Hassan ibn Thabit

Hassan ibn Thabit was an Arabian poet from Medina, one of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad and an early figure in Islamic poetry. He lived between the mid-sixth and the seventh century, a period that spans the move from pre-Islamic Arabia to the community founded under Islam. He wrote in Arabic, and he matters chiefly because his verses describe events of his own time from the inside.

He belonged to the Banu Khazraj tribe, which was based in Medina. Islamic tradition holds that he lived about 120 years, sixty before converting to Islam and sixty after. As a young man he travelled to Al-Hirah and Damascus, and later settled in Medina, where he embraced the new faith after Muhammad's arrival and turned his poetry to its defence. He is credited with more than two thousand satires and elegies, including about a thousand short poems of three to twenty lines.

His output has two main strands. One is satire aimed at opponents of the Muslim community, such as Abu Sufyan, Ibn al-Jibara, Amr ibn al-As, Hatim ibn Hisham and Abu Jahl, whom he mocked by likening them to monkeys, goats, ostriches and foxes. The other is his defence of the Prophet, in which his lines record recent events in detail. He is also regarded as Islam's first religious poet, which places him at a meeting point between older poetic tradition and new religious writing.

His death is recorded in Medina, but the sources disagree on the date. Some place it between 655 and 661, during the caliphate of Ali ibn Abi Talib, while other historians place it between 670 and 674, under Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan. Figures for his age and dates should therefore be read with caution.

His legacy is mainly one of recognition and imitation. The Palestinian poet Salim Al-Ya'qubi called himself "Hassan of Palestine" and took the name as a literary pseudonym. Imam Ahmed Raza Khan, also known as Hassanul Hind, likewise bore a title that links him with the poet of Medina.