al-A'sha Maymun b. Qays

Maymun b. Qays, called al-A'sha ("the night-blind"), was a prominent ancient Arab poet of the tribe of Kays b. Tha'laba of the Bakr b. Wa'il. He was born before 570 at Dumna, a place in the Manfuha oasis south of Riyadh, and died there after 625. ¹

He suffered from an eye disease and went blind in the prime of life. In his youth he set out in search of wealth and for years travelled, probably as a merchant, through Upper and Lower Mesopotamia, Syria, southern Arabia and Abyssinia. After he was blind he lived by his art, writing panegyrics, and kept travelling to the governor of al-Hira, Iyas ibn Qabisa (d. 611), to Hadramawt, to Kays ibn Ma'dikariba, father of al-Ash'ath, and to Hawdha ibn 'Ali, prince of Jaww in Yamama. ¹

After the fall of the Lakhmid king al-Nu'man (501 or 502) the Bakr began raids into the cultivated land of Iraq along the Euphrates, and al-A'sha was probably with the powerful Shayban ibn Tha'laba. He threatened the valley of the Euphrates in an insolent reply to Khusraw II, who had demanded hostages, and confronted Kays ibn Mas'ud, head of the Shayban, when the latter went to court. The poet thus helped bring about the battle of Dhu Qar (605). He later left the Shayban for the Kays ibn Tha'laba, feeling his tribe's honour had been violated, and was accused in his homeland; at a fair near Mecca a mob stirred up by his rival Djihinnam attacked him. ¹

The poet's immediate influence seems to have been confined to anonymous pupils and forgers, who counted on the patronage of al-Ash'ath; their work fills almost the whole second part of the Diwan (poems 52-82), though the first part too contains inauthentic verse. The Diwan was edited by R. Geyer (London 1928). ¹