Abu al-Fath ibn al-Ta'awidhi

Abu'l-Fath Ibn al-Ta'awidhi, Muhammad ibn 'Abdallah, the celebrated scribe-poet; named for al-Ta'awidhi his maternal grandfather who raised him — a tender poet, sweet of speech, easy of phrase, whose verse flew the horizons and led the poets of Iraq; Ibn Khallikan called him the poet of his time without equal, joining strength of wording to sweetness, delicacy of meaning to precision — "in my belief none in the two hundred years before him matched him." ²

Blind late in life, he had already collected his diwan himself, giving it a witty preface and arranging it in four parts, calling whatever he later added "the Supplements"; in his blindness he wrote pieces mourning his eyes and the days of his youth; his stipend in the diwan was transferred at his request into his sons' names; he died in 584. ²