Ta'abbata Sharran

[4] Another story has it that his mother gave him the name because he habitually carried his sword under his arm when travelling with a raiding party.

Modern scholars believe that these traditions "should not be taken at face value," and that the name was intended to signify the poet's unavoidable propensity for trouble.

[5] After the death of his father Jabr, his mother married one of his enemies, Abu Kabir al-Hudhali [ar].

However, scholar Albert Arazi notes that due to a lack of contemporary documents about the sa'alik, knowledge of them is uncertain and "it is not at all easy to unravel the problem posed by the existence of this group.

The band primarily raided the tribes of Bajila, Banu Hudhayl, Azd, and Khath'am, and evaded pursuit by hiding in the Sarawat Mountains.

Narratives of his life are found in several literary sources beginning in the 8th century, and include stylized accounts of his exploits such as him pouring honey on a mountain in order to slide to safety after a raid.

[5] The poet was eventually killed during a raid against the Banu Hudhayl, and his body was thrown into a cave called al-Rakhman.

[5] Ta'abbata Sharran's "Qasida Qafiyya"[a] is the opening poem of the Mufaddaliyat, an important collection of early Arabic poetry.

[12] According to the Italian orientalist Francesco Gabrieli, the Qafiyya may not have been written as a single poem, but might instead be a collection of Ta'abbata Sharran's verses compiled by later editors.

[19] The "Qasida Lamiyya,"[b] transmitted in the 9th-century Hamasah of Abu Tammam, is considered to be another of the poet's major works.

Al-Tibrizi, a major commentator on the Hamasa, believed that the true author was the rāwī (reciter) Khalaf al-Ahmar [ar], while the Andalusian anthologist Ibn Abd Rabbih attributed it to a nephew of Ta'abbata Sharran.

[21] The poem is a rithā' (elegy) on the death of the poet's uncle, slain on a mountain path by the Banu Hudhyal.

"[23] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe admired the poem greatly,[5] and included a German translation of it in the "Notes and Queries" section of his 1819 work West–östlicher Divan.

[32] In another, titled "Sulayma Says to Her Neighbor Women",[c] he meets a ghul and attempts to have sex with her, but she writhes and reveals her horrible face, which prompts him to cut her head off.

During an imagined tour of hell, a Sheikh who criticized al-Ma'arri encounters Ta'abbata Sharran along with al-Shanfara,[38] and asks him if he really married a ghul.

[41] Interest in al-Shanfara led naturally to his associate Ta'abbata Sharran, who became known and appreciated in Europe during the 19th century.