- Ibn Mujbar – Abū Bakr Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd al-Jalīl al-Fihri
The poet of his age, peerless and eloquent: Abū Bakr Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd al-Jalīl ibn Mujbar al-Fihri, first of Murcia and later of Seville.
He composed panegyrics for kings, and critics testified to the power of his rhetoric, the soundness of his natural talent, and the virility of his verse. His odes circulated as proverbial lines, impossible to equal.
Among those who studied under him were Abū al-Qāsim ibn Ḥassān and others.
Ibn al-Abbar lavished praise on him. (1)
He died in Marrakesh, on the Eve of the Sacrifice, in 588 AH, still in the prime of life. (2) Another report places his death in the year seven.
Among his poetry are these lines: (3)
Do you think he will ever forsake reproach (4)
when with it he has passed from youth to grey?
Smitten with graceful maidens,
his soul has never embraced forgetfulness since first it came to reason. (5)
(*) He is treated by Ibn al-Abar, Takmila, 3/132; Ibn Khallikan, under the entry for Yaqub b. Abd al-Mumin, Sultan of the Maghrib, 7/13; al-Dhahabi, Tarikh al-Islam, fol. 146 (Ahmad III 2917/14); al-Ibar, 4/267; Ibn Shakir, Fawat, 4/275; al-Maqri, Nafh al-Tib, 3/237, and elsewhere.
(1) Ibn al-Abar writes: “In his day he was the poet of al-Andalus—indeed, the uncontested poet of the entire Maghrib.”
(2) The description “kahl” (middle-aged) is debatable, for Ibn al-Abar, Ibn Khallikan, Ibn Shakir and others state that he died at the age of fifty-three.
(3) These verses belong to a long qasida. Ibn Khallikan says it contains 107 lines and quotes 32; Ibn Shakir reproduces 29 in his Fawat. Al-Dhahabi notes in Tarikh al-Islam that Ibn Mujbir left a diwan, largely panegyrics to Ibn Abd al-Mumin, and he cites this qasida there.
(4) Ibn Khallikan’s Wafayat and Ibn Shakir’s Fawat read al-ghazla.
(5) Ibn Khallikan’s Wafayat has the reading aʿqalta.