Abu al-ʻAlaʼ al-Maʻarri,2 the Lucretius of Islam, the Voltaire of the East, was born in the spring of the year 973 AD, in the obscure village of Maʻarra,3 which is about eighteen hours’ journey south of Halab (Aleppo). And instead of Ahmad ibn Abdallah ibn Sulaiman ut-Tanukhi (of the tribe of Tanukh), he was called Abu al-ʻAlaʼ (the Father of the Sublime), by which patronymic of distinction he is popularly known throughout the Arabic speaking world.
When a boy, Abu al-ʻAlaʼ was instructed by his father; and subsequently he was sent to Halab, where he pursued his studies under the tutelage of the grammarian Muhammad ibn Abdallah ibn us-Sad. His literary proclivity was evinced in his boyhood, and he wrote verse, we are told, before he was ten. Of these juvenile pieces, however, nothing was preserved.
He was about five years old when he fell a victim to smallpox and almost lost his sight from it. But a weakness in his eyes continued to trouble him and he became, in middle age, I presume, totally blind.4 Some of his biographers would have us believe he was born blind; others state that he completely lost his sight when he was attacked by the virulent disease; and a few intimate that he could see slightly at least with the right eye. As to whether or not he was blind when he was sent to Halab to pursue his studies, his biographers do not agree. My theory, based on the careful perusal of his poems and on a statement advanced by one of his biographers,5 is that he lost his sight gradually, and total blindness must have come upon him either in his youth or his middle age.6 Were we to believe that he was born blind or that he suffered the complete loss of his sight in his boyhood, we should be at a loss to know, not how he wrote his books, for that was done by dictation; not how he taught his pupils, for that was done by lectures; but how he himself was taught in the absence in those days of a regular system of instruction for the blind.
In 1010 AD he visited Baghdad, the centre of learning and intelligence and the capital of the Abbasid caliphs, where he passed about two years and became acquainted with most of the literary men of the age.7 He attended the lectures and the readings of the leading doctors and grammarians, meeting with a civil reception at the hand of most of them.
He also journeyed to Tripoli,8 which boasted, in those days, of many public libraries; and, stopping at Latakia, he lodged in a monastery where he met and befriended a very learned monk. They discussed theology and metaphysics, digressing now and then into the profane. Indeed, the skepticism which permeates Abu al-ʻAla’s writings must have been nursed in that convent by both the monk and the poet.
These are virtually the only data extant showing the various sources of Abu al-ʻAla’s learning; but to one endowed with a keen perception, a powerful intellect, a prodigious memory, together with strong innate literary predilections, they seem sufficient. He was especially noted for the extraordinary memory he possessed; and around this our Arab biographers and historians weave a thick net of anecdotes, or rather fables. I have no doubt that one with such a prodigious memory could retain in a few minutes what the average person could not; but when we are told that Abu al-ʻAlaʼ once heard one of his pupils speaking with a friend in a foreign tongue, and repeated there and then the long conversation, word for word, without having the slightest idea of its meaning, we are disposed to be skeptical. Many such anecdotes are recorded and quoted by his Arab biographers without as much as intimating a single doubt.9 The fact that he was blind partly explains the abnormal development of his memory.
His career as poet and scholar dates from the time he returned from Baghdad. This, so far as is known, was the last journey he made; and his home became henceforth his earthly prison. He calls himself “A double-fettered Captive,”10 his solitude being the one and his blindness the other. Like most of the scholars of his age, in the absence of regular educational institutions, with perhaps one or two exceptions, he had to devote a part of his time to the large number of pupils that flocked to Maʻarra from all parts of Asia Minor, Arabia, and India. Aside from this, he dictated to his numerous amanuenses on every possible and known subject. He is not only a poet of the first rank, but an essayist, a literary critic, and a mathematician as well. Everything he wrote was transcribed by many of his admirers, as was the fashion then, and thus circulated far and near. Nothing, however, was preserved but his Diwans, his Letters and the Epistle of Forgiveness,11 of which I shall yet have occasion to speak.12
His reputation as poet and scholar had now, after his return from Baghdad, overleaped the horizons, as one writer has it. Honors were conferred upon him successively by the rulers and the scholars of his age. His many noted admirers were in constant communication with him. He was now looked upon as “the master of the learned, the chief of the wise, and the sole monarch of the bards of his century.” Maʻarra13 became the Mecca of every literary aspirant; ambitious young scholars came there for enlightenment and inspiration. And Abu al-ʻAlaʼ, although a pessimist, received them
