 | This article possibly contains original research. The article is founded upon 2 sources alone, some subsections support claims without providing sources at all. (September 2024) |
Ibn al-Farid | |
|---|---|
| Born | `Umar ibn `Alī ibn al-Fārid عمر بن علي بن الفارض 22 March 1181 Cairo, Ayyubid Egypt, now Egypt |
| Died | 1235 (aged 54-55) Al-Azhar Mosque, Cairo, Ayyubid Sultanate, now Egypt |
| Resting place | Mokattam Hills, now City of the Dead (Cairo) southeastern Cairo, Egypt |
| Occupation | Arabic poet, writer, philosopher |
| Notable works | Diwan Ibn al-Farid دیوان ابن الفارض |
Ibn al-Farid or Ibn Farid; (Arabic: عمر بن علي بن الفارض, `Umar ibn `Alī ibn al-Fārid) (22 March 1181 – 1234) was an Arab poet as well as a Sufi waliullah. His name is Arabic for "son of the obligator" (the one who divides the inheritance between the inheritors), as his father was well regarded for his work in the legal sphere.[1] He was born in Cairo to parents from Hama in modern Syria, lived for some time in Mecca, and died in Cairo. His poetry is entirely Sufic and he was esteemed as the greatest mystic poet of the Arabs. Some of his poems are said to have been written in ecstasies.[2]
The poetry of Shaykh Umar Ibn al-Farid is considered by many to be the pinnacle of Arabic mystical verse, though surprisingly he is not widely known in the West. (Rumi, probably the best known in the West of the great Sufi poets, wrote primarily in Persian, not Arabic.) Ibn al-Farid's two masterpieces are The Wine Ode, a beautiful meditation on the "wine" of divine bliss, and "The Poem of the Sufi Way", a profound exploration of spiritual experience along the Sufi Path and perhaps the longest mystical poem composed in Arabic. Both poems have inspired in-depth spiritual commentaries throughout the centuries, and they are still reverently memorized by Sufis and other devout Muslims today.
- ^ Th. Emil Homerin, From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint: Ibn al-Farid, His Verse, and His Shrine (Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 2001).
- ^ One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Thatcher, Griffithes Wheeler (1911). "Ibn Fārid". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 14 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 220.
