Diwan of Safi al-Din al-Hilli

Author's name: Safi al-Din al-Hilli

Safi al-Din al-Hilli is Abu al-Mahasin Abd al-Aziz ibn Saraya ibn Nasr al-Ta’i al-Sanbasi. He was born in Hillah, Iraq, and was related to it. He died in Baghdad (1277-1339 AD). His poetry was often artificial and affected by various types of rhetoric and riddles, and there were no innovations, for that was the characteristic of his era. He was perhaps the first poet of his time to excel in the meters of poetry, so he composed muwashshahat, some of which he followed and some of which he innovated, so he came up with something new. He was fond of smoothing out the poems of the ancients, as he did in the famous poem of al-Samū al-Bin ‘Adhī’ al-Yahudi, which begins: If a person has not defiled his honor with baseness. Al-Hilli was also famous for his descriptions of gatherings of amusement and companionship, and for describing aspects of nature. It is evident from the chapters he included in his collection that he did not leave any form of poetry without composing it. Whatever the case, Safi al-Din is the most eloquent poet of the era of decadence, and his poetry is strong in composition and elegant in its brocade, and it did not descend to the common. Al-Mutabadhil, like other poets of his time, wrote the collection in twelve chapters, distributed among the Arabic poetic meters (taf'iliyah) and modern Arabic poetry. They dealt with various poetic themes such as pride and enthusiasm, praise and commendation, expulsions and various adjectives, brotherhood and show-offs, love poetry and wine, complaint and reproach, gifts, satire and satire, literature and asceticism, and various anecdotes.