Abū ʿAmr Kulthūm b. ʿAmr al-ʿAttābī (d. c.220/835) was an Arab poet and prose writer who flourished at the court of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs Hārūn al-Rashīd (r. 170- 93/786-809) and al-Maʾmūn (198-218/813-833). He took his nisba from the Banū ʿAttāb b. Saʿd, a sub-group of the Taghlib, who lived in the neighbourhood of Qinnasrīn, in northern Syria. A descendant of ʿAmr b. Kulthūm, a pre-Islamic poet famed for his Muʿallaqa ode, he was born probably in the middle