Epistle of Forgiveness Vol. 1 – al-Ma’arri

The Work

The book is the first volume of a bilingual Arabic-English edition of Abu al-ʿAlaʾ al-Maʿarri’s Risalat al-Ghufran (The Epistle of Forgiveness), edited and translated by Geert Jan van Gelder and Gregor Schoeler. It presents the opening portion of al-Maʿarri’s long literary epistle in Arabic with a facing English translation, accompanied by a scholarly introduction, a note on the text and translation, and explanatory notes. Because it is the first of two volumes, it does not contain the complete Epistle; the remainder is reserved for the second volume.

The Epistle of Forgiveness is not a systematic theological treatise but a learned and satirical literary epistle written in ornate rhymed prose (sajʿ) mixed with poetry. It is addressed to a correspondent, Ibn al-Qarih, who had sent al-Maʿarri a letter. Al-Maʿarri’s reply combines literary criticism, mockery, theological reflection, and an imaginative vision of the afterlife. The work’s central theme is divine forgiveness: who may receive it, on what grounds, and how far it extends. Around this theme al-Maʿarri builds a highly digressive text that ranges across grammar, poetry, religious controversy, and scenes of Paradise and Hell.

The epistle has two broad movements. In the first, al-Maʿarri responds to Ibn al-Qarih’s letter with a mixture of correction and satire. He criticizes his correspondent’s Arabic, his pretensions, and his religious and literary judgments, while also discussing the meaning of forgiveness and repentance. This section is polemical and learned, showing al-Maʿarri’s command of the Arabic linguistic and poetic tradition and his willingness to mock the assumptions of a pious correspondent.

The second movement is the visionary part for which the work is best known. The narrator is conducted through the afterlife and encounters inhabitants of Paradise and Hell, including poets, scholars, and other figures whose salvation or damnation was theologically or literarily controversial. These encounters become occasions for literary criticism, theological argument, and satire. The vision tests conventional ideas about who deserves forgiveness, and it uses the topography of the afterlife as a frame for debates about poetry, language, religious authority, and divine mercy. The work is playful and digressive rather than allegorical in a narrow sense; its afterlife is populated by figures who recite poetry, argue, and challenge the narrator’s expectations.

Throughout, the Epistle blends prose and verse. Al-Maʿarri quotes and imitates poetry, comments on its quality, and uses verse to characterize the inhabitants of the afterlife. The result is a text that is at once a literary showcase, a religious reflection, and a satire on human vanity and sectarian certainty.

This Volume

This first volume contains the beginning of that work in the editors’ Arabic text and English translation. It includes the translators’ introduction, which supplies the historical, literary, and textual context needed to follow the epistle, and explanatory notes that identify Qur’anic allusions, hadith references, place names, poetic quotations, and other learned matters. The volume is therefore both a translation of the opening portion of al-Maʿarri’s text and a scholarly apparatus for reading it. It ends before the complete Epistle is finished; the continuation appears in the second volume.

Within the portion translated here, forgiveness is explored through irony and juxtaposition rather than through a single doctrinal thesis. The afterlife encounters repeatedly set inherited reputations beside unexpected fates, so that the reader cannot easily reduce the work to a simple lesson about who is saved. The epistle tests the categories of repentance, intercession, and divine mercy against cases that are literarily famous and religiously ambiguous. Its satire is directed not only at Ibn al-Qarih but at the confidence with which scholars, poets, and sectarians assign ultimate value to their own judgments.

At the same time, the work is a sustained exercise in Arabic literary criticism. The afterlife serves as a stage for evaluating poetry and prose, for mocking bad style, and for showing how linguistic and rhetorical skill can coexist with moral or religious failure. The mixture of sajʿ and verse is integral to this: the rhyming prose can mimic, deflate, or dignify a speaker, while quoted poetry functions as evidence, characterization, and satire. The epistle thus treats literature as a serious field of judgment while refusing to let literary prestige settle questions of salvation.

The volume’s bilingual presentation and explanatory apparatus are not mere supplements to the text; they make its density available to readers. The Arabic text preserves the verbal texture that translation cannot fully reproduce, and the notes identify the allusions and technical terms on which the work’s humor and argument depend. The book’s significance lies in this combination: it is a learned parody, a poetic showcase, and a theological provocation in which the boundaries of mercy are debated through the voices and fates of the dead.