Khaqani

Afzal al-Dīn Badīl ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿOthmān (), commonly known as Khāqānī (, –  1199), was a major Persian poet and prose-writer. He was born in Shirvanshah, a vassal of the Seljuks in the region of Shirvan, where he served as an ode-writer to the Shirvanshahs. His fame most securely rests upon the qasidas collected in his Divān, and his autobiographical travelogue Tohfat al-ʿErāqayn. He is also notable for his contributions to the genre of habsiyāt ("prison poetry").

== Life == Khaqani was born into the family of a carpenter in Shirvan, on the border of the Persianate world. His mother was originally a slave-girl of Nestorian Christian faith who had converted to Islam. According to Khaqani, she was a descendant of "the great Philippus", which some scholars such as Minorsky (1945) have interpreted as meaning Marcus Julius Philippus, the third-century Roman emperor. Khaqani lost his father at an early age and was brought up by his uncle, Kāfi-al-Din ʿOmar, a physician. Later in life, Khaqani wrote a poem in his praise, in which he used the similarity of his uncle's name and that of Omar Khayyam to compare their virtues.