Abu Nuwas

Abu Nuwas (Arabic أبو نواس, DMG Abu Nuwas ) also al -Hasan ibn Hani 'al- Hakami ad Dimaschqi / الحسن بن هانئ الحكمي الدمشقي / al - Ḥasan b. Hani al - ʾ Hakami ad Dimašqī (* 757 in Ahwaz, † 815), is considered the first urban poet of Arabic literature and was poet laureate. In the Swahili literature his name for a fictional fool shape is used, which can be partially attributed to the same stories as the Turkish Nasreddin Hodja or the North African Dschuha.

He lived in the time of Caliph Harun ar - Rashid ( Harun al- Rashid also ). In 1001 Abu Nuwas is mentioned as a companion of the Caliph. This period is considered as a time of classical Arabic literature with the center of Baghdad, then the capital of Arabia and Persia.

Abu Nuwas never learned to know his father Hani. This was an Arab, and his mother was a weaver and came from Persia. In Basra and Kufa, he studied with the greatest philologists of his time. To learn how to Bedouin Arabic, which was considered particularly pure, he is said to have also spent a year in the desert.

Dominated literary, this time by the transition from the topoi of Bedouin poetry to a transfiguration and idealization of the same, often ironic, especially by urban poets.

Abu Nuwas wrote wine, hunting and love poems, mostly in the form of homoerotic. However, because of these seals, he got many a time problems and was also imprisoned. One of his many satirical poems he lost with death: a noble Persian family let him mistreat such a way that he died as a result. In the last period of his life, Abu Nuwas had turned from the secular poetry from and of religion.

Since 1976, a crater 116 kilometers in diameter on Mercury is named after the poet. This stands at 17.4 ° N, 20.4 ° ​​W.

Examples

Wine and Quran

Give me and a gift Joseph the delicious wine which makes us shudder Avoid the confusion in your life and take only the peace Give me an up to the edge I do not like cup which are only half full The bottle on the table and the book next to it Drinking three glasses and quote a verse The good mingled with evil and may God forgive me - He will win in the one the other overcame: enough!

( translated from French )

The joys of Baghdad

To whom, he says, do you want to go to Mecca? I answer: Yes, if it with the joys will be of Baghdad over. How should I go on a pilgrimage because as long as I am flooded here at the matchmaker or the host?

( translated from French )