Ta'abbata Sharran
historical figure · 2 works · 2 mentions · 2 anchored passages
Taʼabbaṭa Sharran · تأبط شراً
in the texts
Kitāb madhāhib al-Aʻrāb wa-falāsifat al-Islām fī al-jinn
Brigand poet to whom the ode of the solitary desert-dweller is doubtfully ascribed.
He spends the day in a waterless waste and the evening in a desert — apart and alone (3), and bareback upon the backs of deadly places and he outstrips the wind's embassy from wherever he bears down — with a rushing blast out of his own overtaking speed When sleep's drowsiness has stitched his two eyes shut, there never ceases — to be a guard for him, out of a heart wide awake and deadly and he ma …
And of this class is the saying of Taʼabbaṭa Sharran, or the saying of the one who says in an ode of his
Ansāb al-ʻArab al-qudamāʼ
A pre-Islamic brigand-poet whose sobriquet, taken from an incident, wholly replaced his name.
And so with al-Mukharriq, and Taʼabbaṭa Sharran, and Aʻṣur, and al-Mustawghir, and others whose names went and whose by-names remained — so what should prevent the like of this from happening before recorded history, so that the father of a tribe was given a by-name suiting one of his traits, in praise or in blame, and then the name was forgotten and the by-name remained?