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Q&A

Does al-Asma'i's poem "صوت صفير البلبل" (the sound of the whistle of the bulbul) has a story to tell?

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There's this famous story about al-Asma'i الأصمعي challenging the caliph abu Ja'afar al-Mansur أبو جعفر المنصور by composing a poem that is difficult to memorize, as the caliph himself used to memorize poems after the first hearing and he had both a slave and slave girl who could memorize it at second and third hearing and this way the caliph was able to prove by witnesses that he already heard a poem poets might have composed.
The result was the strange poem entitled:
صوت صفير البلبل (sawtu safeere al-bulbuli/the sound of the whistle of the bulbul). Here's just an extract of the first 9 verses:
Image alt text

the poem clearly has a rhym, but many rather strange compositions of words and repetitions etc. that may make memorizing it difficult, but at the end does it have a story to tell?

Are there any books or essays discussing the meanings and hidden meanings of this poem?

Comment: Whether al-Asma'i really composed this poem or the reality of the story is not the subject of my question and I'd like to say that there are some doubts about that.

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