Fakhr al-Din Iraqi
1213 CE–1289 CE · Hamadan
Fakhr al-Din Ibrahim, known as 'Iraqi, was a Persian Sufi (Islamic mystic) poet, traditionally said to have been born around 610 AH / 1213-14 CE in Komjan, a village near Hamadan in western Iran, and to have died in 688 AH / 1289 CE in Damascus. Tradition holds that he was a precocious student in Hamadan before he joined a band of wandering dervishes (qalandars) and travelled with them to Multan, in what is now Pakistan. There he is reported to have become a disciple of Baha al-Din Zakariyya, a master of the Suhrawardiyya Sufi order, and to have married into his family. After his teacher's death he briefly led the lodge but, the sources say, was driven out by rivalry and departed.
Later accounts place him in Konya in Anatolia, where he attended the circle of Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi, the leading interpreter of the Andalusian mystic Ibn al-'Arabi. From Qunawi's lectures on Ibn al-'Arabi's thought, 'Iraqi is said to have drawn the inspiration for his most famous work, the Lama'at ("Divine Flashes"), a blend of prose and verse on divine love. He enjoyed the patronage of the local governor Mu'in al-Din Parvana, and after Parvana's execution (1277) reportedly fled, spending time in Egypt before settling in Damascus, where he died. He is said to be buried near Ibn al-'Arabi. His Lama'at and his Persian poems became widely loved across the Persianate world.
Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→Trace on the map →
HamadanPersia / Iran — Mordechai/Esther tradition
What they did here
Tradition (Encyclopaedia Iranica; EI2) places his birth ca. 610 AH / 1213-14 CE in Komjan, a village near Hamadan, and reports a precocious early education there, including teaching at a Hamadan madrasa as a youth. Komjan itself is not in the gazetteer, so the nearby city of Hamadan is used. Birth date is a traditional estimate, broadly accepted.
About Hamadan
Hamadan (ancient Ecbatana), in the Zagros highlands of western Iran, was a Median and later Persian capital and a major city of the medieval Jibal region. The philosopher-physician Ibn Sina (Avicenna, d. 1037) spent his final years there and is buried in the city, and the mystic Ayn al-Qudat al-Hamadhani (executed 1131) took his nisba from it.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Fakhr al-Din Iraqi’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Christian world
Jewish world
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.