Bashar ibn Burd


Bashār ibn Burd, nicknamed al-Mura'ath, meaning "the wattled", was a poet of the late Umayyad and early Abbasid periods. Bashar was of Persian origin; his grandfather was taken as a captive to Iraq, but his father was a freedman of the Uqayl tribe. Some Arab scholars considered Bashar the first "modern" poet, and one of the pioneers of badi' in Arabic literature. It is believed that the poet exerted a great influence on the subsequent generation of poets.

Life

Bashar was blind from birth and said to have been ugly, in part a result of smallpox scarring on his face. He grew up in the rich cultural environment of Basra and showed his poetic talents at an early age. Bashar fell foul of some religious figures, such as Malik ibn Dinar and al-Hasan al-Basri, who condemned his poetry for its licentiousness. He exchanged Hija with several poets. Being anti-Mu'tazili, he criticized Wasil ibn Ata, who by some accounts is considered the founder of the Mutazilite school of Islamic thought.
After the Abbasids built Baghdad, Bashar moved there from Basra in 762. Bashar became associated with the caliph al-Mahdi. Due to his libertinism, al-Mahdi ordered him not to write further love poetry. Bashar quickly violated the ban.

Death

Multiple stories of Bashar's end exist. Ammiel Alcalay in 1993 argued that Bashar was condemned as a heretic and executed by al-Mahdi in 783. Hugh Kennedy, on the other hand, relates al-Tabari's account that Ya'qub ibn Dawud had Bashar murdered in the marshes between Basra and Baghdad.

Style

Most of his Hija' are in traditional style, while his fakhr expresses his Shu'ubi sentiments, vaunting the achievements of his Persian ancestors and denigrating the "uncivilized Arabs". The following couplet from Bashar demonstrates his admiration for Zoroastrianism over Islam by preferring prostration towards fire in lieu of soil.

الارض مظلمة و النار مشرقة
والنار معبودة مذكانت النار