?amm─d's father was not an Arab but was brought to Iraq from the Daylam region of Iran. ?amm─d's circle of friends in K┗fah enjoyed wine and poetry, and ?amm─d became one of the most learned men of his time in Arabic poetry. He committed vast numbers of poems to memory and studied the associated lore of battles, genealogies, and folk stories. This knowledge won him the favour of al-Wal┤d II and perhaps others of the Umayyad caliphs of Damascus. After the Umayyad dynasty fell to the ?Abb─sids, ?amm─d retired to K┗fah. He was criticized by some Arab scholars because his interest was in poetry rather than philology and grammatical scholarship; and he was suspected by them, moreover, of creating some of the early Arabic poems he collected.