Shams Maghrebi

شمس مغربی

1348–1406

Molla Mohammad Shirin Maghrebi Tabrizi, known as Shirin or Molla Mohammad Shirin and famous as Shams Maghrebi (749 to 809 AH), was an Iranian Sufi and poet of the second half of the eighth century AH. His year and place of death have been recorded as one of the years 809 to 810 AH in Sorkhab, Tabriz. He was buried in the Baba Farid shrine enclosure. Some attribute the reason for his fame and the pen name Maghrebi to his journey to the Maghreb and his receiving the Sufi cloak from one of the associates of Ibn Arabi. In the Sufi path Maghrebi was a follower of Ismail Sisi, one of the companions of Nur al-Din Abd al-Rahman Esfaraini, and a companion of Kamal al-Din Khojandi. In addition to his Persian poems, poems in Arabic and in the Fahlavi (Azari) dialect have survived from him. Maghrebi's Divan contains three thousand verses in the forms of ghazal, tarji-band, and ruba'i, most of them dealing with mystical themes, especially the unity of being (wahdat al-wujud), the importance of the spiritual path, seeking nearness to God, and the mystical states of the traveler on the path. Besides his Persian Divan and poems in Arabic and the Fahlavi (Azari) dialect, the following works are attributed to him: Asrar al-Fatiha; the treatise Jam-e Jahan-nama, on the exposition of Ibn Arabi's views; a selection from the commentary on the Ta'iyya ode of Ibn Farid; Dorr al-Farid fi Ma'refat al-Towhid, in Persian on the oneness of God and His acts and attributes; Nozhat al-Sasaniyya; Nasihat-nama; and Era'at al-Daqa'iq fi Sharh Mir'at al-Haqa'iq. Maghrebi's Persian Divan was prepared through the efforts of several collaborators of Ganjoor and has been made available in the following sections: