One of the greatest Arab poets of the medieval period, al-Ma’arri was a blind Syrian poet known for
his pessimism as well as his originality. Considered heretical by many Muslims, al-Ma’arri is a religious skeptic whose most famous work, nevertheless, is a vision of the afterlife.
Born, as his name implies, in the town of Ma’arrah in Syria, south of Aleppo, al-Ma’arri was
stricken with smallpox as a young child. He survived the disease but was blinded for life, yet he
compensated for his blindness by cultivating his
remarkable memory. Educated at Aleppo, Antioch,
and Tripoli, al-Ma’arri is reputed to have memorized the manuscripts he found in those cities, so
that he was able to immediately recall vast quantities of prose and verse.
In 1008, thinking to embark on a literary career,
al-Ma’arri set off for Baghdad, where he hoped to
find a patron. Though well received in literary circles there, he was unable to secure a sponsor, and it
was this as well as news of his mother’s failing health
that convinced him to return to Ma’arrah after 18
months. Here he lived in semi-retirement for the
rest of his life. But he produced a collection of early
poems called Saqt al-zand (The Spark from the
Flint), a collection that gave him a reputation and
inspired a number of young poets to come to Ma’arrah to study with him. Later he produced a larger
and more unorthodox volume of 1,592 poems
called Luzum ma lam yalzam (The constraint of
what is not compulsory), the title referring to the
constraints he had imposed upon himself with the
difficult rhyme schemes of the poems.
Al-Ma’arri’s poetry as well as his prose is known
for its difficulty, its pessimism, religious skepticism, asceticism, and heterodox ideas. Influenced
by Indian thought, al-Ma’arri was a vegetarian,
avidly opposed to causing cruelty to animals. He
refused even to eat honey, since he saw this as an
abuse of bees. He even suggested that animals, who
suffered cruelly in this world, would be compensated by a kind of paradise in the afterlife. As for
human beings, however, al-Ma’arri seems to have
entertained grave doubts about the existence of
any kind of immortality, which explains as well his
advocating cremation. In addition, though an advocate of social justice, he apparently saw procreation as sinful, since it brought into the world
more generations born to suffer. A supreme rationalist, he was skeptical about anything in religion
that smacked of myth or absurdity; thus he had
no patience with Sufism, the mystic sect of Islam,
which he believed to be inspired by the devil. Nor
did he have much patience with other poets, most
of whom he saw as spinners of lies painting a romantic picture of life instead of telling the truth
about life’s miseries as he knew them.
Aware of how unorthodox his ideas must seem,
al-Ma’arri often cloaked his opinions in obscure
language or disguised them as animal fables: One
of his more interesting works is a comment on
current political events called the Risalat al’Sahil
wa al’Shahij (Letters of a horse and a mule) in
which the animals exchange opinions on the current state of government in Syria. But al-Ma’arri’s
reputation as a heretic was solidified by the publication of his Al-Fusul wa al’Ghayat (Paragraphs
and periods), a book that seemed to his contemporaries to be a parody of the KORAN itself.
Al-Ma’arri’s most famous work is the prose text
Risalat al-Ghufran (The Letter of Forgiveness), probably written toward the end of his life in about 1033.
Here, in a text based on a very literal interpretation
of certain sections of the Koran, he gives a fantastic
vision of the afterlife (something he did not himself
take seriously), presenting many pagan poets in
heaven as “forgiven” (thus providing the title). In
fact, al-Ma’arri presents both heaven and hell as
peopled by poets and philologists who engage in
lengthy discussions about the nature of language
and poetry. The text may have influenced DANTE.
Bibliography
Al-Ma’arri, Abu al-‘Ala. Risalat al-Gufran: The Letter
of Forgiveness. Translated by Arthur Wormhoudt.
Oskaloosa, Iowa: William Penn College, 1997.
———. Saqt al Zand: The Spark from the Flint. Translated by Arthur Wormhoudt. Oskaloosa, Iowa:
William Penn College, 1972.
Irwin, Robert, ed. Night and Horses and the Desert: An
Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1999.