Ibn Hamdis

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Ibn Hamdis (c. 1056 - c. 1133) was a Sicilian Arab poet.

He was born in Noto, near Syracuse. When he was 31, his town was captured by the Normans and he was forced to move to Andalusia, then still under Muslim control, at Sevilla, where he make friends with prince Al Mutamid, who was also a poet. After the death of the latter in an Almoravid prison of Maroc (1095), Hamdis moved to Algeria under the protection of prince al-Mansur. When the latter died, he then moved to Madhiyya in Tunisia, as a guest of the Zirid rulers.

Hamdis thence continued to move in most of the Mediterranean Islamic countries until his death at Majorca in 1133. His works include c. 6,000 verses, many of them devoted to his lost Sicily.