1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ibn Fārid

by Griffithes Wheeler Thatcher

IBN FĀRID [Abū–l-Qāsim ʽUmar ibn ul-Fāriḍ] (1181–1235), Arabian poet, was born in Cairo, 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. His diwan has been published with commentary at Beirūt, 1887, &c.; with the commentaries of Burīnī (d. 1615) and ‘Abdul-Ghānī (d. 1730) at Marseilles, 1853, and at Cairo; and with the commentary of Rushayyid Ghālib (19th century) at Cairo, 1893. One of the separate poems was edited by J. von Hammer Purgstall as Das arabische hohe Lied der Liebe (Vienna, 1854).

See R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (London, 1907), pp. 394-398. (G. W. T.)