Abu Nawas

A city is able to surprise, also Baghdad in the

nine century. Abu Nanas was a part of that
surprising. When we was child we knew from the
cast-off tale came from somewhere: he was smart,
tricky and cute, but funny, who lived in the Harun
Al Rasyids era. However, the writers of Arabic
literature history saw him with respectfully: He
was a poet taking modernistic sound in the golden
era, but it was not easy forever.
He was born in the middle of the seven century
in Avaz, Persia, and passed away before sixty
years old in Baghdad. His mother was a weaver
from Persia, and his father, who he was never
known, was a soldier from Damascus. In the
difficulty life, his mother sold him to a physician
from Yemen.
Brought to Basra, this child learned reading
Quran, but what happen was. Abu Nawas was a
handsome boy, curly long hair, and well mannered.
He was attracting the heart of the poet, Waliba ibn
al-Hubab. Eventually she became his teacher and
darling. They lived in Kuffah.
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Two year later Abu Nawas who was an

adolescent returned to Basra, the cultural capital
city, for studying Arabic poetry pre-Islam. From
here, he had stayed a year among Badui people to
absorb the originality of their language, but he
was bored. He returned to big city:
Because this was a live
There was not a desert camp
There was not a camels milk!
How you could been seated a Badui,
Beside the Kisra Palace?
The dispute between urban and rural rather
had particular influenced in the live of Arabic
literature at that time. It was accordance with
dispute between oral tradition and written culture.
Oral tradition was luster in pre-Islam period:
poetry was also a song, and it had grown in
memorized. In this tradition, the regular formula
become important, in order to material to be
memorized is not threatened with forgotten.
However, Islam came, Quran given, with a
language, which as al-Rummani said, a researcher
from the teen century, It can not be imitated.
When this religion came to another region, there
2

was an assembly between Arab and non-Arab. It

was able to enrich in one side, and rising an
anxious on the other hand.
Listening

is

the

father

of

all

linguistic

capabilities, Ibnu Khaldun said in Muqaddima.

Then, the trend of Arabian linguistic changed,
with variation hearing from non-Arab spoken
using Arabian After that, there was concerned
that Quran and hadits were not able to understand
eventually. Then, Grammar began to develop,
started with Abul al-Daulis book, followed by alKhalil in the seven century.
Grammar is a sign when oral language has
decreased its role, when the letter of the alphabet
was

more

important,

because

the

word

is

analyzed, scrutinized, arranged in category and all

of them only can be done if the word is able to
explore again. Shortly, while the word is written.
Using alphabet stimulated the capability of
analysis. Afterward, a study of literature and
theory has developed. All at once, the formula
used to support material to memorize, was not
needed again. Arabian literature slid in freedom,
wandering with shape and essence.

Altogether, poetry was more possible to be

individual expression, something in touched with
the urban life. Abu Nawas was imperiously in
here.
Ali Ahmad Said, who was popular as Adonis,
Syria poet who lives in France now, picturing the
Abu Nawass poetry implied the fire lip destroys
every

obstacle,

characters.

For

both

social

Abu

Nawas,

or
said

religious
Adonis,

Happiness is not come from when we had done

something

permitted,

but

contrary,

keeping

something forbidden and breaks the law. Abu

Nawas stated that he did not want to be sinful as
another people done, because his desire was the
sin which make another sin appeared to be fade.
He opposed to The tyrant in the sky.
At that position, Adonis said, Abu Nawas uses
mask a clown and shift to be drunk, even his
homoerotic desire was expressed with no conceal.
He became popular by khamriyyat, wine poetry,
and mudhakkarat also mujuniyyat, erotic poetries
which smart and naughty revered the fellows.
Living under the administrative of Harun alRasyids and his successors, Muhammad al-Amin,
the

famous

poet

sometime
4

had

to

pay

his

naughty by sentence in the jail. Even, under the

administrative of Khalifah Abdullah al-Mamun,
who protected art and science, but he did not like
to drunk and the naughty poet, Abu Nawas got his
ending. There was someone said that he passed
away in a jail, and another story said that he was
poisoned.
Live of Abu Nawas was colorful, but we will
mistake if we forget that his disobedient is in
poetry itself. Poetry is not afraid to break a
consensus, said the great theorist of literature in
the ten century, al-Jurjani, so that consensus which
was formed in oral tradition was broken. This
modernization has been continued since the eight
century, beginning by Ibn Burd according to
Adonis has invented an urban language and no
a desert language, a language which on the Abu
Nawass hand it reached the top which it had
never been attained before.
For many decades, that urban language was
glorious. However, in 1258 Baghdad was fallen by
Mongolian who came from the far savannah.
Perhaps it can be interpreted that urban is
defeated by rural eventually: Urban are only

passionate and drunk, the rural is sturdy and

original.
Perhaps

it

causes

after-Baghdad,

people

choose back to basis. Badui who was mocked

by Abu Nawas that they were not proper to close
with Kisra Palace also can be an answer when
people try to find a medicine for Arabian culture,
which had been crisis since the thirteen century.
Originality is a tough, although, certainly the
originality is sluggish.