Misguided Bravado Cost This Poet His Life
After his release in 935, Al Mutanabbi became a wandering poet. He traveled around the region’s courts, and composed poems in praise of rulers in exchange for patronage. Poems that praise patrons in exchange for patronage have a long history that cuts across cultures. From ancient Sumer through ancient Greece and Persia, and among the Anglo Saxons, Arabs, Vikings and others, bards and poets sang and recited for supper. But when they sought richer fare, the surest ticket was to compose something that flattered a wealthy and powerful figure. Al Mutanabbi did that, and was often handsomely rewarded with gifts of cash. However, his greatest hope was to get appointed a governor of some province. He impressed as an unsurpassed poet, but did not impress as a potential governor.
Al Mutanabbi’s personality was prickly, and he was excessively proud. Such traits, combined with the dramatics that frequently accompany creative genius, gave his patrons pause, and his ambitions to govern a province were never fulfilled. The flip side of Al Mutanabbi’s praise was his propensity to compose devastating verse to insult those who rubbed him wrong. His targets were typically rival courtiers who competed for a patron’s attention, but sometimes included patrons who failed to reward Al Mutanabbi as richly as he thought he deserved. One particularly misguided poetic diss got him killed in 965, when the victim of his verse ambushed him near Baghdad. Outnumbered, he sought to flee. So the pursuers derisively shouted some of Al Mutanabbi’s bold lines, in which he boasted of his courage. Stung, he turned around in a misguided attempt to live up to his verse, and was killed in the ensuing fight.