'ABD AL-JABBAR IBN HAMDIS (1055-1133) was a poet of the medieval Muslim Mediterranean world who survives as the best-known figure from four centuries of Arab-Islamic civilisation on the island of Sicily. Though he achieved fame and success in his time, he was forced to bear witness to sectarian strife among the Muslims of both Sicily and Spain, and the gradual success of the Christian reconquest. Today, his poetry provides us with a window on to the tumultuous times in which he lived, from his youth in Sicily to his professional formation in Seville, and finally to his return to north Africa where he witnessed and recorded the gradual decline of his beloved homeland under the Normans.