خلاصه ماشینی:
breath of wind2• Before reciting, he clapped his hands, cleared his throat, spat right and left, and then began3• Then, at Basra, every lad and every girl in love sang Bashshar's songs; every wailing woman and every song• stress made money thereby ; every man of importance feared (I) (Ibn Khall.
In poetry the shibboleth of the 3rd/9th century was 'originality' or ' innovation' (bida'), something unlike others-, One of the outstanding poets of the age, Ibn al-Mu'tazz, actually wrote a book on this subject".
In the _few passages where the drinking-songs of Abu Nuwas give details we invariably find : '' The morning has rent the veil of darkness ", or some such thing1• A hundred years later, Ibn al-Mu'tazz gives most variants on this subject :- " Arise, carousing boon companions, let us take the morning draught in darkness for the dawn is well- n1.
And indeed, narcissus is the chief flower of Svria which not infrequently completely whitens its meadows", Even of a ' Battle of Flowers ' he has sung in which the rose, the self-satisfied lily, the anemone ' whose checks bear the scar of warfare,' the violet in mourning attire and the car• nation as war-crier march in the cover of the whirling dust against the narcissus,-until the poet, anxious for his favourite, unites them all peacefully in a salon where ' birds and harps sing '4• In the previous century Buhturi (Ibn Khall.