The Epistle of Forgiveness. Abu l-'Ala al-Ma'arri

God, despite the need to come closer, the distance, and the remoteness, to let the Sheikh enjoy the excellence that has risen high upon his shoulders and which has conquered East and West. For if one traverses his raging sea of knowledge and considers the brilliance of his radiant full moon, one’s pen is apt to falter in one’s fingers and one’s natural talent will fail to impress itself5 on one’s epistles, unless one hands to him the keys or asks him to bestow one of the keys of his knowledge, so that one could be affiliated to him, in his debt, as someone who has come down to his mountain path, one of his associates and his party; a spark of his fire, a sliver of his gold dinar, a drop of his ocean, a puddle of his flood—Alas, how remote!

      A span is too short for a journey;6

      Applying kohl to the eyes is not like having coal-black eyes;7

      They were created generous, not feigning to be generous:

      the generous is he who does not feign generosity;8

      —especially since the characteristics of the soul cleave to it like colors to bodies: white cannot turn black, nor black white. Nor can a brave man be cowardly, or a coward brave. Abū Bakr al-ʿArzamī says:

      The coward among men flees, abandoning his nearest and dearest,9

      while the brave among men will defend those unrelated to him.

      A munificent man’s favor will be granted to his enemy,

      while the favor of a miser will be denied to his relatives.

      He who does not refrain from brutishness to those who love him

      will refrain from brutishness toward those who assail him.

      2.3

      ومن أين للضَّباب صوْبُ السحاب، وللغُراب هُوِىُّ العُقاب! وكيف وقد أصبح ذِكرُه في مواسِمِ الذكر أذاناً، وعلى مَعالم الشكر لسانًا! فمَن دافع العِيان، وكابَرَ الإنْس والجان، واستَبدَّ بالإفْكِ والبُهتان، كان كمن صالَبَ بوَقاحتِه الحجر، وحاسن بقَباحتِه القمر، وهذَى وهذَر، وتعاطى فعقَر، وكان كمحموم بُلسِم فعفر، ونادى على نفسه بالنقص في البدو والحضر، وكان كما قال من يعنيه ولا يشكّ فيه :

كناطحٍ صخْرةً يومًا لِيَفلقَها

فلم يَضِرْها وأَوْهَى قَرنَه الوعِلُ

      ورُوي أنّ رسول الله – صلّى الله عليه وسلّم، وزاده شرفاً لديه – قال: لعن الله ذا اللسانين، لعن الله كلّ شقَّارٍ، لعن الله كلّ قَتَّات.

      How could a fog compare with a downpour from the clouds? How could the crow swoop like the eagle? How to compare oneself to the Sheikh, whose name, when mentioned in the sessions of recollection, has become a call to prayer, a tongue to express the landmarks of gratitude?10 He who rejects the evidence of the eyes, who treats both mankind and jinn haughtily, and who clings to calumny and falsehood obstinately is like someone who in his insolence vies with the hardness of the stone in his obdurateness, who seeks to rival the beauty of the moon with his ugliness, who raves and babbles, who «takes in hand and hamstrings it».11 He is like someone afflicted with fever who is delirious and who looks jaundiced,12 like someone who proclaims his own shortcomings among the dwellers of the desert and the towns. He is—and this is unquestionable—like the person the poet meant:13

      Like one that butts a rock, one day, hoping to cleave it,

      but does not harm it, and the ibex only hurts his horns.

      It is transmitted that the messenger of God—God bless and preserve him and increase him in honor with Him—said, “God curse him who speaks with two tongues, God curse every liar, God curse every slanderer!”

      2.4

      وردتُ حلب ظاهِرَها – حماها الله وحرسها – بعد أن مُنيتُ بِرَبضِها بالدُرَخْمين وأُمّ حَبَوْكَرَى والفُتَكْرين، بل رُمِيتُ بآبِدة الآباد والداهيةِ النآد، فلما دخَلتُها – وبعدُ لم تستقرّ بي الدار، وقد نكرتُها لفقدان معرفةٍ وجار – أنشدتُها باكياً:

إذا زُرْتُ أرضًا بعد طولِ اجتنابها

فقَدتُ حبيبًا والبلادُ كما هيا

      كان أبو القَطِران، المرّارُ بنُ سعيد الفَقْعسيّ، يهوَى ابنةَ عمه بنجدٍ، واسمُها وحشيّةُ فاهتداها رجلٌ شاميٌّ إلى بلده. فغمَّه بُعدُها، وساءَه فِراقُها، فقال من قصيدة:

إذا تركتْ وحْشيّةُ النجْدَ لم يكنْ	لعينيْك مما تبكيان طبيبُ
رأى نظرةً منها فلم يَملِك البُكا	مَعاوِزُ يَربو تحتهن كثيبُ
وكانت رياحُ الشام تُكْرَه مرّة	فقد جَعلتْ تلك الرياحُ تطيبُ

      فحصلتُ من الرباح على الرياح، كما حصل لأبي القطران من وحشيّةَ.

      ثم. . . وثم. . . وثم. . .^١

      ١ كذا في النسخ.

      I reached the periphery of Aleppo—may God protect and guard it—after having been smitten in its outskirts with catastrophe, calamity, and casualty; nay, I was stricken with the rarest misfortunes and a crushing disaster. When I entered the town, not yet having a fixed abode, I did not recognize it, for I could not find any acquaintance or neighbor; then I recited to it, weeping:

      When, after long avoidance, I pay a visit to a land,

      I miss a loved one, though the place is still the same.

      Abū l-Qaṭirān al-Marrār ibn Saʿīd al-Faqʿasī was in love with his cousin in Najd who was called Waḥshiyyah. A man from Syria took her as his wife to his country. He was grieved and afflicted by her being far away and by being separated from her. In a poem he said:

      Since Waḥshiyyah has left Najd, no doctor

      can cure your eyes of what they weep for.

      He saw a glance from her and he could not hold back his tears:

      her clothes, with underneath a rising sand dune!14

      The winds that blow from Syria were once15 disliked,

      but