Abū Nuwās was a prominent Abbasid poet of the Modernist style. He was born in what is now Ahvaz, Iran, ca. 139–40/756–58, before moving to Basra and later Baghdad, where he became the court companion of caliph al-Amīn. He died sometime between 198/813 and 200/815 in Baghdad.
James E. Montgomery is Sir Thomas Adams’s Professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity Hall. His latest publications are In Deadly Embrace: Arabic Hunting Poems, Fate the Hunter: Early Arabic Hunting Poems, and Kalīlah and Dimnah: Fables of Virtue and Vice, with Michael Fishbein. In 2024 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy.
