Note 60 — HASAN OF BASSORAH.[5]

Arab. “Shá’ir Al-Walahán” = the love-distraught poet; Lane has “a distracted poet.” My learned friend Professor Aloys Sprenger has consulted, upon the subject of Al-Walahán the well-known Professor of Arabic at Halle, Dr. Thorbeck, who remarks that the word (here as further on) must be an adjective, mad, love-distraught, not a “lakab” or poetical cognomen. He generally finds it written Al-Shá’ir al-Walahán (the love-demented poet) not Al-Walahán al-Shá’ir = Walahán the Poet. Note this burst of song after the sweet youth falls in love: it explains the cause of verse-quotation in The Nights, poetry being the natural language of love and battle.