Muslim ibn al-Walid

Abu al-Walīd Muslim ibn al-Walīd al-Anṣārī (Arabic: أبو الوليد مسلم بن الوليد الأنصاري; c. 130 H/748 AD– 207 H/823 AD),^[1] also known as Ṣarī‘ al-Ghawānī (Arabic: صريع الغواني, "The One Knocked Down by the Fair"^[2]), was among the finest poets of the early Abbasid period, and mawla of the Ansar.^[3] As worded by Hilary Kilpatrick, he was patronized by Abbasid dignitaries, one of the first masters of the "refined" badiʿ style,^[a] best known for wine and love songs, also composed panegyrics.^[1]

As worded by the Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, he was born and brought up in Kufa. He moved to Baghdad in the reign of Harun al-Rashid before the Barmakid debacle of 187 H/794 AD.^[3]

He gained favour by Al Fadl bin Sahl, a wazeer in the reign of the seventh Abbasid caliph al-Maʾmūn and was appointed as a postmaster in Jurjān (Gorgan in present-day Iran) by al-Maʾmūn and remained and later in Isfahan. He withdrew from poetry after Al Fadl was murdered and led a lonely life until his death.^[5] He is buried in Gorgan.

Edition and translation

• M. J. de Goeje's edition (1875)
• The Diwan of Muslim ibn al-Walid, called Sariʻ al Gawani, translated and commented on by Arthur Wormhoudt. William Penn College. 1981.

Notes

• Poetsgate.com: ديوان صريع الغواني (in Arabic)

1. Quoting S. A. Bonebakker,

   According to Ibn al-Muʿtazz, badīʿ devices do not appear for the first time in the work of the early Abbasid poets such as Bashshār, Muslim b. al-Walīd and Abū Nuwās; still they are more frequently found in their work than in the poems of the ancients."^[4]