Ibn Khallikān said (1): Abū al-ʿAtāhiyah once met Abū Nuwās—who was of the same generation as he, as was Bashshār ibn Burd. Abū al-ʿAtāhiyah asked him, “How many verses do you compose in a single day?” He replied, “A verse, or two at most.” Abū al-ʿAtāhiyah said, “As for me, I turn out a hundred, even two hundred.” Abū Nuwās answered, “That is because what you produce is like your own line (2)(3):
O ʿUtbu, what is there between you and me? …
Would that I had never laid eyes on you!
Had I wished, I could have composed a thousand—two thousand—poems of that sort. What I write, however, is like my own verse (4):
From the hand of a libertine, dressed as a man,
desired by two lovers: a sodomite and a fornicator.
If you tried to craft something of that caliber, ages would pass and still you would fail.”

Ibn Khallikān also said (5): Among the elegant lines of Abū al-ʿAtāhiyah (6) are:
Indeed, I so pined for you that—from excessive yearning—
anyone who sits near me catches the scent of longing in my clothes. (7)

Ibn Khallikān continues (8): He composed an immense corpus of poetry. He was born in 130 AH and died on Monday, the 3rd of Jumādā al-Ākhirah in 211 AH; some say he died in 213 AH. He requested that the following be inscribed upon his grave in Baghdad (9):
A life whose end is death
is a life hurried toward distress.

[Then came the year 212 AH.] In that year al-Maʾmūn dispatched Muḥammad ibn Ḥumayd al-Ṭūsī along the Mosul road to fight Bābak al-Khurramī in the lands of Azerbaijan. He captured a number of the rebels there and sent them in chains to al-Maʾmūn in Baghdad.

And in Rabīʿ al-Awwal of that same year, al-Maʾmūn unleashed upon the people two monstrous innovations, one even graver than the other.