1. Ibn al-Farid or Ibn Farid; was an Arab poet as well as a Sufi waliullah.
22 Facts About Ibn al-Farid
1. 2.
Ibn al-Farid's name is Arabic for "son of the obligator", as his father was well regarded for his work in the legal sphere.
3.
Ibn al-Farid was born in Cairo to parents from Hama in modern Syria, lived for some time in Mecca, and died in Cairo.
4.
Ibn al-Farid's poetry is entirely Sufic and he was esteemed as the greatest mystic poet of the Arabs.
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Whichever is the case, Ibn al-Farid's father was a knowledgeable scholar and gave his son a good foundation in belles lettres.
6.
When he was a young man Ibn al-Farid would go on extended spiritual retreats among the oases, specifically the Oasis of the Wretches, outside Cairo, but he eventually felt that he was not making deep enough spiritual progress.
7.
Ibn al-Farid abandoned his spiritual wanderings and enrolled in a madrasa studying in the Shafi'i school of law.
8.
One day Ibn al-Farid saw a greengrocer performing the ritual Muslim ablutions outside the door of the madrasa, but the man was doing them out of the prescribed order.
9.
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".
10.
Ibn al-Farid would hold teaching sessions with judges, viziers and other leaders of the city.
11.
Ibn al-Farid became a scholar of Muslim law, a teacher of the hadith, and a teacher of poetry.
12.
Unlike many other respected poets of the day such as Ibn Sana al-Mulk, Ibn Unayn, Baha al-Din Zuhayr and Ibn Matruh, Ibn al-Farid refused the patronage of wealthy governmental figures which would have required him to produce poetry for propaganda, preferring the relatively humble life of a teacher that allowed him to compose his poetry of enlightenment unhampered.
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Ibn al-Farid declined both the money and the offer of the shrine, choosing to trust in God to supply for his needs.
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Ibn al-Farid was buried in Qarafah cemetery at the foot of Mt.
15.
Ibn al-Farid would take forty-day fasts, during which he would neither eat, drink nor sleep.
16.
Ibn al-Farid threw off all of his clothes, an act which members of the crowd repeated.
17.
Ibn al-Farid claimed to see many things happen that could be considered to be out of this world.
18.
Ibn al-Farid wrote of a lion kneeling down to him and asking him to ride.
19.
Ibn al-Farid wrote of seeing a man descending a mountain, floating without using his feet.
20.
Ibn al-Farid claimed that a "great green bird" came down at the funeral of the greengrocer and "gobbled up his corpse".
21.
Ibn al-Farid claimed to have conversed with Muhammad in a dream.
22.
Ibn al-Farid was depicted in art, notably in a sketch by Khalil Gibran made in 1917.