Abu l-ʿAlaʾ al-Maʿarri’s The Epistle of Forgiveness is a long, mocking reply in Arabic prose and verse to a rambling letter from a minor grammarian named Ibn al-Qarih. Written in eleventh-century Syria by a blind poet and lexicographer famed for his learning and his bite, it turns the conventions of the formal epistle inside out: what begins as a testy correspondence swells into a visionary journey through Paradise and Hell, where the poets, grammarians, and singers of the Arabic tradition are met, quizzed, and argued with. The work survives in a single remarkable edition tradition and reaches English here in the first complete translation in any language.
From Aleppo to the Garden Gate
The Making of a Difficult Book
The volume presents al-Maʿarri’s Epistle of Forgiveness, or A Pardon to Enter the Garden, in a parallel-text edition by Geert Jan van Gelder and Gregor Schoeler, the first volume subtitled A Vision of Heaven and Hell and preceded by Ibn al-Qarih’s epistle. It belongs to the Library of Arabic Literature under Philip F. Kennedy, with James E. Montgomery as volume editor, a series backed by the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute and devoted to Arabic texts from the pre-Islamic era to the brink of modernity. The dedication asks the translators’ spouses, Sheila and Christa, to forgive the hours given to al-Maʿarri; the acknowledgments thank the series editors, Chip Rossetti, Stuart Brown, Carolyn Brunelle, and copy editor Kelly Zaug, and credit Montgomery with most of the improvements—the translators hope he will forgive the ideas they kept as their own, a fitting leitmotif for a work about pardon.
A Cantankerous Genius and His Reluctant Fame
The introduction calls the book a long, mocking reply by a quarrelsome maverick obsessed with lexicography and grammar to a rambling, groveling letter by an obscure and mediocre stylist—hardly a promising masterpiece. Ibn Khallikan ignores it; Yaqut merely lists it, though he has an entry on Ibn al-Qarih, “the one who wrote a well-known letter to Abu l-ʿAlaʾ.” Its fame came through Reynold A. Nicholson, who drew on manuscripts collected by his grandfather and published a partial edition with summary in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society between 1900 and 1902. It rose on the claim that it prefigured Dante’s Commedia, a thesis now abandoned.
The Blind Poet of Maʿarrat al-Nuʿman
Al-Thaʿalibi’s supplement to Yatimat al-dahr preserves the poet al-Dulafi al-Massisi’s account of a blind, witty poet in Maʿarrat al-Nuʿman who played chess and backgammon and moved easily between gravity and jest, saying he thanked God for blindness as others thank Him for sight, since it spared him boring and hateful people. “Abu l-ʿAlaʾ” is an honorific, not a teknonym—he never had children—and “al-Maʿarri” comes from his birthplace between Aleppo and Homs. Biographical dictionaries list him as Ahmad son of ʿAbd Allah son of Sulayman, traced through twenty or thirty generations to pre-Islamic Arab genealogy and belonging to the Tanukh confederation. Born toward sunset on Friday, 27 Rabiʿ Awwal 363 (26 December 973) into a respectable family of scholars and judges, he lost his sight to smallpox at four and compensated with a prodigious memory. He dictated his works; his pupil al-Tibrizi reported that at one stage four qualified secretaries and a servant girl wrote down his dictations. He studied in his hometown and Aleppo, loved poetry above all, and became an ardent admirer of al-Mutanabbi, on whose verse he wrote Muʿjiz Ahmad (Ahmad’s Miracle), playing on his shared given name with the poet and alluding to the Qurʾan, Muhammad’s miracle, Muhammad sometimes being called Ahmad.
Two Collections and a Reputation for Doubt
His poetic efforts date from age eleven or twelve, and most of his preserved verse sits in two distinct collections. The early Saqt al-zand (The Spark of the Fire Stick) shows al-Mutanabbi’s influence. The later collection holds nearly sixteen hundred mostly short pieces: sustained invective against mankind, a glorification of wisdom and reason, and a skepticism that made him suspect in pious circles. Dogmatically incoherent, doubts about the Resurrection, the afterlife, and the value of prophethood alternate with professions of orthodox belief. Its title, Luzum ma la yalzam (“the necessity of what is not necessary”), reflects a rich rhyme using two rhyme consonants and all the alphabet’s letters, along with sustained paronomasia and rare words. To refute allegations of unbelief he wrote Zajr al-nabih (Chiding Away the Barking Dog), parts of which survive.
Closing the Letter and the Turn to Aleppo
The letter winds down with a formal seal—praise to God, blessings on Muhammad and his family—before the writer confesses that melancholy overtook him almost as soon as he had drafted it. He begs pardon for any rambling or slip, on the principle that a man who errs and then apologizes, strives, and examines himself carefully deserves forgiveness; perfection, after all, belongs to no one. He borrows ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab’s words—”God have mercy on any man who points out my defects to me”—and asks the Sheikh to honor him with a reply, noting that the letter has been admired, dictated, and circulated in lectures under the Sheikh’s name. Al-Zahrajt’s letter, he adds, was the chief reason he came to Aleppo at all; once the answer arrives he will parade it through the city and beyond.
The Preamble: Snakes, Hearts, and Wordplay
A new movement opens with the basmala and a prayer for ease and help. The writer spins an elaborate conceit on the hamdtah tree—never the afdniyah—on which no stinging snake ever lived, bearing fruit out of love for the venerable Sheikh; a lofty tree laden with such fruit would bow its branches to the earth. He unpacks the lexicography: the tree is afaniyah when tender and hamdtah when dry, a familiar haunt of bold male snakes, and hamatah also names the heartburn—at the Preamble’s start, the core of the heart itself, pierced by a glance. Within his two ragged robes, he says, lives a “male snake” (hidb) charged with harming him, appearing in no season, harboring for the Sheikh a love no mother bears her son. This black thing, dearer to him than ‘Antarah to Zabibah or al-Sulayk to al-Sulakah, is the bottom of the heart, and it may be masculine or feminine. He piles up Aswads and Suwayds—al-Aswad ibn Zam’ah, the two Aswads of al-Yashkurt’s verse, Suwayd ibn Abi Kahil, Sawdah bint Zam’ah wed to the Prophet, Sawadah ibn ‘Adi entering the grave—until the “two black things” of water and dates, the “two white things” of swords, and the red things gratifying the eye’s pupil complete the chain.
Ibn al-Qarih’s Letter Described
Then comes al-Ma’arri’s description of Ibn al-Qarih’s letter: a sea of wisdom enjoining acceptance of God’s laws and condemning those who clutch branches instead of the trunk. He drowned in its billows, astonished by its jewels; its opening praise, from a master of eloquence, could turn each letter into a body of light begging forgiveness for its writer until Judgment Day, or into silver and golden ladders for its lines to ascend.
The Description of Paradise
The Paradise section begins: for such praise, trees will be planted for the Sheikh, each shading East to West—nothing like the “Tree of Suspending” revered in pre-Islamic times, which a poet refused when asked to match. Ever-living youths stand and sit in that shade, God’s gifts to His people.
Puns on “Umm” and the Honey of Paradise
A run of punning substitutions follows: “Of Umm Nakhl” becomes white bread with rakhl, a female lamb; “Umm Sirm” yields honey; “Umm Daww” a kid; “Umm Kurh” fat; “Umm Shary” honey again—a chapter, the author says, that could be stretched further, like an apparition visiting in a dream. Two pounds of Paradise honey mixed with every bitter thing God created—colocynth, aloes, wormwood, and the rest—would taste delicious; hateful colocynth would seem sugar pressed from cane, and coastal sugarcane owners would lose their livelihood.
Rivers, Fish, and the Drinking Companions
Whoever reaches these rivers lands sweet fish found on no dish; Ahmad ibn al-Husayn would have despised his gift of a fish playing in a pond of honey. The rivers of wine hold fishes of gold, silver, and jewels; a believer drinking from a fish’s mouth tastes a sweetness that would sweeten the salty sea. The Sheikh, raised high through true repentance, chooses carousers from the literate: the man of Thumalah, the man of Daws, Yunus ibn Habib, Ibn Mas’adah. Quranic brothers on couches, free of rancor; Ahmad ibn Yahya’s breast cleansed of hatred for Muhammad ibn Yazid; Sibawayh washed of grudge against al-Kisa’i; Abu ‘Ubaydah devoted to Ibn Qurayb.
Lexical Puzzles and the Priority of Nouns
The talk turns first to words. A dark, low-lying thing is a cooking pot; something made to resound, its peridot near at hand, is a lute, the “peridot” being its ornamented part. The mottled hues of a cloud are called zibrij, compared to peridot, and reading mujaljil rather than mujaljal points to a thundering cloud. The Sheikh marvels that Ibn Ahmar, an Arab of unquestioned authority, derives zabarjad from zibrij—backing the author of al-‘Ayn, who holds the d in salakhdam secondary, a view Basran grammarians dislike. Ibn Ahmar argues that zibrij may come from zabarjad as though a verb were formed from a noun, since verbs cannot carry five-consonant roots: one says yuzabriju, then builds the noun, just as the diminutive of farazdaq is furayzid. The Sheikh presses him toward the claim that verbs precede nouns; Ibn Ahmar refuses, making the noun the original stem from which branches grow, and the Sheikh finds him evasive and unable to answer further.
Tamim ibn Muqbil and the Terror of the Reckoning
Asked which of the company is Tamim, the poet names himself. Questioned about his verse on Salma’s abode and the meaning of al-Maranah—a woman, a camel, or “habit”—he confesses that since passing Paradise’s gate he cannot recall a single line, for he was harshly reckoned with: they charged him with fighting ‘Ali, al-Najashi spoke against him, and he escaped the flames only scorched. He marvels that the Sheikh’s memory survives, and describes the Herald crying “Where is So-and-so, son of So-and-so?”, potentates dragged to the Inferno, crowned women pulled by fiery tongues, princes whimpering in fiery fetters, and a voice from the Throne quoting «Beware of a day on which you will be returned to God.»
Ridwan, Zufar, and Hamzah
The Sheikh tells his own road: risen to the Plane of Resurrection, parched, his good deeds few as drought-stricken tussocks but his final repentance shining like a lamp. After months fearing to drown in sweat he composed poems for Ridwan, the Porter Angel, in every meter, and was ignored; when he shouted, Ridwan said he had not known his own name was meant, and refused entry without the Lord’s permission. Zufar likewise ignored his verses, calling poetry the Devil’s Qur’an taught by jinn, and disclaimed intercession. Despairing, the Sheikh saw Hamzah among the martyrs of Uhud and composed lines on Ka‘b ibn Malik’s elegy; Hamzah rebuked him with «Every man of them that day will have enough to preoccupy him,» yet promised to send word to his nephew ‘Ali.
The Grammarian’s Trial and the Witnesses
‘Ali asks for the document of good deeds. At the assembly the Sheikh finds Abu ‘Ali al-Farisi, his old grammar teacher, accused by three men over the cases of “water,” mugtawi versus magtawi, ta‘bayah versus ta‘bayh, and a pronoun’s reference. The Sheikh defends him with his book The Proof, noting he shed no blood nor stole money, and the accusers disperse. The Commander calls for witnesses to the repentance: the qadi of Aleppo, ‘Abd al-Mun‘im ibn ‘Abd al-Karim. A crier calls three times; only at the third does a witness answer, attesting the repentance “in the nick of time,” notaries present. The Commander then says he wants something impossible.
A Banquet in Paradise
The Sheikh resolves on a feast for every poet in Paradise—pre-Islamic believers, Islamic poets, scholars, and good company—reasoning the Creator can supply all without effort. Mills rise at the Kawthar, grinding heavenly wheat finer than the Hudhayl poet’s crusts; black-eyed girls turn hand mills of pearl and gold, and the Sheikh calls “sideways and contrary,” right and left. Beasts then drive the stones—camels, she-camels, mules, cattle, wild asses. Flour is milled, immortal youths bring kids and fat birds, cows and sheep are slaughtered painlessly, “in earnest but like play.” Cooks who worked in Aleppo through the ages are summoned; servant boys like well-kept pearls gather every guest; golden tables and silver trays are set, bowls lasting as long as the “vultures” Kuwayy and Surayy, cupbearers and singing girls attending.
Abu Kabir al-Hudhali and the Limits of a Talent
The tour of the Fire continues with the damned poets. The Sheikh comes upon an unidentified man who names himself Abu Kabir al-Hudhali, “Amir ibn al-Hulays,” a leading poet of the tribe of Hudhayl. The Sheikh recognizes him at once but scolds him for a habit of opening poems on the same motif—gray hair that will not be kept away—and recites three variants of the opening plus a reported fourth, calling the repetition a limit on his gift. He grants the man his better verses: the well, the wolves, the viper, the duckweed. Abu Kabir answers that he cannot gnaw through heaps of burning coal to reach sweet water; the inhabitants of Hell speak only Woe and Wail. He tells the Sheikh to go his way and not be distracted from his horse. The Sheikh rejoices, taking this as a guarantee of eternal mercy.
Sakhr al-Ghayy and al-Akhtal of Taghlib
He asks after Sakhr al-Ghayy and is told to look. He taunts him that his beloved Dahma’ is now on no shared earth or sky, quoting Sakhr’s own verse about his frights over her, and asks what became of his son Talid—damnation distracted him from the boy, as a wild animal is heedless of a bleeding heel tendon.
Then he finds a man writhing in pain, al-Akhtal of Taghlib, and accuses him of describing wine and being doomed to hot embers, reciting a long wine poem of his: kneeling camels, skins like breechless blacks, the morning drink, wine like a consuming ember, Baysant wine, cups passed with “Cheers!”, interruptions by song and roast meat, inebriation creeping like ants on sand, the vintner, “Kill her by mixing her!” Al-Akhtal answers that he trailed many a wineskin and met many a mail-armored man, avoided great sin, and hoped his God-serving soul would be called in, but the divine decrees decided otherwise. The Sheikh says he erred twice: not embracing Islam when it came, and intimacy with Mu’awiyah’s son Yazid while obeying his misleading soul, preferring the perishable to the eternal. Al-Akhtal sighs and recalls his days with Yazid—ambergris, endless mint, jesting tolerated, brocade robes, singing girls singing Yazid’s verses, and a drunken joke rewarded with a gift swift as a sword’s quiver. The Sheikh asks whether Yazid was monotheist or apostate; al-Akhtal says Yazid liked verses on Khalidah, on Abi Sufyan at Uhud leaving wailing women, on ‘Ali seeking power but failing while fortune favored Mu’awiyah, on wine pressed by a Christian from a Syrian vine, and on Muhammad laid in a grave in Medina. The Sheikh curses him: the poets of Heaven and Hell forgot their panegyrics and love lyrics, but he was not distracted from unbelief and misdeeds.
Satan’s Rebuke
Satan tells his angels, addressed as “brothers of Malik,” that he has never seen creatures more impotent. Called “Father Bitterness,” he complains that the Sheikh distracts them from their work and that a gutsy one would seize and drag him to the Fire. They answer, “Father Whirlwind,” that they have no power over those in Paradise. The Sheikh scolds and gloats; Satan says gloating was forbidden to the children of Adam, who always do what is forbidden; the Sheikh retorts that Satan first gloated at Adam’s misery, and the starter is more unjust. He asks al-Akhtal about verses refusing obedient Ramadan fasting and sacrificial meat, not crying “Come to salvation!” but drinking chilled wine and prostrating at dawn. Al-Akhtal confirms them, saying he is sorry and full of worry, but asks whether repentance availed “the man of the tribe of Kusa’.”
Muhalhil and the Grammar of Hell
Bored, the Sheikh heads for his castle, then realizes he forgot Muhalhil al-Taghlibi, the two Muraqqishes, al-Shanfara, and Ta’abbata Sharra, and returns. He calls for “‘Adi ibn Rabi’ah,” quoting verses used as grammatical evidence; the Guards of Hell say they know nothing of “grammarians” or “linguistic evidence” and ask him to speak clearly. He specifies Muhalhil al-Taghlibi, brother of Kulayb of Wail, and grieves that ‘Adi entered this place, citing his ode “O, night of ours in Dhi Husam, be bright!” He asks why he was called Muhalhil—said to be because he first “finely wove” poetry.
Textual and Qur’anic Glosses
The notes open with a point of grammar: the form ‘Amru lladhi ought properly to read ‘Amrun-i lladhi. This ‘Amr is better known as Hashim, “the bread crumbler,” the Prophet’s great-grandfather, and the epithet has been claimed through the centuries by those asserting descent from him; most sources assign the verse in question to Ibn al-Zib‘ara. Two Qur’anic comparisons follow—the challenge of Q 39:32 to whoever lies against God and denies the truth when it reaches him, and Q 71:17–18 on God growing mankind from the earth and returning him to it. A pre-Islamic tale is then unpacked: the snake called “She of the Rock,” who killed a man and afterward struck a bargain with his brother, paying him a dinar every other day as blood money. Al-Nabighah al-Dhubyani alludes to this in the poem al-Ma‘arri paraphrases, and a note argues this must be the sense, since the ordinary meanings of man kafara and mu’min—unbeliever and believer—probably also play their part. Brief glosses identify “the brother’s grave,” take al-barr as God (or alternatively read “for a righteous person there is a watchful eye”), and cite Q 6:96 and Q 3:41.
Variant Readings and Prosody
A note explains how variant readings entered the text through early oral and consonantal transmission—script originally lacking diacritical dots and vowel signs, supplied only later—and how, to halt the proliferation, a limited number of versions, seven or ten, were recognized as canonical, their differences mostly insignificant. Unlike al-Hasan’s, Abu ‘Amr’s version belongs among the canonical seven. “Evangel” arrives through Ethiopian from Greek evangelion and occurs twelve times in the Qur’an; Q 4:1, Q 14:22, and Q 35:43 are cited. A line of Imru’ al-Qays is noted: having avenged his father’s murder, he is no longer bound by his oath of abstention. Prosodic notes follow—pronouncing ashrab with a furtive vowel so it counts as two long syllables, verses attributed to Abu Nukhaylah found in Sibawayh’s grammar, the shortening sahi against sahib, meters that do not require balance, al-Mutanakhkhil, and the fuller form SLSS against SLL. The opening verse’s ‘alamdatin and ka-tahbiri are both SLLL rather than SLSSL, and “she” may be allowed as subject of talin instead of the wine.
Obscure Words and the Poet’s Tale
Further notes identify a verse from Imru’ al-Qays’ Mu‘allaqah; verses ascribed by Bint al-Shati’ to Majnun Layla but absent from his collected verse, the third line found instead in the Diwan of Ibn Muqbil; two lines left unidentified; and the rare word ‘uthman, alluding to the killing of the third caliph ‘Uthman in 35/656, at the root of serious rifts in early Islam. The story behind one poem is given: the poet sees girls, among them his beloved ‘Unayzah, bathing, takes their clothes, and returns them only after admiring their charms, then slaughters his camel and regales them. In the Mu‘allaqah the girls throw chunks of raw meat, and the rare word tharmad may have been chosen because tharmada means “to undercook meat.” The rajaz poets belong to the first and second centuries; a short lacuna requires supplied words in square brackets; a saying of the Prophet is found in the Hadith; the “leader” could be al-Khalil or Sibawayh. The Sheikh employs rhymed prose and obscure words that are not imitated, and he apparently condemns the lowly meter for eulogy and the qasidah form. Q 52:23, Q 56:18–19, 56:23, and Q 10:10 are cited; Ibn al-Qarih’s letter is meant, the reply following in Volume Two.
The Glossary of Names and Terms
The volume closes with reference materials: a glossary of proper names and terms, a bibliography, further readings, and institutional notices. Entries run alphabetically, giving dates, professions, tribal affiliations, and identifying details for caliphs, poets, grammarians, singers, places, and tribes. Rabi‘ah is named one of the two most important confederations within the “North Arabian”
A Letter That Refuses to Be a Letter
The book’s strangest quality is that it will not sit still in any genre. It is called a risalah, a letter addressed to one man, yet it is not an ordinary letter; it contains a narrative with long flashbacks, yet it is not a story, a qissah or a khabar; it folds in philological dictations and, as one medieval biographer put it, “much adab”—erudition, quotations, moral edification, anecdotes. Anyone hunting for organic unity has an arduous task, and the translators suggest the work’s originality may lie precisely in its resistance to pigeonholing. Al-Maʿarri was not foremost a storyteller but a satirist, moralist, and philologist living, as the introduction puts it, in the “prison” of the Arabic language. The ornate epistolary prose of his time ran on metaphor, recondite vocabulary, and sajʿ, the paired rhymed prose that al-Hamadhani had pioneered in narrative; al-Maʿarri deploys it at chosen points in the first part and so densely in the second that imitation in English becomes impossible. The translation keeps his “forced metaphors and tyrannous rhymes,” his rich rhyme and obscure words, choosing fidelity over readability and matching his rarities with unusual English ones.
The Sheikh, the Grammarian, and the Company of the Damned
Two figures carry the whole book. Ibn al-Qarih, the correspondent, is a self-righteous and groveling stylist whose letter—reproduced at the start—winds through flattery, complaint, and petty scholarly gossip. The Sheikh, al-Maʿarri’s own mask, answers with a parody of the same courtesies before the vision proper begins: risen from his grave, he negotiates with the porter angel Ridwan, with the intercessor Zufar, and finally with Hamzah and ʿAli, reciting poems in every meter that incorporate the name of whoever he is trying to persuade. The comedy is exact—Ridwan has never heard the word “poems”—and the theology is precise: entry comes by God’s permission and a repentance witnessed “in the nick of time,” not by verse. Once inside, the Sheikh convenes a banquet for every poet who died a Muslim, and the guest list becomes the book’s real subject. Al-Aʿsha and al-Nabighah trade insults and a thrown golden beaker; Hassan ibn Thabit defends his wine verses; Imru’ al-Qays is cross-examined about metrical faults and spurious attributions; a jinnee named Abu Hadrash boasts that the jinn command thousands of meters humans never heard of. Hell supplies its own roll call of the damned, and the arguments there are as pedantic as anywhere else.
What the Joke Is For
Under the mockery runs a serious rationalist current. Al-Maʿarri’s earlier poetry had already made him suspect in pious circles—doubts about the Resurrection and the value of prophethood alternating with professions of orthodoxy—and the Epistle’s satire of religious imposture belongs to that same skeptical temper. The opening of the vision proper dwells on heretics and false messiahs: the one-eyed fuller of Transoxania addressed as “Lord Almighty,” al-Sanadiqi in Yemen with his “House of Abundance,” al-Walid ibn Yazid shooting arrows at a copy of the Qur’an. The point is not unbelief but the exposure of human credulity and human pretension, clerics and caliphs alike. The book’s later fame came from a different direction: it was read as prefiguring Dante’s Commedia, a thesis now abandoned, and it was taken up by modern Arab writers—Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi, whose 1931 verse epic Revolution in Hell sends the maladjusted storming Heaven, and Muhammad al-Muwaylihi, whose Hadith ʿIsa ibn Hisham shares the resurrected protagonist and the satirical journey. The Epistle’s afterlife, in other words, has been as argumentative as its text.
