IBN AL-FĀRIḌ (AH 576–632/1181–1235 CE), more fully Abū Ḥafṣ or Abū al-Qāsim ʿUmar ibn Abī al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Murshid ibn ʿAlī; often called the greatest mystical poet in the history of Arabic literature. His father, known as al-Fāriḍ because his profession was the allocation of shares (furūḍ) in cases of inheritance, migrated from his native Hama in Syria to Cairo, where Ibn al-Fāriḍ was born and where he lived and died.

Though little is known about his life, there is evidence that he married and had at least two sons and a daughter. He studied ḥadīth and Shāfiʿī law in his youth, but his spiritual bent was such that he preferred solitary devotion in the desert or on Mount al-Muqaṭṭam, east of Cairo, and he finally became a Ṣūf...