Shahid Balkhi (or Shuhayd; Persian: شهید بلخی, romanized: Shahīd-e Balkhī; died 927) was a scribe, philosopher and poet active in the Chaghaniyan and Samanid courts.
The modern historian Francois de Blois has argued that the name of "Shahid" is a misrepresentation of chronicles, stating that during that period the name was only used as a posthumous title for Muslims that had been killed in battle, and thus using it for a living person "would seem ludicrous and indeed sacrilegious."
[6] Based on this, de Blois suggests that Shahid may have been part of the somewhat pro-Shi'ite Mu'tazili environment of his two associates.
[5] The Siwanu'l-hikma of Abu Sulayman Sijistani contains a large excerpt from one of Shahid's books about the "superiority of the pleasures of the soul over those of the body", which may have been what Razi addressed in one of his polemics.
Measure the wisdom, thousands less.Persian poets between the 10th and 12th-centuries mention Shahid in an respectful manner, but after that he fades into obscurity.
[5] The modern historian N. N. Negmatov calls Shahid "one of the best court poets of the Samanid Nasr II, and one of the leading scholars of the age.