Abu al-Ala al-Maarri

Abu al-Ala al-Maarri was born in 973 in Maarat al-Numan, south of Aleppo, into a family of qadis and men of letters. Smallpox left him blind before the age of six; he learned language and poetry from the masters of the region, wrote verse from childhood and stayed in Baghdad. Back in his town, he never left it again and called himself “prisoner of the two prisons”, blindness and the house. A vegetarian ascetic, opposed to procreation, he lived surrounded by disciples and died in his native town in 1057.

In the catalogue 1

• NarrativeThe Epistle of Forgivenessرسالة الغفرانAbu al-Ala al-Maarri · 1033LiteraturePublic domain