) The two verses are quoted in Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat al-Aʿyan, 3/334.
(*) Principal biographical sources: al-Muntazam, 9/90–94; al-Kharida, 1/77; al-Kamil fi l-Tarikh, 10/250; Wafayat al-Aʿyan, 5/134–137; al-Fakhri, 297–299; al-Wafi bi-l-Wafayat, 3/3–4; Tabaqat al-Subki, 4/136, 140; al-Bidaya, 2/150–151; al-Iʿlam (MS) ḥawādith, 488; Kashf al-Zunun, 344; Muʿjam al-Ansab, 9.