ÿAbëd ibn al-Abraṣ Al Asadi ( was an Arab poet of the Jahiliyya (pre-Islamic period), thought to have lived in the first half of the sixth century CE.
Little is known about ibn al-Abraá¹£; Charles James Lyall provides an English survey of medieval stories of his life and times, but their reliability is generally doubtful. Ibn al-Abraá¹£'s tribe was the Banà « Asad. Legends about him have him as a contemporary (and victim) of the Lakhmid king al-Mundhir III ibn al-Nu'mÃÂn, who died in 554, and Imru' al-Qays, likewise of the late fifth and earlier sixth centuries. Imru' al-Qays, whose father Hujr, king of Kinda, was killed by the Banà « Asad, is portrayed as a rival to ibn al-Abraá¹£. Reinhard Weipert concluded that<blockquote>He was one of the leading men of his tribe when they revolted against the supremacy of Ḥujr b. al-ḤÃÂrith, the king of the Banà « Kinda and father of the poet Imru' al-Qays (d. c.550), and killed him. There are many divergent versions of how this uprising took place, but it is an undoubted historical event, as ÿAbëdâÂÂs poems prove that he took part in it as a contemporary and rival of Imru' al-Qays and finally as his enemy, after the slaying of Ḥujr.</blockquote>
Abëd ibn al-Abraá¹£'s poetry is known largely from a single manuscript, acquired by the British Museum in Beirut in 1907 (now held in the British Library), where it is found along with an anonymous commentary from the Kà «fë school.
Thirty largely complete qaṣëdas attributed to ibn al-Abraá¹£ are known, alongside seventeen framentary poems. Scholars agree that some items are unlikely to have been composed by ibn al-Abraá¹£ or to date from his era, for example a riddle-contest in which ibn al-Abraá¹£ poses riddles to Imru' al-Qays, who solves them. On the whole, however, "the very distinct archaism in the structure and the language of the dëwÃÂn is", in the words of Francesco Gabrieli, "a strong argument for its authenticity". Making reference to ibn al-Abraá¹£'s poems as numbered by Lyall, Gabrielli found that<blockquote>the sententious mind of ÿAbëd is expressed not only in his nostalgia for the past, but also in his praise of himself and of his tribe (iv, vii, xxii, xxiv etc.) and in his virulent polemics against Imru' al-Ḳays and other, unknown, poets. The allusions to his poetical talent are especially noteworthy (x and xxiii): they show that he had a clear conscience of his inspiration and his artistic technique. The old Arab critics admired his descriptions of storms and desert tempests, but the modern reader appreciates most among all the poems of his dëwÃÂn his descriptions of animals, such as the famous scene of an eagle chasing a fox (i) and that of the fish in the sea (xxiii). In these poems and in other celebrated tableaux, ÿAbid appears as one of the most powerful poets of the djÃÂhiliyya.</blockquote>As Gabrielli noted, ibn al-Abraá¹£'s qaṣëda on the eagle chasing the fox is particularly renowned. It is a very rare example of a poem in the metre basëṠmukhallaÿ: Ibn Qutayba (d. 889) included it among the MuÿallaqÃÂt; Abà « Zayd al-Qurashë's Jamharat ashÿÃÂr al-ÿArab included it among the mujamharÃÂt, while al-Tibrëzë (d. 1109) reckoned it one of the best ten qaṣëdas (in his Sharḥ al-qaá¹£ÃÂÿid al-ÿashr.