IBN AL-FARID

born March 22, 1181 or March 11, 1182, Cairo died Jan. 23, 1235, Cairo in full Sharaf Ad-din Abu Hafs 'umar Ibn Al-farid Arab poet whose expression of Sufi mysticism is regarded as the finest in the Arabic language. Son of a Syrian-born inheritance-law functionary, Ibn al-Farid studied for a legal career but abandoned law for a solitary religious life in the Muqattam hills near Cairo. He spent some years in or near Mecca, where he met the renowned Sufi as-Suhrawardi of Baghdad. Venerated as a saint during his lifetime, Ibn al-Farid was buried in the Muqattam hills, where his tomb is still visited. Many of Ibn al-Farid's poems are qasidahs (odes) on the lover's longing for reunion with his beloved. He expresses through this convention his yearning for a return to Mecca and, at a deeper level, a desire to be assimilated into the spirit of Muhammad, first projection of the Godhead. He developed this theme at length in Nazm as-suluk (Eng. trans. by A.J. Arberry, The Poem of the Way, 1952). Almost equally famous is his Khamriyah (Wine Ode; Eng. trans., with other poems, in Reynold Alleyne Nicholson's Studies in Islamic Mysticism and in The Mystical Poems of Ibn al-Farid, translated by A.J. Arberry ). This long qasidah describes the effects of the wine of divine love. Although Ibn al-Farid's poetry is mannered in style, with rhetorical embellishments and conventional imagery, his poems contain passages of striking beauty and deep religious feeling.