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Abu ʾl-Ḥasan Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Baṣrī ibn Lankak ( Arabic: ابن لنكك, d. c. 360 AH/970 CE) was a poet from Basra. His epithet ibn Lankak literally means "the son of the little lame man". He is known to have spent time in Baghdad: when al-Mutanabbī visited the city in 351/962, Ibn Lankak addressed a number of epigrams to him. A dīwān of ibn Lankak's poetry is known to have existed, being mentioned by al-Ṣāḥib Ibn ʿAbbād, but today few poems are known, principally from Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī's Kitāb Yatīmat al-dahr fī mahāsin ahl al-ʿaṣr. In the estimation of Charles Pellat, Ibn Lankak's surviving works "show him to have had a tendency to be pessimistic and critical: he complains of contemporary poets who deprive him of the glory which he considered his right, of his native town, and above all of fate in general, although he admits in a famous verse that human beings are responsible for their own misfortunes". [1]

References

  1. ^ Pellat, Ch. (1971). "Ibn Lankak". In Lewis, B.; Ménage, V. L.; Pellat, Ch. & Schacht, J. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Volume III: H–Iram. Leiden: E. J. Brill. doi: 10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_3270. OCLC  495469525..