The Ambassadors Magazine - January 2009

ABU AL- ‘ALA' AL-MA’ARRI
ARAB POET & PHILOSOPHER
EXTRAORDINAIRE

By Habeeb Salloum

“I think our world is not a place to rest,

But where a man may take his little ease,

Until the landlord whom he never sees

Gives that apartment to another guest.”

So wrote Abu al-‘Ala’ Ahmad ibn Abdallah al-Ma^’arri (973-1057), Arab poet/philosopher extraordinaire in this verse translated by Henry Baerlein, in his The Diwan of Abu'l-ala. These words were not just lines of poetry but, rather, a vivid description of the life the last of the great medieval Arab poets.

About himself, al-Ma'arri wrote, "Men of acute mind call me an ascetic, but they are wrong in their diagnosis. Although I disciplined my desires, I only abandoned worldly pleasures because the best of these withdrew themselves from me."

Yet, his somewhat misanthropic nature appears in another remark: "I was made an abstainer from mankind by my acquaintance with them and my knowledge that created beings are dust."

For years I had read his poetry translated into English and had been fascinated with his ideas. Hence, this day I was, with my daughter, making a pilgrimage to the tomb of one of the greatest thinkers of the Middle Ages. A deep excitement gripped me as we neared the town where al-Ma'arri was born and is buried.

At Maarat al-Numan (Ma’arrat al-Nu’man), where al-Ma'arri’s father had once been the Governor is a booming city of some 50,000 south of Aleppo, This dark-coloured limestone town, noted for its renowned poet and sweets, for centuries, has been known as a commercial hub - its Saturday bazaar, an open-air carnival, the envy of the neighbouring towns.

During the Crusades, Maarat al-Numan was captured then completely destroyed. The Men of the Cross-slaughtered most of its inhabitant and some historians have indicated that after the fall of the town, the starving Crusaders feasted on barbecued human flesh. However, Maarat al-Numan subsequently arose from its ashes and today it is a target for poets and literary men, like us from all parts of the Arab world and beyond.

We stopped by al-Ma'arri’s mausoleum next to a library, much frequented by the local intellectuals and dedicated to this famous 11th century blind Arab poet of philosophers, and philosopher of poets. As we walked toward that famous poet’s monument, excitement built within me. It felt as if I was to meet al-Ma'arri himself.

Life was not kind to Al-Ma'arri who traced his ancestry back to the Tanukh tribe of Southern Arabia, and who, to some in the West, became known as the Eastern Lucretius. He was stricken with smallpox when he was four and this eventually led to his total blindness. He memorized the Holy Qur’an at an early age and at the same time became a scholar in the masterpieces of Arabic literature. He studied in Aleppo, Antioch, Damascus and other Syrian towns, learning by heart the manuscripts preserved in the libraries and schools in these cities, before returning to Maarat al-Numan.

However, Baghdad being the centre of the civilized world in that era attracted him and he travelled there in 1008, but only stayed eighteen months in that metropolis of learning. Returning home, he lived in semi-retirement, spending the remainder of his life in his place of birth. Seemingly always melancholy, he called himself, 'the prisoner of two jails' - the prison of blindness; and that of loneliness. However, he did not live a secluded life. Such was his renown that enthusiastic followers flocked to Maarat al-Numan to listen to his lectures on poetry and grammar.

Abu al-‘^cAla' al-Ma’arri fully absorbed the Arab and Islamic culture of his age and was one of the greatest freethinkers in Islam. His poetry was deeply affected by a pervasive pessimism and although he was a believer in God he was a sceptic when it came to religion, running counter to the heroic idealism of his time. In one of his verses he says: “Death's debt is then and there paid down by dying men; but it is a promise bare that they shall rise again.”

He constantly speaks of death as something very desirable and regards procreation as a sin. He taunted the privileged classes of his day and expressed a strong contempt for hypocrisy, injustice, and superstition.

From his poetry one will find that he was truly a man of compassion who fought in defence of freethinking, liberalism in thought and equality between people. No less notable were his enlightened stands against wars of aggression, bigotry, class distinction, oppression, racism and slavery. In his poetry, he called for equality between humans. This is attested to in this verse translated by Baerlein, in which the poet philosophises:

"You strut in piety the while you take

He believed that religions were philosophies conceived by humans - fables invented by the ancients. In A Literary History of the Arabs, R.A. Nicholson quotes one of his poems:

A giant in the Arab literary world he authored many works. From among his most famous are: Saqt az-zand (The Tinder Spark), his first great work; Luzumiyat (Necessities), his last great work referring to the unnecessary complexity of the rhyme; Al Fusal Wa’l-Gahayat (Paragraphs and Periods), written in rhymed verse in Qur’anic style; and his most famous, Risalat al-Ghufran (Epistle of Pardon). His works influenced, not only Omar Khayyam but also a number of medieval Western men of letters. His Risalat al-Ghufran is said to have inspired the great Italian poet Dante in his writing of the Divine Comedy.

In this work, al-Ma’arri imagines paradise and hell and envisions the poets who dwell in both, narrating interesting stories of a meeting between Ibn al-Qareh (Ibn al-Qarih), a writer from Aleppo, and poets who lived in different ages. Dante in his Divine Comedy followed a very similar division of paradise and hell.

Al-Ma’arri lived a bachelor all his life and when he died at the age of 84, he asked for the following inscription to be inscribed on his tomb: "It is my father who did this wrong to me, but I did not commit one against any other."

Al-Ma’ari is considered one of the outstanding names in the Arabic literature. Even after a millennium his impact on Arab intellectual life has continued until modern times. He continues to appeal to both young and old in the modern Arab world.

For near a decade the city of Idleb, a few miles from Maarat al-Numan, has held an al-Ma’ari Cultural Festival. The activities include lectures by Syrian and Arab literalists [literary men] and researchers on al-Ma’aari’s writings. The festival always concludes with a poetic evening, which includes the participation of poets from Syria and other parts of the Arab world. It brings alive the memory of Syria’s renowned poet and spreads his appeal to the modern generations.

I thought of this appeal as Abed al-Khelak Sergawi, the Director of al-Ma’arri’s home, now an Arab cultural centre, guided us through the poet’s former home. We stopped for a while at his tomb attempting to decipher the hardly readable famous inscription then walked along listening to Sergawi relate in detail the life story of this blind poet. Our last stop was the library containing copies of al-Ma’arri’s works and publications by others about his writings as well as many volumes relating to Arab literature and grammar.

The Director spoke with great passion about his favourite poet intermingled with reciting stanzas from al-Ma’arri’s works. He seemed glassy-eyed as he expressed his deep sorrow that none of the manuscripts of this world-famous poet were in the collection – only copies. The originals, with the exception of two in the Arab world – one in Egypt and one in Morocco – were in European libraries.

As we drove away from Maarat al-Numan and the tomb of its most famous son, I thought of Nicholson`s words about al-Ma’arri: “Amidst his meditations on the human tragedy, a fierce hatred of injustice, hypocrisy, and superstition blazes out.” These thoughts and his fierce determination to always speak the truth and support justice have kept his memory alive for hundreds of centuries.

If you have laid no dominating hand

Fitzgerald, Edward, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, Avon Books, New York, N.Y., 1967.

Hayes, John, R., The Genius of Arab Civilization, The Mit Press,Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975.

al-Ma^carri, Abu al-^cAla', Risalat al-Ghufran, Dar al‑Qalam, Beirut, 1975.

Nicholson, R.A., A Literary History of the Arabs, Cambridge University Press, London 1969.

Ullah, N., Islamic Literature, Washington Square Press, Inc., New York, 1963.

Habeeb Salloum is a Canadian freelance writer and author who has traveled to many parts of the world and has written comprehensively about the countries and their cuisines. His email is: habeeb.salloum@sympatico.ca.