Tarafa ibn al-Abd

Amr ibn al-Abd, celebrated as Tarafa, was born into the Banu Bakr tribe in the historic region of Bahrain (eastern Arabia). An orphaned youth of dazzling poetic genius and fiercely rebellious temperament, he lived an epicurean life of reckless generosity, hunting, and outspoken satirical criticism of tribal elders.

Tarafa's Mu'allaqah is celebrated for its incandescent philosophical defiance of mortality and its exhaustive, anatomically exquisite thirty-line description of his she-camel. After writing stinging satirical verses ridiculing the Lakhmid King Amr ibn Hind of Al-Hirah, the king tricked him into delivering a sealed letter to the governor of Bahrain that commanded his execution, buried alive at just twenty-six.