Ibn Zamrak

Ibn Zamrak (also Zumruk) or Abu Abd Allah Muhammad b, Yusuf b. Muhammad b. Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Yusuf al-Surayhi, (1333–1393) was a poet and statesman from Granada, Al-Andalus. Some his poems still decorate the fountains and palaces of Alhambra in Granada.

He was of humble origin but thanks to his teacher Ibn al-Khatib he was introduced at the court of the Nasrids. He accompanied sultan Abu Abd Allah Mohammed V to Morocco and when Mohammed was reinstated on the throne in Granada in 1361 he was appointed as his private secretary and a court poet. When Ibn al-Khatib was dismissed as vizier in 1371, Ibn Zamrak succeeded him and hired a group of assassins to kill him in prison after his arrest in Fez. Later, Ibn Zamrak himself was imprisoned for nearly two years by Yusuf II and was assassinated on the orders of Sultan Muhammad VII while he was reading the Qur'an at home in 1393.

See also

• Court of the Lions

Sources

• "Biography of Ibn Zamrak", in: The Encyclopaedia of Islam.(2), iii, pp. 972–973, article by F. de la Granja
• "The Eye of Sovereignty: Poetry and Vision in the Alhambra's Lindaraja Mirado" by D. Fairchild Ruggles, in: Gesta, Vol. 36, No. 2, Visual Culture of Medieval Iberia (1997), pp. 180–189
• García Gómez, Emilio (1905-1995), Ibn Zamrak el poeta de la Alhambra, Granada : Patronato de la Alhambra, 1975
• Le poete vizir Ibn Zamrak: du faubourg d' Al baycine au palais de l'Alhambra, by Hamdan Hadjadji, 2005
• Ibn Zamrak al-Gharnāṭī, 733-796 H/1333-1393 M : sīratuhu wa-adabuh, by Aḥmad Salīm Ḥimṣī, Bayrūt : Mu'assasat al-Risālah ; Ṭarābulus, Lubnān : Där al-Īmān, 1985.

External links

• Poems of the Alhambra