Ashja' al-Sulami

Ashja' al-Sulami, a poet. Al-Mas'udi admired his elegy for the Barmakids. ²

Al-Mas'udi quotes his ode which begins: "Now we have rested and our mounts have rested", and his lines "Yours is a Barmakid sword, keen, that was struck by a Hashimite keen sword", and "The Barmakids turned away from the world, and had they been spared of men they would not have increased." ²

• The only source is al-Mas'udi and needs an additional source for his life.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam entry on al-Sulami, Abu 'l-Walid, an Arab poet of the end of the second/eighth century, identifies him with this poet, as its text names his brother Ahmad, also a poet, who confined himself to erotic verse. An orphan, he settled young at Basra with his mother. When he showed talent, the Kaysites of Basra, who had had no eminent poet since the death of Bashshar ibn Burd, fabricated a Kaysite genealogy for him. After his training he went to al-Raqqa to Ja'far ibn Yahya al-Barmaki, who presented him to al-Rashid, and from then on he was the panegyrist of the caliph and his entourage, including the Barmakids, al-Qasim ibn al-Rashid, al-Amin, al-Fadl ibn al-Rabi' and Muhammad ibn Mansur ibn Ziyad. Most of his surviving work is panegyric, widely circulated through the Kaysites of Basra; there are a few funeral orations, notably for al-Rashid. ³