[BEIRUT IMPRINTS / ANNOTATIONS TO ARABIC POETRY] Serh-i kaside yâiyye li-cenâb Ibn el-Fariz. [i.e., Annotation to the qasida and yaiyya by his honour Ibn El-Fariz]. Annotated by Mersin mutasarrifi Mehmed Nâzim

Annotated by NÂZIM, MEHMED (1849-1926) from IBN AL-FARID UMAR b. ALI SHARAF AL-DÎN AL-MISRÎ AL-SADÎ, (Mystic Arab poet), (1181-1234).

Beyrut Cerîdesi Matbaasi, Beyrut [Beirut], AH 1312 = [1895].

Staple-stitched soft covers. Housed in a handmade box. Cr. 8vo. (20,5 x 13,5 cm). In Ottoman script (Old Turkish with Arabic letters). 46 p. Lack of front and rear cover, wear to spine, trimmed upper margins. Overall, a fair copy.

Scarce first and only edition of this annotation to the Yaiyya qasidas of classical Arabic verse of the greatest mystic Arab poet Ibn Farid (1181-1234). It’s annotated by Mehmed Nâzim (1849-1926), written when he served as governor in Mersin.

This rare pamphlet printed in an Ottoman Vilâyât printing house “Beyrut Cerîdesi Matbaasi”, which also published an Ottoman newspaper with the same name in the long run in Beyrut, Lebanon. 

Ibn Farid was born in Cairo of Ayyubid Egypt to parents from Hama in Syria, lived for some time in Mecca, and died in Cairo. His poetry is entirely Sufic and he was esteemed as the greatest mystic poet of the Arabs. Some of his poems are said to have been written in ecstasies. 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. 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. Both poems have inspired in-depth spiritual commentaries throughout the centuries, and they are still reverently memorized by Sufis and other devout Muslims today. Ibn al-Farid claimed to see many things happen that could be out of this world. He wrote of a lion kneeling to him and asking him to ride. He also wrote of seeing a man descending a mountain, floating without using his feet. He claimed that a "great green bird" came down at the funeral of the greengrocer and "gobbled up his corpse". He also claimed to have conversed with Muhammad in a dream. Ibn al-Farid's son Kamal al-Din Muhammad described his ecstasies or trances as sometimes lasting ten consecutive days without eating, drinking, moving, speaking, or hearing outside noises. He would alternately stand, sit, lie on his side, and "throw himself down on his side." When he came to, his first words would be a dictation of the verse God had given him.

Mehmed Nazim Pasha, (1840-1926) was an Ottoman statesman, governor of Thessaloniki [i.e. Salonica] poet, and translator. He was a Mevlevi. He wrote his mystic poems, and he was the grandfather of famous Turkish leftist poet Nazim Hikmet Ran, (1902-1963).

Özege 18840.; As of May 2024, we couldn’t trace any copies in OCLC, KVK.