16. Al Mutanabbi’s Last-Minute Turnaround
Al Mutanabbi was often handsomely rewarded with gifts of cash, but his greatest hope was to get appointed governor of a province. He impressed as an unsurpassed poet, but failed to impress as a potential governor, as his personality was prickly and his overweening pride was often off-putting. Such traits, combined with the dramatics frequently accompanying creative genius, gave his patrons pause, and his ambitions of ruling a province were never fulfilled.
The flip side of Al Mutanabbi’s praise was his propensity to compose devastating verses insulting those who rubbed him wrong – typically rival courtiers competing for a patron’s attention, but sometimes patrons who failed to reward Al Mutanabbi as richly as he thought he deserved. Such insulting poetry got him killed in 965, when one of the victims of his verse waylaid him near Baghdad. Outnumbered, he fought through his attackers and broke free. Then his attackers derisively shouted some of Al Mutanabbi’s bold lines, in which he had boasted of his courage. Stung by his own words, the poet halted his flight, turned around in order to live up to his verse, and was killed in the fight that followed.
