Career
Singing, not study, attracted him, and at the age of twenty-three he fled to Mosul, where he joined a band of wild youths. After a year he went to Rai (Rei, Rhagae), where he met an ambassador of the caliph Al-Mansur, who enabled him to come to Basra and take singing lessons. His fame as a singer spread, and the caliph Al-Mahdi brought him to the court.
Two or three times he was knouted and imprisoned for excess in wine-drinking, but was always taken into favor again. His powers of song were far beyond anything else known at the time. See the Preface to Ahlwardt's Abu Nowas (Greifswald, 1861), pp.
13–18, and the many stories of his life in the Kitab al-Aghani, V. 2-49.
