themes. His poems, even at their most conventional (the
long panegyrics), are well crafted, often playfully evok-
ing the conventional loci of Arabic verse for the dramatic
or lyrical purposes of his piece. He paints an irreplace-
ably vivid picture of twelfth-century Córdoba, a city, a
civilization conscious that its glory days were past:
Where is Ibn.. .’s Lane, with its bustle?
Where is the Mosque Quarter, and its beauty?
Laden it is with more spite than it can bear—
Come close! you’ll see a
Field to plough and seed;
The rest infested
Head-high with weed. (zajal 147, strophe 3 and refrain)Further Reading
An-Naw ̄aj ̄ı , Shams ad-D ̄ın Muhammad ibh Hasan. cUq ̄u d al-la’l
fi ’l-muwashshah.at wa’l-azj ̄a l. Ms. Escorial 434.
Colin, G. S. “Ibn Kuzm ̄an.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. New ed.
Vol. 3. Leiden, 1960. 849–52.
Corriente, F. Gramática, métrica, y texto del cancionero his-
panoárabe de Abén Quzmán. Madrid, 1980. 69ff.
García Gómez, E. Todo Ben Guzma n. Madrid, 1933.
Gorton, T. J. “The Metre of Ibn Quzm ̄a n: A ‘Classical’ Approach.”
Journal of Arabic Literature 6 (1975), 1–29.
——. “Back to Ibn Quzm ̄a n.” In Cultures in Contact in Medi-
eval Spain: Historical and Literary Essays Presented to L. P.
Harvey. Eds. D. Hook and B. Taylor. London, 1990. 103–09.
Gunzburg, D. de. Le Divan d’Ibn Guzman: Texte, traduction,
commentaire. Fasc. 1, Le Texte d’après le manuscrit unique
du Musée impérial de St-Pétersbourg. Berlin, 1896.
Monroe, J. T. “Romance Prosody in the Poetry of Ibn Quzm ̄a n.”
In Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Vol. 6, Papers from the
Sixth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Ed. Mushira
Eid et al. Amsterdam, 1994, 63–87.
Nykl, A. R. (ed.) El cancionero de Abén Guzmán. Madrid,
1933.
Stern, S. M. Hispano-Arabic Strophic Poetry. Ed. L. P. Harvey.
Oxford, 1974. Ch. 4.
T. J. Gorton
IBN SA‘I ̄ D, ABU ‘L-H ̄ .ASAN ‘ALI ̄ B. MUS ̄^ A ̄
B. MUH.AMMAD B. ‘ABD AL-MALIK B.
SA‘I ̄ D (1208/13–1286)
Poet, traveler and adventurer, geographer, literary histo-
rian and anthologist, Ibn Sa‘ ̄ı is recognized as a leading
exponent of Andalusian culture of the thirteenth century.
He was bora into a noble family of Yemeni ancestry that,
during the period of the T.a ̄’ifas, came to govern a for-
tress at the present site of Alcalá la Real to the northwest
of Granada. Ibn Sa‘ ̄ı d’s grandfather had served as w ̄a l ̄ı
(governor) of both Seville and Granada, and his father
apparently left the family fortress defi nitively in 1224
to become w ̄a l ̄ı of Algeciras. Ibn Sa‘ ̄ı d spent much of
his youth at Seville, the leading intellectual center of
al- Andalus at the time, where he studied under the tute-
lage of many of the outstanding scholars of his day. His
father, who loved learning and scholarship more than
politics, instilled in his son the same zest for learning and
inquiry, and the two traveled about al-Andalus and Mo-
rocco to seek out rare books for their literary research.
Father and son left al-Andalus in 1241 at a time when
their political fortunes had been reversed, declaring their
intention to perform the pilgrimage, though neither ever
returned to his native land. The father fell ill and died
in Alexandria in 1242, and Ibn Sa‘ ̄ı d then proceeded
to Cairo, where he found an enthusiastic reception and
was admired for his scholarship and literary talents. In
an age of political uncertainty, Ibn Sa‘ ̄ı d’s scholarship
coincided with the fervent desire of many scholars to
preserve the legacy of Arab civilization. Ibn Sa‘ ̄ı d trav-
eled extensively, and his travels took him to Arabia,
Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Armenia.
Much of Ibn Sa‘ ̄ıd’s fame rests on a multivolume
work entitled Al-Mughrib fi H.ul ̄a ‘l-Maghrib, a work
to which he put on the fi nishing touches, but which in
actuality took shape gradually over a period of about
eleven decades. In 1135–1136, a man of letters by the
name of Al-H. idj ̄a r ̄ı visited the family fortress, and the
great-grandfather of Ibn Sa‘ ̄ıd encouraged the visitor
to compile an anthology of Andalusian poets. In this
anthology the author arranged all the poets according
to the town or district to which they belonged. Then, for
over a century, the original patron, his son, his grandson,
and fi nally his great-grandson (our Ibn Sa‘ ̄ıd) sought to
improve upon the work and to make numerous additions.
In its fi nal form it came to deal with the literary history
and geography of not only al-Andalus, but of North
Africa, Sicily, and Egypt, as well. The section devoted
to al-Andalus, conserved in almost its entirety, gives
brief geographical descriptions of each area as well as
biographical notes of important personages, seasoned
with anecdotes and poetical excerpts. Aside from its
literary value, this work tells us much about the intel-
lectual and social life of al-Andalus up until the time of
the work’s completion. Drawing principally on materials
from this anthology, Ibn Sa‘ ̄ıd composed short works
for patrons on given topics or themes. There have come
down to us several volumes of a companion work to Al-
Mughrib identical in format, dealing with the literary
history of the Arab East, and originally conceived of by
Ibn Sa‘ ̄ıd’s father.
Though Ibn Sa‘ ̄ı d’s d ̄ıw ̄a n has been lost, a number
of his poems have come down to us. His poetry is
conventional in many ways; nevertheless, his verses of
nostalgia recalling the days of his youth in al-Andalus
speak of a heartfelt yearning to return and are rich in
many imaginative images often succeeding one another
in an almost dizzying kaleidoscopic fashion.
Even though Ibn Sa ‘ ̄ıd’s contributions to literary
history are remarkable, no less so is the geographical
information he either recorded from personal observa-IBN QUZM^ AN ̄