Extract from the Encyclopaedia of Islam CD-ROM Edition v.1.

ABU 'l- #AT$HIYA, poetic nickname ("father of craziness") of Ab Is Ism#l b. al-|sim b. Suwayd b. Kaysn , Arabic poet, born in Kfa (or #Ayn al-Tamr) 130/748 and died 210/825 or 211/826. His family had been mawl of the #Anaza tribe for two or three generations, and were engaged in menial occupations; his father was a cupper, and the poet himself as a youth sold earthenware in the streets. His outlook on life was embittered by a sense of social inferiority; in his later verse he gave vent to his hatred of the governing class and the wealthy; and he was notorious for covetousness and meanness to the end of his life. But like Ba r b. Burd, he had a natural gift for poetry, and hoped to find in this the door to a larger life. On account of his poverty he had not the time to attend lectures on philology and the poetry of the ancients, and to this we must attribute the freshness and unconventionality of his style. As a young man he associated with the profligate circle of poets grouped around Wliba b. al- ubb, and gained a reputation with his azals and wine-songs; later critics have condemned these productions as poor and effeminate (Ibn |utayba, i#r, 497), and only fragments of them have survived. Like most of the spontaneous poets, he showed a preference for simple language and short metres, and first rose to fame by a panegyric on al-Mahd which, in spite of these unconventional characteristics, gained the caliph's favour. He made himself notorious in Ba dd by his azals in praise of #Utba, a slave-girl of al-Mahd's cousin Raya, who hoped to gain the caliph's notice but had no intention of throwing herself away on a penniless nobody. He held the caliph responsible for his failure to win #Utba, and some indiscrete verses gained him a flogging and banishment to Kfa. When al-Mahd died, he took his revenge in some verses which could be read ambiguously. Back in Ba dd his fulsome praise of al-Hd annoyed the latter's successor Hrn al-Ra d, who sent him to prison along with his friend Ibrhm al-Mawil. Restored to favour, he charmed Hrn with his love-lyrics, but suddenly renounced the azal and devoted himself to ascetic poetry (c. 178). Hrn at first took umbrage at his conversion and imprisoned him, but was reconciled later at the instances of al-Fa l b. Rab#, and in part also no doubt because of his popularity with the masses. It may be suspected that al-Fa l's patronage was connected with his intrigue, in association with the queen Zubayda, against the Barmakids, and that Abu '1-#Athiya's new "ascetic" productions conveniently served their purposes. However that may be, Abu'l-#Athiya maintained henceforward a vast [I 108a] output of sermons in verse, long and short, painting the horrors of all-levelling Death, and directed especially against the rich and the powerful, not excluding the caliph himself. So profitable was it that when Ab Nuws also began to produce zuhdiyyt Abu'l-#Athiya warned him not to trespass on the field to which he had established a prescriptive right (A br Ab Nuws, Cairo 1924, 70). Some later critics questioned, not without cause, the sincerity of his conversion, notably the real ascetic Abu'l-#Al" al-Ma#arr, who referred to him as "that astute fellow" (Ibn Fa l Allh, Maslik al-Abr, xv, MS Brit. Mus. 575, fol. 136). A more frequent accusation brought against Abu'l-#Athiya is that of heresy, which was a favourite weapon at the time; and it was suggested by Goldziher that one reason for his imprisonments may be sought in the occasionally unorthodox tone of some of his poems. Having no theological education he seems to have been influenced by the modified legacy of Manichaean beliefs still current in #Ir, which accounted for the disorders of this world by the existence of two primary substances, good and evil, though Abu'l-#Athiya held that both were the creation of Allh. In certain of his verses also, such as "If you would see the noblest of mankind look for a king in the guise of a pauper", there may be suggestions of a concealed attachment to Ms al-Kim and the cause of the #ite imms, still strong in Kfa. His astonishing success as a poet was due to the simplicity, spontaneity, and artlessness of his language, which contrasted with the laboured artificiality of some of his contemporaries, and expressed the feelings of the people in verse that they could understand. He was fortunate also, by his friendship with Ibrhm al-Mawil, to have many of his poems set to music by the foremost musician of the day. He and his younger contemporary Abn b. #Abd al- amd [q.v.] were the first to use muzdawi (couplet) rhyming verse, and he
2001 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands

Extract from the Encyclopaedia of Islam CD-ROM Edition v.1.1

was the first, according to al-Ma#arr (al-Ful wa'l- ayt, i, 131), to invent the metre mu ri#. He also used a metre consisting of eight long syllables. Owing to his enormous output his entire dwn was never collected. The zuhdiyyt were put together by the Spanish scholar Ibn #Abd al-Barr (d. 463/1071). (A. Guillaume) Ibn allikn, no. 91 al-A n2, iii, 126-83 (3, iv, 1-112) see also Guidi's Tables for other references Ta"r Ba dd, vi, 250-60 Goldziher, Trans. IX Congress of Orientalists, 113 ff. G. Vajda, in RSO, 1937, 215 ff., 225 ff. Brockelmann, I, 76; S I, 119. Partial editions of the dwn were published in Bairut 1887, 1909 see also Ma m#a, ed. F. E. Bustani, Bairut 1927 Zuhdiyyt, trans. O. Rescher, Stuttgart 1928.

2001 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands