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. Ibn al-Farid became a scholar of Muslim law, a teacher of the hadith (the traditions surrounding the sayings and life of the prophet Muhammad), and a teacher of poetry. While walking down the street, people would come up to him and crowd around him, seeking spiritual blessings ( barakah) and try to kiss his hand (he would respond by shaking their hand). He would hold teaching sessions with judges, viziers and other leaders of the city. Upon Ibn al-Farid's return to Cairo, he was treated as a saint. Upon his return he found the greengrocer on the point of death, and they wished each other farewell. Shaykh Umar Ibn al-Farid stayed in Mecca for fifteen years, but eventually returned to Cairo because he heard the same greengrocer calling him back to attend his funeral. 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". Then the man gave Ibn al-Farid a vision, in that very moment, of Mecca. But he argued that he couldn't possibly make the trip to Mecca right away. Umar Ibn al-Farid was stunned by this statement, seeing that this simple greengrocer was no ordinary man. You will be enlightened only in the Hijaz, in Mecca…"
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When Ibn al-Farid tried to correct him, the greengrocer looked at him and said, "Umar! You will not be enlightened in Egypt. 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. He abandoned his spiritual wanderings and enrolled in a madrasa studying in the Shafi'i school of law. When he was a young man Ibn al-Farid would go on extended spiritual retreats among the oases, specifically the Oasis of the Wretches (Wadi al-Mustad'afin), outside Cairo, but he eventually felt that he was not making deep enough spiritual progress. Whichever is the case, Ibn al-Farid's father was a knowledgeable scholar and gave his son a good foundation in belles lettres. These two can be reconciled, however, by interpreting his name to mean that he often represented women in cases of inheritance. 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. Ibn al-Farid's father moved from his native town, Hama in Syria, to Cairo where Umar was born. Both poems have inspired in-depth spiritual commentaries throughout the centuries, and they are still reverently memorized by Sufis and other devout Muslims today. ( 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. 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. Some of his poems are said to have been written in ecstasies. His poetry is entirely Sufic and he was esteemed as the greatest mystic poet of the Arabs. He was born in Cairo to parents from Hama in Syria, lived for some time in Mecca, and died in Cairo.
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His name is Arabic for "son of the obligator" (the one who divides the inheritance between the inheritors), as his father was well regarded for his work in the legal sphere.
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Mokattam Hills, now City of the Dead (Cairo) southeastern Cairo, Egypt
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Al-Azhar Mosque, Cairo, Ayyubid Sultanate, now Egypt