and surpassed the men of his age in it. He attached himself to the court of Sayf al-Dawlah ibn Ḥamdān, praised him in verse, and enjoyed high favour. He then made for Egypt, composed panegyrics for Kāfūr al-Ikhshīdī, afterwards lampooned him and fled. Reaching Baghdad, he praised certain of its notables and had his Dīwān recited before them. He next returned to Kūfa and eulogised one of the grandees— Ibn al-ʿAmīd—who rewarded him with thirty thousand dinars. He then travelled to Fārs, lauded ʿAḍud al-Dawlah ibn Būyah, and was granted enormous sums approaching two hundred thousand dirhams.

Others say he acquired only about thirty thousand dinars. ʿAḍud al-Dawlah then planted someone to ask him, “Which gifts are finer, those of ʿAḍud al-Dawlah ibn Būyah or of Sayf al-Dawlah ibn Ḥamdān?” He replied, “These are more generous, but they are forced; those were fewer, yet they came from a cheerful soul—for they were natural, whereas these are affected.” (1) When this was reported to ʿAḍud al-Dawlah he grew enraged and dispatched a party of Bedouins to waylay the poet on his return to Baghdad.

It is also said that he had earlier satirised their chief, Ḍabbah al-Asadī—who with his men were highwaymen—and that for this reason ʿAḍud al-Dawlah instructed them to assault him, kill him, and seize whatever wealth he carried. They caught up with him—sixty horsemen—on a Wednesday when three days of Ramadan remained. Some say he was killed on a Monday with five days left of Ramadan; others maintain it happened in Shaʿbān. He had halted by a spring beneath a pear tree and spread out his meal for lunch. With him were his son Muḥassad (2) and fifteen servants. When he saw them he called, “Come forward, O nobles of the Arabs!” Receiving no reply, he sensed danger, rose to his weapons and mount, and they faced one another for a time. They slew his son Muḥassad and some of his servants, and he sought to flee.

A retainer said to him, “Where will you go when you are the one who said:
The night, the horse and the open waste all know me;
And war, the thrust, the parchment and the pen. (3)”

He answered, “Woe to you, you have killed me!” He wheeled back, drove his lance into the neck of their leader and killed him, but they closed in and pierced him with spears (4) until he died, taking all the wealth that was with him. This occurred near al-Nuʿmāniyyah as he was on his way back to Baghdad, where he was buried; he was forty-eight years old.

Ibn ʿAsākir relates that at the stage before this, some Bedouins had asked him for fifty dirhams to guarantee his safety, but miserliness, pride, and his boast of bravery kept him from giving it. Al-Mutanabbī was by blood a pure Juʿfī, yet while among Banū Kalb in the desert of al-Samāwah near Ḥimṣ he claimed to be an Alid descended from al-Ḥasan, then even claimed prophethood. A band of their ignorant rabble followed him, and he asserted that revelation had come down to him, including the words:

“By the star …”