ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn ʿAbd al-Razzāq ibn Jaʿfar ibn Bashrūn, called al-Ṣiqillī (the Sicilian), was an
Arabic poet from
Mahdia
Mahdia ( ar, المهدية ') is a Tunisian coastal city with 62,189 inhabitants, south of Monastir and southeast of Sousse.
Mahdia is a provincial centre north of Sfax. It is important for the associated fish-processing industry, as well as w ...
who spent much of his life in
Sicily
(man) it, Siciliana (woman)
, population_note =
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, population_blank1 =
, demographics_type1 = Ethnicity
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, demographi ...
. He was a court poet of King
Roger II
Roger II ( it, Ruggero II; 22 December 1095 – 26 February 1154) was King of Sicily and Africa, son of Roger I of Sicily and successor to his brother Simon. He began his rule as Count of Sicily in 1105, became Duke of Apulia and Calabria in ...
(1130–1154) and compiled an anthology of verse, ''Al-Mukhtār fī al-naẓm wa-l-nathr li-afāḍil ahl al-ʿaṣr'' (Selected Prose and Verse from the Noblest People of the Age).
The anthology of
ʿImād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī contains a single ''
qaṣīda
The qaṣīda (also spelled ''qaṣīdah''; is originally an Arabic word , plural ''qaṣā’id'', ; that was passed to some other languages such as fa, قصیده or , ''chakameh'', and tr, kaside) is an ancient Arabic word and form of writin ...
'' from a longer poem by Ibn Bashrūn. In his standard fashion, ʿImād al-Dīn cut it short because it was a
panegyric for an infidel. It refers to Roger as "king of the Caesars" or "king of imperial kings" (''malik al-mulūk al-qayṣarīya''). The passage selected by ʿImād al-Dīn describes a palace, gardens and a menagerie as indicators of Roger's power:
Notes
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People from Mahdia
12th-century Arabic-language poets
12th-century Sicilian people