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Document Details : Title: The Oldest Text of Ibn al-Fārid's Dīwān Author(s): SCATTOLIN, G. Journal: MIDEO Volume: 24 Date: 2000 Pages: 83-114 DOI: 10.2143/MID.24.0.565633 Abstract : In the introduction to his translation of the ‘Great Ta’iyya’ (al-Ta’iyyat al-kubrā), a mystical poem composed by the Egyptian Sufi?Umar Ibn al-Fārid (576/1181-632/ 1235), Arthur John Arberry (d. 1973), the well known English orientalist, mentions two reasons that pushed him to undertake such a difficult task1. The first, as he says, was that: “... I happened to hit upon a manuscript of Ibn al-Fārid’s poems in the library of my generous friend Mr. A. Chester Beatty, a copy which antedates all other known codices”. The other was that: “By one of those strange coincidences which almost persuade a man to believe in destiny, I had the luck at about same time to pick up in an obscure bookshop a copy of the very rare edition (published in the East in 1876) of the oldest and most detailed commentary on the poem, that written during the latter half of the thirteenth century by Sa'īd al-Dīn al-Farghānī...”. |
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