Kudama al-Sijilli

Kudama al-Sijilli was an Arab poet of the first/seventh-eighth century, who died after 105/724. The unsigned Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.) entry says that although he composed several qasidas, his fame rests on his rajaz verses about bedouin subjects, such as camels, horses and ounces, and on his eulogies of the Umayyads 'Abd al-Malik and Hisham, of Malik b. Bishr, and of the governor al-Hajjaj. ¹

The critics include him among the four best rajaz poets, with his fellow tribesman al-Aghlab and the two Tamimites of Basra, al-'Ajjaj and his son Ru'ba, and they rank him highest for description and praise his facility in improvisation. His rivalry with al-'Ajjaj, the Mudar against the Rabi'a, is famous, and the biographers describe a grotesque scene at al-Mirbad, in which the rivals' camels are put to flight. ¹