The best edition of Ibnu'l-Fáriḍ's Díwán with which I am acquainted is that published by the Shaykh Rushayd b. Shálib ad-Daḥdáḥ al-Lubnání at Paris in 1855, with a French preface by the Abbé Bargès, Professor of Hebrew at the Sorbonne. Besides the text of the poems, it contains two commentaries, one by Shaykh Ḥasan al-Búríní, purely philo­logical, the other, by Shaykh 'Abdu'l-Ghaní an-Nábalúsí, explaining the esoteric meaning.

The following is a rather free translation of a poem in the Díwán of Ibnu'l-Fáriḍ (edition of ad-Daḥdáḥ, pp. 263-268) which has always seemed to me both typical and beautiful:—

“Where the Lote-tree at the bending of the glade
Casts its shade,
There the Lover, led by passion, went astray,
And even in the straying found his way.

In that southerly ravine his heart is stirred
By a hope in its fulfilment long deferred:
'Tis the Valley of 'Aqíq; * O comrade, halt!
Feign amazement, if amazement makes default!
Look for me, for blinding tears mine eyes do fill,
And the power to see it lags behind the will.
Ask, I pray, the Fawn who haunts it if he knows
Of my heart, and how it loves him, and its woes.
Nay, my passionate abasement can he know
While the glory of his beauty fills him so?
May my heart, my wasted heart, his ransom be!
His own to yield no merit is in me!
What think'st thou? Doth he deem me then content,
While I crave for him, with this my banishment?
In sleepless nights his form I vainly try
To paint upon the canvas of the eye.
If I lend an ear to what my mentors say
May I ne'er escape their torments for a day!
By the sweetness of my friend and his desire,
Though he tire of me, my heart shall never tire!
O would that from al-'Udhayb's limpid pool
With a draught I might my burning vitals cool!
Nay, far beyond my craving is that stream:
Alas, my thirst and that mirage's gleam!”

Since in this book Arabic literature necessarily occupies a secon­dary place, it is impossible to discuss more fully the work of this remarkable poet, who, while strongly recalling in many passages the ideas and imagery of the Persian mystical poets, excels the majority of them in boldness, variety, and wealth of expression. Too many of those who have written on Ṣúfíism have treated it as an essentially Aryan movement, and for this reason it is particularly necessary to emphasise the fact that two of the greatest mystics of Islám (and perhaps a third, namely Dhu'n-Nún of Egypt, who, in the opinion of my friend Mr. R. A. Nicholson, first gave to the earlier asceticism the definitely pantheistic bent and quasi-erotic expression which we recognise as the chief characteristics of Ṣúfíism) were of non-Aryan origin.