Bashshar ibn Burd (714–784)
Born 714 CE, died 784 CE.
Abū Muʿādh Bashshār ibn Burd (Arabic: أبو معاذ بشّار بن برد; 714–783), nicknamed al-Muraʿʿath (Arabic: المرعّث, 'the wattled'), was a Persian poet of the late Umayyad and early Abbasid periods who wrote in Arabic. Bashshar was of Persian ethnicity; his grandfather was taken as a captive to Iraq, but his father was a freedman (mawla) of the Uqayl tribe. Some Arab scholars considered Bashshar the first "modern" poet, and one of the pioneers of badi' in Arabic literature. It is believed that the poet exerted a great influence on the subsequent generation of poets.
Text from the Wikipedia article Bashshar_ibn_Burd, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.