Skip to content

There are no poems on wine equal to my own, and to my amatory compositions all others must yield.

Another quote →

More quotes by Abu Nuwas

He played with sacred formulae, such as the call to prayer: "Come to prayer!" is rendered, in one profane turn, "Come to sleep-together!"

Cease your reproach, for reproach is only temptation.

The following complaint sets perhaps the smuttiest tone about the poet’s detainment: "al-Amin, I languish in the sodomites' prison and fear being buggered. Do you wish them to bugger your very own poet?"

Say, then, to whom affects learning in philosophy
Knowing one thing doesn’t comprise an education
Don’t forbid others what you choose to eschew
For prohibition is, in religion, desecration

In an ebullient exchange with the Baghdadi singing-girl ‘Inan he wrote: "Gorgeous one! – God has made your face a qibla for me, /So allow me to pray toward your face, and lets have a kiss." Here "kiss" (qubla) and "the direction of prayer" (qibla) are made to rhyme, an almost inevitable rhyming couplet.

All Abu Nuwas quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Abu Nuwas (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.