Ibn Bassām: a case study on poetry and power

Through the analysis of a long cluster of khabars and various versions of a single short one, this article aims at illustrating the utility of poetry for modern historical investigation. Examples are taken from biographical material on Ibn Bassām al-‘Abartā’ī (d. 302/916), a kātib, adīb and satirical poet whose brushes with people of authority are described extensively in the sources. An analysis of these examples shows that in them poetry is not an embellishment of prose but its shaper, and that often prose merely expands on poetry with less than reliable information.