Muhammad Shirin (Shams-i) Maghribi

Muhammad Shirin Maghribi, Muhammad he was born in the village of Ammand, some forty miles northwest of Tabriz near Lake Urumiya and died aged 60 in 809/1406-8.

Maghribi should be accounted as the most important Persian Sufi poet—after ‘Iraqi (d. 688/1289), Qasim-i Anwar (d. 837/1433) and Shabistari (d. ca. 740/1339-40of Ibn ‘Arabi’s school in the late 13th/early 14th century. is the ‘Unity of Being’ (wahdat al-wujud). Although the imagery of romantic Persian poets such as Salman Sawaji (d. 778/1376) and Humam Tabrizi (d. 714/1314) also fills his verse, lending it a particular brillance and graceful beauty, it is as an exponent and exegete of the theomonistic doctrine of Ibn ‘Arabi that his poems achieved their principal fame. it is apparent that the poet adopted ‘Maghribi’ as his takhalluṣ in honour of the Shaykh al-Akbar.

After his celebrated Diwan, Maghribi’s other works listed by Ibn Karbala’i include: 1) Asrar-i fatiHa (not extant); 2) Risala-yi jam-i jahan-nama (consisting mainly of selections from Farghani’s commentary on Ibn Fariḍ’s Ta’iyya entitled Mashariq al-darari, ed. Dj. Ashtiyani, Tehran 1979; Durr al-farid fi ma‘rifat al-tawHid (a work still extant, see Fihrist-i  Kitab-khana-yi Sipahsalar, II: 682 wherein it is said to be in Persian, treating in 3 chapters the divine Unity, Actions and Qualities); 4) Nuzhat al-sasaniyya (evidently not extant t). Other works ascribed elsewhere to Maghribi include a Nasihat-nama and Ira’at al-daqa’iq fi sharH-i Mi’rat al-Haqa’iq.

Maghribi had five silsila affiliations according to Ibn Karbala’i  Baha’ al-Din Hamadani; 2) Ibn ‘Arabi; 3) Sa‘d al-Din; 4) Isma‘il Sisi and 5) ‘Abd al-Mu‘min al-Sarawi, although his principal master was Sisi  who counted among his protégés and disciples three of the greatest Sufi poets of the 14th-century, namely: Kamal Khujandi (d. 803/1400), Qasim-i Anwar, and Muhammad ‘Aṣṣar Tabrizi (d. 792-3/1390-1). Sisi was a Kubrawi Shaykh, having been a disciple, either directly or indirectly, of ‘Ala’ al-Dawla Simnani (d. 736/1336).

As a poet of the Akbarian school, Maghribi follows very closely the imagery and thought of Shabistari and Sa‘d al-Din Farghani. Maghribi’s poetic style was imitated by Shah Ni‘matu’llah (d. 834/1431) and Muhammad Lahiji, the latter author quoting extensively from Maghribi’s Diwan throughout his famous Mafatih al-i‘jaz fi sharh-i Gulshan-i raz in order to illustrate Shabistari’s symbolism and doctrine  Many of the images and expressions of Maghribi’s poetry have become proverbs in Persian, and his influence can be seen in the writings of many of the Persian Ishraqi philosophers up to the present day. Quotations from his poetry, for instance, can be found scattered throughout the writings of the 19th-century Hakim Mulla Hadi Sabzawari (d. 1289/1873).

 (L. Lewisohn, Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd Edition)