Al-Ballanūbī

Abu al-Hasan Ali bin Abd al-Rahman bin Abi al-Bashaer al-Siqilli , also known as Ibn Abi al-Bishr al-Siqilli , was an Egyptian Arab Sicilian poet of the eleventh century AD / fifth AH, who lived most of his life in Fatimid Egypt.

Biography The dates of his birth and death are unknown. He was known as al-Balnubi because he came from Villanova (Ballanûbah in Arabic) in western Sicily. He migrated to Fatimid Egypt after the Norman conquest of Sicily.

In Alexandria, he taught grammar and language to Abu Muhammad Abdullah bin Yahya bin Hammoud al-Khuraimi, Ali bin al-Hassan bin Youssef al-Damrawi, and Omar bin Issa al-Soussi. Rather, he had many characteristics of Egyptian poets in the Fatimid era, which indicates that most of his poetry originated in Egypt." The poetic forms he used included praise poems, satire, lamentation, descriptive pieces and ghazals.

Imad al-Din al-Isfahani mentioned Balnubi’s collection of poetry, of which he said: “I read completely free-form poetry, more than ruby and pearl, attributed to Abu al-Hassan bin Abi al-Bishr.” A collection of his poetry's was edited by Hilal Naji and published in 1976.