ori replied: 'His best
pieces surpass the best of mine, and my worst are better than the
worst of his,' Abul-Ala al Maarri, a great philologist and poet (born
in A.D. 973, died A.D. 1057), was asked which was the best poet of the
three, Abu Tammam, Al-Bohtori, or Al-Mutanabbi; he replied that two of
them were moralists, and that Bohtori was the poet. He died A.D. 897.
His poems were not arranged in order till Abu Bakr as Sauli collected
them and classed them alphabetically by their rhymes, while Abul Faraj
Ali bin Husain Al-Ispahani collected them also, and arranged them
according to their subjects. A copy of his 'Diwan' is in the
Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.

Al Mutanabbi, or the pretended prophet, a _role_ to which he aspired,
but in which he did not succeed, comes next to the two great
poets--Abu Tammam and Al-Bohtori--though some critics consider him to
be superior to them. He is, however, generally acknowledged to be a
great lyric poet, while many of his best Kasidas refer to the exploits
of Saif ad Dawlah, a prince of the Benou Hamdan dynasty in Syria. After
leaving him he went to Egypt, then to Persia, Baghdad, and finally
Kufa, his native place, near which he was killed in a fight in A.D.
965. It is stated that in this contest Mutanabbi, seeing himself
vanquished, was taking to flight, when his slave said to him, 'Let it
never be said that you fled from a fight, you who are the author of
this verse: "The horse, and the night, and the desert know me (well);
the sword also, and the lance, and paper and the pen."'

Upon this he turned back and fought till he was slain, along with his
son and his slave. His 'Diwan,' or collection of poems, is well known,
and much read in our times, even in India. It has been translated into
German.

An-Nami was one of the ablest and most talented poets of his time, but
inferior to Mutanabbi, with whom he had some encounters and contests
in reciting extemporary verses when they were at the court of Saif ad
Dawlah together. He died A.D. 1008 at Aleppo, aged ninety.

Abul-Abbas Al-Mofadhdhal, the collector of the celebrated selection of
Arabic poems called the 'Mofadhdhaliat,' which served as a model for
the Hamasas, was the first editor of the seven suspended poems, the
Mua'llakat, and also one of the earliest of the Arab philologists. He
was a native of Kufa, and adhered to the faction of Ibrahim bin
Abdallah; who rebelled in A.D. 761 against Al-Mansur, the second
Abbaside K