The third poet who appears in Selección de poesía árabe is Abu al-Ala al-Ma’arri (973-1057 CE), who was born 223 years after Abbas Ibn al-Ahnaf (750-809 CE) and 112 after Abdullah Ibn al-Mu’tazz (861-908 CE), the two poets whose work I have already translated. In fact, taken together, the lives of these three poets coincide closely with the first three centuries of the Abbasid Caliphate, which was established in the year of al-Ahnaf’s birth (750 CE) and peaked during the subsequent two centuries. Fortunes turned thereafter, and by the time al-Ma’arri died in 1057, the empire faced serious challenges, although the ruling dynasty managed to hold on, in one form or another, until 1517 CE. For more on the historical background, and in particular the emergence of the Abbasid Caliphate, see this post. In the meantime, here is my translation of the biography of al-Ma’arri that appears in Selección de poesía árabe.
Abu al-Ala al-Ma’arri was born in the Syrian city of al-Ma’arra in the year 973 CE. When he was four, he suffered an attack of smallpox and lost his sight. His father died when he was fourteen, and al-Ma’arri decided to depart for Aleppo, Antioch and other Syrian cities, where he would live and study for six years. It is notable that al-Ma’arri, like his father and other members of his family, avoided undertaking the customary pilgrimage to Mecca. At the age of twenty, he returned to the town of his birth, where he lived in relative poverty even as his reputation as a poet began to grow.
In 1008, al-Ma’arri travelled to Baghdad, where he performed his poetry to wide acclaim. After eighteen months in the Abbasid capital, he returned home, where he adopted an ascetic and vegetarian lifestyle, eating lentils and figs, and where he would remain confined in his house for the rest of his life. Blind and enclosed between four walls, he became known as “the twice-imprisoned man”. Adding his abandonment of religion to these two privations, he described himself as “thrice benighted”. Al-Ma’arri’s attempt to live as a hermit enjoyed only a partial success, as his home became a site of pilgrimage, with disciples from around the world visiting to hear him speak. Al-Ma’arri’s work is full of philosophical propositions and moral energy. It represents the highest point reached during the flourishing of intellectual life that characterised the Abbasid period. Al-Ma’arri died in 1057 at the age of 83.
My translations of al-Ma’arri’s poems will appear here in the weeks to come. As before, I’ll be working from Alberto Manzano’s Spanish, itself a translation from the medieval Arabic.
The Haw Field 