Abu Firas al-Hamdani

Abu Firas al-Hamdani (932–968) (Arabic: أبو فراس الحمداني‎) was an Arab poet. He was a member of the noble family of the Hamanids, who were rulers in northern Syria and upper Mesopotamia during the 10th century. His most famous work is a collection of poems titled al-Rûmiyât (الروميات).

Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī, poetic cognomen of al-Ḥārit̲h̲ b. Abi 'l-ʿAlāʾ Saʿīd b. Ḥamdān al-Tag̲h̲libī, Arab poet, born in 320/932, probably in ʿIrāḳ. Saʿīd, himself a poet, was killed by his nephew Nāṣir al-Dawla Ḥasan on attempting to occupy Mawṣil in 323/935, The mother of Abū Firās, a Greek umm walad , moved with her son to Aleppo after its occupation by the poet's cousin Sayf al-Dawla in 333/944, and there he was trained under the eye of Sayf al-Dawla, who also married his sister. In 336/947-8 he was appointed to the governorship of Manbid̲j̲ (and later also of Ḥarrān), where, in spite of his youth, he distinguished himself in the conflicts with the Nizārī tribes of Diyār Muḍar and the Syrian desert. He also frequently accompanied Sayf al-Dawla in his Byzantine expeditions, and was captured in 348/951 but succeeded in escaping from imprisonment at Ḵh̲ars̲h̲ana by leaping on horseback into the Euphrates. In 351/962 he was again captured at Manbid̲j̲ during the Greek operations preliminary to the siege of Aleppo, and taken to Constantinople where he remained, in spite of his entreaties to Sayf al-Dawla, until the general exchange of prisoners in 355/966. He was then appointed governor of Ḥimṣ and in the year after Sayf al-Dawla's death attempted to revolt against his son and successor (and his own nephew) Abu'l-Maʿālī, but was defeated, captured and killed by the latter's general Karg̲h̲awayh, 2 Ḏj̲umādā i, 357/4 April 968.

The reputation of Abū Firās owes much to his personal qualities. Handsome in person, of noble family, brave, generous, and extolled by his contemporaries as “excelling in every virtue” (though also egoistic and rashly ambitious), he lived up to the Arab ideal of chivalry which he expressed in his poetry. This is probably the thought which underlies the often-quoted phrase of Ibn ʿAbbād: “Poetry began with a king (sc. Imruʾ al-Ḳays) and ended with a king (sc. Abū Firās)”. His earlier output is composed of ḳaṣīdas of the classical type, devoted to praise of his family's nobility and warlike deeds (notably a rāʾiyya of 225 lines recounting the history of the Ḥamdānid house) or to self-praise, and shorter lyrical pieces on amatory or friendship themes of the ʿIrāḳī type. The former are remarkable for their sincerity, directness, and natural vigour, in contrast to the metaphorical elaboration of his chief rival at the court of Sayf al-Dawla, al-Mutanabbī; the latter are elegant trifles, formal and unoriginal. Noteworthy also are his outspokenly S̲h̲īʿite odes, satirizing the ʿAbbāsids. But it is more especially on the poems of his captivity, the Rūmiyyāt, that his fame rests. In these he gives expression in affecting and eloquent terms to the captive's yearning for home and friends, mingled with not a little self-praise, reproach to Sayf al-Dawla for the delay in ransoming him, and bitter complaints at being neglected.

His dīwān was edited with a commentary (largely from the poet himself) shortly after his death by his tutor and friend, the grammarian Ibn Ḵh̲ālawayh (d. 370/980). The manuscripts present, however, so many variations in text and arrangement that other recensions must also have been circulated, including probably that of al-Babbag̲h̲ā (d. 398/1008: see Tanūk̲h̲ī, Bibl.). All the earlier defective editions (Bayrūt 1873, 1900, 1910) are superseded by the critical edition of S. Dahhān (3 vols., Bayrūt 1944), with full bibliography.

Further reading

• Sami Dahan, Le diwan d'Abu Firas al-Hamdani (poète arabe du IVe siècle de l'hégire). Beirut: Institut français de Damas, 1944.