He was nicknamed al-A'sha which means "weak-sighted"[3] or "night-blind" after he lost his sight.
His style, reliant on sound effects and full-bodied foreign words, tends to be artificial.
[citation needed] His love poems are devoted to the praise of Huraira, a black female slave.
[citation needed] These beliefs may have been due to his interactions with the bishop of Najrān and the 'Ibādites of Al-Hirah.
[4] Philip F. Kennedy writes of Al-A'sha's love of wine that:[5][6] It is said that he almost converted to Islam in 629 but fell just short of the act, dissuaded at the last minute upon finding out, already on route to visit Muhammad, about the Islamic proscription of wine.One of his qasidah or odes is sometimes included in the Mu'allaqat, an early collection of Arabic poetry.