Amīr Faḫr al-Dīn Maḥmūd b. Amīr Yamīn al-Dīn Tuğrāʾī Mustawfī Faryūmadī is considered one of the most important Persian poet of qaṭʿas (lit: "fragments", i.e., epigrams or occasional verses) and “one of the earliest poets to write of the imāms and the tragedy of Karbalā”. He began writing verses at an early age as his father tutored him in poetry. Upon his father’s death in 724/1323–4, he became court poet and financial officer in the service of Alāʾ al-Dīn (governor of Ḫurāsān); however, his distaste for court life led to his falling out of favor with Alāʾ al-Dīn.
In 742/1341 Ibn Yamīn joined the radical wing of the Sarbadārs, whose severe defeat in 743/1342 caused him to be taken prisoner and lose all that he had written up to that point. Ibn Yamīn later tried to reconstruct his early dīwān through memory, notes and the help of friends. He was able to reproduce two versions, one in 746/1346 and one in 758/1356.
Rashīd-ī-Yāsīmī, Ibn Yamīn’s biographer, marks the year of 743/1342 as the division between two periods in the poetry of Ibn Yamīn; the first, from the end of the seventh century until 743/1342; the second, from 743/1342 until his death 769/1367: “The first period is that of his youth, and it was specially fruitful in odes and lively pieces and disputations with his father. The second belonged to his old age, and was productive of moral and didactic pieces”. From 749/1348 until his death in 769/1368, Ibn Yamīn resided in the place of his birth in the “service” of the Sarbadārs. “We find that Ibn Yamīn,” wrote Rashīd-ī-Yāsīmī, “for his livelihood held on to the skirts of warring chiefs, had frequent periods of disappointment and depression, but lived to enjoy the fruits of his laureatship in popular esteem”. He died in 769/1368.
Dīvān