First published in 2005. Arabic literature has a distinguished tradition of bacchanals but none are so consistently entertaining or explicit or iconoclastic as those of Abu Nuwas al_hasan ibn Hani al-Hakami (c. 756-c.815), the 'bad boy' of Abbasid poetry. In his khamriyyat, Abu Nuwas offers a glimpse of the hedonistic and dissipated world he inhabited: the world of Baghdad high society at the zenith of the Abbasid caliphate. Yet there is also a modern and up-to-date feel about his poetry that makes it ideal for presentation to an English-speaking readership, some twelve centuries after his death.
