the would-be prophet

Abu al-Tayyib Ahmad ibn Husayn al-Mutanabbi (915-965 CE), was a panegyrist for the famous emir Sayf al-Dawla for a time, and was also known for writing fakhr, or poetry with a self-vaunting or boasting attitude. His laqab (nickname) is from the 7th form of the verb نبى “to be a prophet” and means “the would-be prophet” or “the one who gives himself out as a prophet.” Arrogant, perhaps, but a huge baller:

I have tasted the bitter and the sweet of affairs
And walked over the rough and smooth path of days
I have come to know all about time. It cannot produce
Any extraordinary word or new action.

(Translation: Franz Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam, Leiden 1970, p. 277)

Another one:

Live where you will
acquire virtue and knowledge
for the fuller man is he who says:
This is what I am,
not, ‘my father was so-and-so’.

(Translation: Omar Pound, Arabic and Persian Poems, Washington 1970, p. 64-65)

Lastly, a story about his wit and subtlety, my translation from the Kitāb Tasliyyit al-Khawāṭr fi Muntakhbāt al-Malḥ wa al-Nawādr by Shākr al-Batlūnī:

One of the subtle of signs is that the famous poet al-Mutanabbi once praised a certain enemy of his king. The king then became angry, and had it in mind to assassinate him. al-Mutanabbi fled. Then after a period of time, the king ordered his secretary to address al-Mutanabbi amiably, that he would return; then the king would deceive him and kill him. But though the secretary loved al-Mutanabbi disobedience was not possible for him. So he wrote at the end of the letter “[the king] has forgiven you, God willing” and put a shadda on the nūn (of the word inna). Then when al-Mutanabbi understood it, he set out and dispatched a letter to the secretary, after having added an alif after the nūn with a shadda. And this is one of the subtlest of signs: the scribe meant by the inna, the speech of God be exalted, “the notables conspire against you, in order to kill you; leave! I am one of your sincere advisors.” And al-Mutanabbi meant by the addition of alif, the speech of God be exalted, “we will never enter [that kingdom], as long as they continue to be in it.”

Go here to listen to a recitation of one of his panegyrics.

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