A'sha Hamdan

Al-A'sha of Hamdan, a poet. He was in the army that Salm ibn Ziyad sent to Khujanda, and they were defeated. ¹

He said verses on that battle, lamenting his horse and describing its death. ¹

• The only source is al-Baladhuri's "Futuh al-Buldan", without a page number in the data; it needs an additional source.

A'sha Hamdan, properly 'Abd al-Rahman ibn 'Abd Allah, was an Arab poet who lived in Kufa in the second half of the first/seventh century. In his early career he was a traditionist and Qur'an reader; he married a sister of the theologian al-Sha'bi, who had married a sister of al-A'sha. Later he turned to poetry and sometimes spoke for the Yamanite faction. He took part in the wars of al-Hajjaj's governorship and his health seems to have suffered on an expedition into Mukran. He took part in the campaign of 'Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Ash'ath against the Turks, was taken captive, and escaped with the help of a Turkish woman who had fallen for him. When Ibn al-Ash'ath turned against al-Hajjaj, the poet's sharp tongue helped him with satires. After the defeat at Dayr al-Jamajim Ibn al-Ash'ath fled, and A'sha was led prisoner before al-Hajjaj, who recalled some of his satires; his improvised flattery availed him nothing, and the sentence of death was carried out on the spot in 83 AH (702). The verses of his that survive reflect his adventures and political feelings; his poetry, unaffected by the modernism of the Medinese school, has considerable force in both its partisan and its conventional erotic verse. ²