Rashid al-Din Vatvat | |
|---|---|
 Incipit page of One Hundred Sayings by Ali Rashid al-Din Vatvat | |
| Born | c. 1088/9 |
| Died | 1182/3 (aged 97) |
| Nationality | Khwarazmian Empire |
| Occupation(s) | Secretary, poet, philologist |
Rashid al-Din Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Abd Jalil al-Umari (Persian: رشیدالدین محمد بن محمد بن عبد جلیل العمری; 1088/9 – 1182/3), better known by his nickname of Vatvat (وطواط; "the swallow"), was a secretary, poet, philologist in the Khwarazmian Empire. In addition to being a prolific author in Arabic and Persian, he also occupied high-ranking offices, serving as the chief secretary and propagandist under the Khwarazmshahs Atsiz (r. 1127/8–1156) and Il-Arslan (r. 1156–1172).
Although Vatvat spent most of his life in the Khwarazmian capital of Gurganj, he was himself a native of Balkh or Bukhara. He mainly composed panegyric qasidehs, but his rhetorical work Hada'iq al-sihr fi daqa'iq al-shi'r ("Gardens of Magic in the Subtleties of Poetry") is in prose.[1]
- ^ Rypka 1968, p. 560–561.