ʿUmar ibn Abī Rabīʿah al-Makhzūmī () (November 644,

Mecca Mecca, officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, is the capital of Mecca Province in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia; it is the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow valley above ...

– 712/719, Mecca, full name: Abū ’l-Khaṭṭāb ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Rabīʿah Ibn al-Mughayra ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar ibn Makhzūm ibn Yakaza ibn Murra al-Makhzūmī) was an Arab poet. He was born into a wealthy family of the

Quraysh The Quraysh () are an Tribes of Arabia, Arab tribe who controlled Mecca before the rise of Islam. Their members were divided into ten main clans, most notably including the Banu Hashim, into which Islam's founding prophet Muhammad was born. By ...

tribe of Mecca, his father being ʿAbd Allāh and his mother Asmā bint Mukharriba. He was characterised by the biographer

Ibn Khallikan Aḥmad bin Muḥammad bin Ibrāhīm bin Abū Bakr ibn Khallikān (; 22 September 1211 – 30 October 1282), better known as Ibn Khallikān, was a renowned Islamic historian of Kurdish origin who compiled the celebrated biographical encyclopedi ...

as 'the best poet ever produced by the tribe of Quraysh'. He is known for his love poetry and for being one of the originators of the literary form ghazel in Islamic literature. He was "impassioned by everything beautiful that he saw in the street or during pilgrimage.". According to Ibn Khallikan, the most prominent object of his affections was al-Thurayya bint Ali Ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Umayya al-Ashghar ibn ʿAbd Shams ibn ʿAbd Manāf, granddaughter of the famous poet Qutayla bint al-Nadr, who married Suhayl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn Auf al-Zuhrī, on which occasion Umar recited the following famous verses, which pun on the fact that the married couple’s names are both names of heavenly bodies (''Suhayl'' being

Canopus Canopus is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Carina (constellation), Carina and the list of brightest stars, second-brightest star in the night sky. It is also Bayer designation, designated α Carinae, which is Rom ...

and ''al-Thurayyā'' being the

Pleiades The Pleiades (), also known as Seven Sisters and Messier 45 (M45), is an Asterism (astronomy), asterism of an open cluster, open star cluster containing young Stellar classification#Class B, B-type stars in the northwest of the constellation Tau ...

O thou who joinest in marriage al-Thurayyā and Suhayl, tell me, I pray thee, how can they ever meet? The former rises in the north-east, and the latter in the south-east!''Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary'', trans. by Baron McGuckin de Slane, Oriental Translation Fund (Series), 57, 4 vols (Paris: Printed for the Oriental translation fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1842-71), I 373.

References

644 births 710s deaths Poets from the Umayyad Caliphate Banu Makhzum {{MEast-poet-stub 7th-century Arab people 8th-century Arab people People from Mecca 7th-century Arabic-language poets 8th-century Arabic-language poets