Abú Nuwás, Hasan ibn Háni (c.760–c. 815)

Arab poet. Considered to be one of the greatest poets of the Abbasid period, he is celebrated for the freedom, eroticism, and ironic lightness of touch he brought to traditional forms.

He was educated at Basra, spent a year in the desert among the Arabs, and later lived under the protection of the caliph Harun al-Rashid in Baghdad. The Divan des Abu Nuwas, translated by A von Kremer, was published in Vienna in 1855; it was published in the original in Cairo 1860; and in Beirut 1884.