Mutanabbi: (المتنبی)

AL-Mutanabbi

 Mutanabbi was one of the greatest poets of Arabic literature. His native name is Abu Tayyib Ahmad bin Hussain but he is popularly known as al-Mutanabbi. He was born and raised up in Kufa. His father was a water-carrier of Kufa. He took his education at Damascus and Syria. On his own's ability, he got the singular knowledge and mastery of Arabic poems. From his childhood, Mutanabbi was very much ambitious so he claimed himself as a prophet for which he is said as al-Mutanabbi (The false Prophet). And as a result, he was thrown into prison by the governor of Hims. After releasing from the prison he wandered to and fro chanting the praises of all and sundry until fortune guided him to the court of Saifud Dawla of Aleppo. For nine years (948-957 A.D.) he stood high in the favour of that cultured prince, whose virtues he celebrated in a series of splendid eulogies, and with whom he lived as an intimate friend and comrade in arms. 

          Mutanabbi was sincerely connected to his the noble master, and this feeling inspired a purer and loftier strain than we find in the fulsome panegyrics which he afterwards addressed to the Negro Kafur. He seems to have been occasionally in disgrace, but Safud Dawla could deny nothing to a poet who paid him such magnificent compliments. Nor was he deterred by any false modesty from praising himself: he was fully conscious of his power and, like Arabian bards in general, he bragged about it. Although the verbal legerdemain which is so conspicuous in his poetry cannot be reproduced in another language, the lines translated below may be taken as a favourable and sufficiently characteristic specimen of his style. 

          As a successful poet Mutanabbi capitalized his poems in form and meaning. One feature of the poems of Mutanabbi is to praise the contemporary society and morality. His poems connected with human life. He is allowed to be a master of that proverbial philosophy in which Orientals delight and which is characteristic of the modern school beginning with Abul Atahiya, though some of the ancients had already cultivated it with success.

          Mutanabbi was the poet of meaning. He mingled between the poems and the philosophy as we may find in verse:

لم یترک الدھر من قلبی ولا کبدی            شیئا تتمہ عین ولا جید
یا ساقی اخمر فی کوسکما             ام فی کوسکاھم وتسھید؟
 لی لا تغیرنی اصخرۃ انا؟ ما          ھذی المدام ولا تلک الاناشید

 Life philosophy is one of the main point of Mutanabbi’s verses. He wrote:

نصیبک فی حیاتک من حبیب         نصیبک فی منامک من خیال
رمانی الدھر بالارزائ حتی       فوادی فی غشائ من نبال

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