Ibn al-Farid
| Ibn al-Farid | |
|---|---|
| Born | `Umar ibn `Alī ibn al-Fārid عمر بن علي بن الفارض 22 March 1181 Cairo, Abbasid Caliphate, now Egypt |
| Died | 1234 (aged 53) Al-Azhar Mosque, Cairo, Abbasid Caliphate, now Egypt |
| Resting place | Mokattam Hills, now City of the Dead (Cairo) Southeastern Cairo, Egypt |
| Occupation | Arab 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. His name literally means “son of the legal advocate for women”, and his father was well regarded for his work in the legal sphere. He was born in Cairo from a Syrian parents came from Hama in Syria , lived for some time in Mecca and died in Cairo. His poetry is entirely Sufic, and he was esteemed the greatest mystic poet of the Arabs. Some of his poems are said to have been written in ecstasies.
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.
Ibn al-Farid's father moved from his native town, Hama in Syria, to Cairo where he Umar was born. Some sources say that his father was a respected farid (an advocate for women’s causes) and others say that his profession was the allocation of shares (furūḍ) in cases of inheritance. These two can be reconciled, however, by interpreting his name to mean that he often represented women in cases of inheritance. Whichever is the case, Ibn al-Farid's father was a knowledgeable scholar and gave his son a good foundation in belles lettres.
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