ABU NUWAS (756?-810), Arabian Poet.

Abu Nuwas was born in Persia, and as a young adult moved to baghdad, where he befriended the great Caliph Harunal-Rashid. In his lifetime, he wrote some five thousand poems, establishing himself as the most widely quoted Arab poet of all time. The poems of Abu Nuwas celebrate both heterosexual and homosexual love. He was quite open about his own homosexuality, which is graphically illustrated in the Arabian Nights story "Abu Nuwas and the Three Boys."