106 – Ṣarīʿ al-Ghawānī, Muslim ibn al-Walīd al-Anṣārī *
He is Muslim ibn al-Walīd al-Anṣārī, their client, a Baghdadi and the standard-bearer of poetry. Others maintain that he was originally from Kufa and later settled in Baghdad.
A gifted, eloquent poet and accomplished panegyrist, he is the one who praised Jaʿfar al-Barmakī, saying:
Like a moon—or a gaunt, prowling lion—
or a male serpent, or a rain-filled cloud;
Time never smiles save when you seek from him,
nor does it frown except when none is asked. (1)
And he said of Yazīd ibn Mazyad:
He clothes the swords with the lives of those who break their word,
and makes men’s heads a crown for drooping spears;
Whenever he bares his blade, the paths it cuts
are death’s own roads through bodies and through helms. (2)
He died toward the end of Hārūn al-Rashīd’s reign, and his dīwān (collected poems) is well known.
(*) Ibn Maʿin, Al-Tarikh, p. 367; Khalifa, Tabaqat, p. 276; Al-Bukhari, Al-Tarikh al-Kabir, 6/25; Al-Tarikh al-Saghir, 2/236; Ibn Qutayba, Shiʿr wa-l-Shuʿaraʾ, p. 528; Al-ʿUqayli, Al-Duʿafaʾ, p. 245; Ibn Abi Hatim, Al-Jarh wa-l-Taʿdil, 5/395; Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Tarikh Baghdad, 13/96.
(1) Diwan, p. 250, from the poem that opens: “Istamtir al-ʿayn an ahbabahu ihtamalū (Let the eye pour rain, for his loved ones have departed) / Law kana radd al-bukāʾ al-ḥayya idh raḥalū (If only tears could return the living once they leave).” A variant reading of the second hemistich of the following verse is: “wa-laysa yaʿbus” (“and he does not frown”).
(2) The two verses are found in the Diwan, pp. 11 and 14, within his celebrated qasida that begins: “Ajarrartu ḥabla khaliʿin fīl-ṣabā ghazal / Wa-shamartu himam al-ʿudhāl fīl-ʿadhl” (I pulled the rope of a reckless youth in playful breeze, and I roused the zeal of the reproachers in their reproach).