IBN FARADĪ [Abū-l-Walīd ‘Abdallāh ibn ul-Faradi] (962-1012), Arabian historian, was born at Cordova and studied law and tradition. In 992 he made the pilgrimage and proceeded to Egypt and Kairawān, studying in these places. After his return in 1009 he became cadi in Valencia, and was killed at Cordova when the Berbers took the city.
His chief work is the History of the Learned Men of Andalusia, edited by F. Codera (Madrid, 1891-1892). He wrote also a history of the poets of Andalusia.
(G. W. T.)
IBN FĀRID [Abū-l-Qāsim ‘Umar 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.)
IBN GABIROL [Solomon ben Judah], Jewish poet and philosopher, was born at Malaga, probably about 1021. The early part of his troublous life was spent at Saragossa, but few personal details of it are recorded. His parents died while he was a child and he was under the protection first of a certain Jekuthiel, who died in 1039, and afterwards of Samuel ha-Nagid, the well-known patron of learning. His passionate disposition, however, embittered no doubt by his misfortunes, involved him in frequent difficulties and led to his quarrelling with Samuel. It is generally agreed that he died young, although the date is uncertain. Al Harizi[1] says at the age of twenty-nine, and Moses b. Ezra[2] about thirty, but Abraham Zaccuto[3] states that he died (at Valencia) in 1070. M. Steinschneider[4] accepts the date 1058.
His literary activity began early. He is said to have composed poems at the age of sixteen, and elegies by him are extant on Hai Gaon (died in 1038) and Jekuthiel (died in 1039), each of which was written probably soon after the death of the person commemorated. About the same time he also wrote his ‘Anaq, a poem on grammar, of which only 97 lines out of 400 are preserved. Moses ben Ezra says of him that he imitated Moslem models, and was the first to open to Jewish poets the door of versification,[5] meaning that he first popularized the use of Arabic metres in Hebrew. It is as a poet that he has been known to the Jews to the present day, and admired for the youthful freshness and beauty of his work, in which he may be compared to the romantic school in France and England in the early 19th century. Besides his lyrical and satirical poems, he contributed many of the finest compositions to the liturgy (some of them with the acrostic “Shelomoh ha-qaṭō”), which are widely different from the artificial manner of the earlier payyeṭanim. The best known of his longer liturgical compositions are the philosophical Kether Malkūth (for the Day of Atonement) and the Azharōth, on the 613 precepts (for Shebhu‘ōth). Owing to his pure biblical style he had an abiding influence on subsequent liturgical writers.