Bashār ibn Burd nicknamed "al-Mura'ath" meaning the wattled, was a poet in the late Umayyad and the early Abbasid periods. Bashar was of Persian origin; his grandfather was taken as a captive to Iraq, his father was a freedman (Mawla) of the Uqayl tribe. Many Arab scholars considered Bashar the first "modern" poet and one of the pioneers of the badi' in Arabic literature. It is believed that he exerted a great influence on the subsequent generation of poets. Wikipedia
The definitive Wikipedia entry for Bashar Ibn Burd. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_ibn_Burd
