- Ibn al-Farid
Ibn al-Farid or Ibn Farid ;
Arabic , عمر بن علي بن الفارض (`Umar ibn `Alī ibn al-Fārid) (1181-1235) was anArab poet. He was born inCairo , lived for some time inMecca and died in Cairo. His poetry is entirelySufi c, 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 and Hafiz, probably the best known in the West of the greatSufi poets, both wrote primarily in Persian, not Arabic.) Ibn al-Farid's two masterpieces are TheWine Ode , a beautiful meditation on the "wine" of divine bliss, and The Poem of theSufi Way , a profound exploration of spiritual experience along theSufi Path and perhaps the longestmystical poem composed in Arabic. Both poems have inspired in-depth spiritual commentaries throughout the centuries, and they are still reverently memorized bySufis and other devoutMuslims today.Biography
Ibn al-Farid's father was a judge and important government official in
Cairo .When he was a young man Ibn al-Farid would go on extended spiritual retreats among the
oases outside of Cairo, but he eventually felt that he was not making deep enough spiritual progress. He abandoned his spiritual wanderings and enteredlaw school .One day Ibn al-Farid saw a greengrocer performing the ritual Muslim ablutions outside the door of the law school, but the man was doing them out of the prescribed order. When Ibn al-Farid tried to correct him, the greengrocer looked at him and said, "Umar! You will not be
enlightened inEgypt . You will be enlightened only in theHijaz , inMecca ..."Umar Ibn al-Farid was stunned by this statement, seeing that this simple greengrocer was no ordinary man. But he argued that he couldn't possibly make the trip to
Mecca right away. Then the man gave Ibn al-Farid a vision, in that very moment, of Mecca. Ibn al-Farid was so transfixed by this experience that he left immediately for Mecca and, in his own words, "Then as I entered it, enlightenment came to me wave after wave and never left."Shaykh Umar Ibn al-Farid stayed many years in
Mecca , but eventually returned toCairo . He became a scholar of Muslim law, a teacher of thehadith (the traditions surrounding the sayings and life of the prophetMuhammad ), and a teacher of poetry. Unlike many other respected poets of the age, Ibn al-Farid refused the patronage of wealthy governmental figures which would have required him to produce poetry forpropaganda , preferring the relatively humble life of a teacher that allowed him to compose his poetry of enlightenment unhampered.Wahhabi criticism
Although hailed throughout the
Muslim world as one of the great spiritual classics, Ibn al-Farid's Poem of the Sufi Way has also been controversial. It was because of an allegedFatwa ofKufr from Ibn Abdul Wahhab (founder of theWahhabi movement. Interestingly, the Saudi Government has printed a book of his letters and in one of his letters he denies issuing aFatwa ofKufr against Ibn Al-Farid ofIbn al-Arabi .References
*1911
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