Abdul Alhazred
otherThe mad Arab, author of the Necronomicon — in which, according to the deathless Chinamen, there are double meanings the initiated might read as they choose — also remembered as 'the mad poet' who dreamed of the nameless city the night before composing his unexplainable couplet on death and eternity.
He enters the record only at second hand, and by two separate routes: through what the deathless Chinamen were said to have told Castro of the Necronomicon's double meanings, and through the couplet the mad poet sang after dreaming of the nameless city.
He is remembered as 'the mad poet' who dreamed of that city the night before he sang: 'That is not dead which can eternal lie, / And with strange eons, even death may die' — words later babbled deliriously by a terrified explorer fleeing the city's depths.
The man himself — when he lived, where he wrote, how he ended — is nowhere set down.
Locations
Sources
Every fact above traces back to the text.
“though the deathless Chinamen said that there were double meanings in the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred which the initiated might read as they chose”
The Call of Cthulhu (1928) — Chapter 2, The Tale of Inspector Legrasse
“It was of this place that Abdul Alhazred the mad poet dreamed on the night before he sang his unexplainable couplet”
The Nameless City (1921)
“That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange eons, even death may die.”
The Nameless City (1921)