Ḥasan b. Háni’ gained the familiar title of Abú Nuwás (Father of the lock of hair) from two locks which hung down on his shoulders. He was born of humble parents, about the middle of the eighth century, in Aḥwáz, the capital of Khúzistán. That he was not a pure Arab the name of his mother, Jallabán, clearly indicates, while the following verse affords sufficient proof that he was not ashamed of his Persian blood:-- "Who are Tamím and Qays and all their kin? The Arabs in God's sight are nobody."[527] He received his education at Baṣra, of which city he calls himself a native,[528] and at Kúfa, where he studied poetry and philology under the learned Khalaf al-Aḥmar. After passing a 'Wanderjahr' among the Arabs of the desert, as was the custom of scholars at that time, he made his way to Baghdád and soon eclipsed every competitor at the court of Hárún the Orthodox. A man of the most abandoned character, which he took no pains to conceal, Abú Nuwás, by his flagrant immorality, drunkenness, and blasphemy, excited the Caliph's anger to such a pitch that he often threatened the culprit with death, and actually imprisoned him on several occasions; but these fits of severity were brief. The poet survived both Hárún and his son, Amín, who succeeded him in the Caliphate. Age brought repentance--"the Devil was sick, the Devil a monk would be." He addressed the following lines from prison to Faḍl b. al-Rabí‘, whom Hárún appointed Grand Vizier after the fall of the Barmecides:-- "Faḍl, who hast taught and trained me up to goodness (And goodness is but habit), thee I praise. Now hath vice fled and virtue me revisits, And I have turned to chaste and pious ways. To see me, thou would'st think the saintly Baṣrite, Ḥasan, or else Qatáda, met thy gaze,[529] So do I deck humility with leanness, While yellow, locust-like, my cheek o'erlays. Beads on my arm; and on my breast the Scripture, Where hung a chain of gold in other days."[530] The Díwán of Abú Nuwás contains poems in many different styles--_e.g._, panegyric (_madíḥ), satire (_hijá_), songs of the chase (ṭardiyyát_), elegies (_maráthí_), and religious poems (_zuhdiyyát_); but love and wine were the two motives by which his genius was most brilliantly inspired. His wine-songs (_khamriyyát_) are generally acknowledged to be incomparable. Here is one of the shortest:-- "Thou scolder of the grape and me, I ne'er shall win thy smile! Because against thee I rebel, 'Tis churlish to revile. Ah, breathe no more the name of wine Until thou cease to blame, For fear that thy foul tongue should smirch Its fair and lovely name! Come, pour it out, ye gentle boys, A vintage ten years old, That seems as though 'twere in the cup A lake of liquid gold. And when the water mingles there, To fancy's eye are set Pearls over shining pearls close strung As in a carcanet."[531] Another poem begins--