From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint: Ibn Al-Farid, His Verse, and His Shrine

Through a detailed examination of a renowned Arab mystical poet, Th. Emil Homerin provides one of the first case studies to illustrate an obscure aspect of popular Islamic faith--the sanctification of saints and the creation of shrines in medieval times. Despite the fact that Muslims have venerated saints for more than a thousand years, Islam has never developed a formal means of canonization, and the process of sanctification remains an important but largely neglected dimension of Islamic scholarship. In "From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint", Homerin explores this uncharted territory by following the fortunes of a single Sufi saint over seven and a half centuries. Regarded as a saint within a generation of his death, 'Umar Ibn al-Farid (1181-1235) is still venerated at his shrine in Cairo. Contemporary religious singers and writers, including Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, continue to cite the poet's verse. Using biographies, hagiographies, polemics, legal rulings, histories, and novels, Homerin traces the course of Ibn al-Farid's saintly reputation. He relates the rise and fall of Ibn al-Farid's popularity to Egypt's changing religious, cultural, and political environment.