Diwan of Ibn al-Khayyat

Author's name: Ibn Al-Khayyat

Abu Abdullah Ahmed bin Muhammad bin Ali bin Yahya bin Sadaqa Al-Taghlabi, known as Ibn Khayyat, the Damascene poet and writer, is related to the Taghlib tribe of Rabi'a of the Adnanite Arabs. Ibn Khayyat was born in Damascus in 450 AH, as he himself mentioned. His father was a tailor, and he became famous for that. Ibn Khayyat entered Tripoli as a young man, relying only on his skill in poetry, his abundant nature, and the poetry of the ancients he had memorized. His expertise in the tools of Arabic grammar, morphology, semantics, rhetoric, rhetoric, and prosody was excellent. When Ibn Khayyat returned to Damascus, its king at that time was Taj al-Dawla Tutush bin Alp Arslan Al-Seljuk, and his vizier was Hibat Allah bin Badi' Al-Isfahani, who accompanied him and was very dear to him. Ibn Al-Qaysarani said: Hibat Allah bin Badi' Abu Al-Najm agreed to give Ibn Khayyat a thousand dinars, and he was the last poet of our time to whom he agreed to give a thousand dinars. In 487 AH, he traveled with him to Rayy, where he recited a poem in his praise. The beginning of it is: "O father, you have only been given power over my oppression... and O love, you have left nothing of me but illusion." He died in Damascus on the first of Ramadan in the year 517 AH. The cemetery in which he was buried has not been identified, but it is perhaps the Bab al-Saghir Cemetery due to its proximity to his home.