Ibn Hamdis

It is probable that Ibn Hamdis was raised in a prosperous family, likely landed gentry, who settled the Val di Noto early after the Muslim conquest of Sicily in the 9th century.

The Kalbid court of Palermo and its ephemeral splendour had long been effaced by squabbles between contender warlords, who had partitioned the island into three fiefdoms.

The poet spent thirteen years in al-Andalus, participating in the political events that involved the taifa kingdoms; the Christian onslaught coming from the North, and the looming Almoravid conquest.

In 1091, Ibn Hamdis witnessed, together with the dismayed population of Seville, the arrest and deportation of his patron and friend al-Mu'tamid to North Africa.

The new lords of al-Andalus, the Almoravids (from the Arabic al-murābiṭūn, or "inhabitants of monasteries") were suspicious of poetry and other urban refinements, deemed religiously reproachable.

After a perilous sea-journey, in which his boat was shipwrecked, causing his beloved slave-girl, Jawhara, to drown (to her he devoted some of his finest elegies), the poet settled once again in North Africa.

[6] Forgotten for much of the 20th century, Ibn Hamdis is mentioned by Leonardo Sciascia in the 1969 article Sicily and Sicilitudine, included in the collection La corda pazza.

And to the great Arab-Sicilian poet, Burgaretta dedicated an intense lyric in Sicilian language, then winner of the Vann'antò Saitta Prize.