الرَّمْــزُ فِي الشِّــعْرِ الصُّــوفِيّ ابْنُ الفَارِضِ نَمُوذَجَاً

Sufism spread throughout the Islamic world in the third century AH as a religious movement calling for asceticism and worship, and most of the Sufis of this century were following the Companions and Followers for their religiousness, piety and asceticism. However, Sufi poetry appeared among the hermits and ascetics, and its characteristics emerged when piety and religiousness spread among the Faqihs, Scholars and Narrators. With Jalal al-Din al-Rumi in Persian poetry and Ibn al-Farid and Ibn al-Arabi in Arabic poetry, Sufi poetry achieved its pinnacle. For their expression and ecstasy, the Sufis resorted to the Symbolism due to the intensity of their heritage and the multiplicity of its interpretation, and to convey their perceptions and define the relationship between them and God Almighty. As the Sufi symbol is based on a mystical experience, the Sufis found their purpose in the symbolism for their experiences, desires and intentions to be inferred. Ibn al-Farid, the mystical poet to whom the imamate of divine love ended, left a small divan poetry with a first-degree spiritual heritage. This divan has the most delicate and valuable poetry, as well as the symbolism of remarkable ingenuity, such as the symbol of woman, symbol of wine, place and time expressions, symbols derived from the nature, and other symbols. It is worth noting that Ibn Al-Farid in his divan poetry originated and produced over a hundred complex Sufi terms, which lends the phrase and meaning stronger connotations. Ibn al-Farid considered feminine beauty as a way to absolute divine beauty and believed that all the manifestations of the universe are nothing more than manifestations of the Divine Essence, in which he saw God's majesty present in everything. His poetic experience arose from the spiritual exercise and his approach which was based on inspiration rather than the senses and mind. Wine was regarded as a symbol of divine love by the Sufis, and it was associated with their spiritual intentions. Ibn al-Farid, whose poems (Ta'iyah and Mimeyah) contained various intoxicated undertones due to their psychological meanings and emotional states, is an outstanding exemplar of this current. But the truth is that Ibn al-Farid in the mentioned poems spoke only about love but through the symbol of wine. Love, for him, is the first-degree divine understanding and the basis of the heart and spiritual state. He preferred to resort to the wine dictionary to build his poetic experience due to the absence of the mind that is characterized by drunkenness, for drunkenness is not trance but rather absence, and it is a spiritual wine that restores the soul to union with the Beloved. Ibn al-Farid introduced in his poems a coherent Sufi world of symbols, connotations, and signs. Key Words: Sufism, Sufi poetry, Ibn al-Farid, symbol, beauty, love, wine, drunkenness.