Ibn Al-Rum: Life and Poems

Egypt’s National Centre for Translation (NCT) has republished the book Ibn Al-Rumi, (Ibn Al-Rumi: His Life and Poems), by the Orientalist Rofoun Gast, which was translated into Arabic by Hussein Nasser, professor of Arabic literature at Cairo University. The book consists of two chapters, the first tackling the life of Ibn Al-Rumi, the second the circumstances accompanying his death, his relations with other poets and his ethics. Ibn Al-Rumi is one of the most renowned poets of the Abbassid era. He was born to a half-Greek father and a Persian mother in Baghdad in AD 836 and died in AD 896. He is best known for the tragedy that marked most of the poems in his only book Diwan Ibn Al-Rumi.