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

ب بنت الشاطئ ط. ٩ (١٩٩٣)‏ ٤ بنت الشاطئ ط. ٤ (دون تاريخ)‏ د Michel Dechico (1980) ك كامل كيلاني (١٩٤٣)‏ كع محمد كرد علي (١٩٥٤)‏ ن R. A. Nicholson (1900–2) ق مفيد قميحة (١٩٨٦)‏ ي إبراهيم اليازجي (١٩٠٣)‏

Notes to the Introduction

1	Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, i, 113–16; the same in al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī, iv, 94–111.
2	Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, iii, 107–217; see p. 161.
3	Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, xv, 83.
4	Nicholson, “Persian Manuscripts.”
5	Nicholson, “The Risālatu ’l-Ghufrān by Abū ’l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1900): 637–720; (1902): 75–101, 337–62, 813–47.
6	Al-Thaʿālibī, Tatimmat al-Yatīmah, p. 16; also in Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, iii, 129–30; Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Bughyat al-ṭalab, p. 897; al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī bi-l-Wafayāt, vii, 96. Ibn al-ʿAdīm, always keen to defend al-Maʿarrī, doubts that he ever played games or even jested. Al-Maʿarrī’s jesting cannot be denied but it is admittedly always of a serious kind.
7	Following Arabic usage, in this introduction he will be called either al-Maʿarrī or Abū l-ʿAlāʾ, for the sake of variety.
8	The Arabic term is kunyah (incorrectly translated as “patronymic” in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, New [= Second] Edition, v, 395).
9	Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Bughyat al-ṭalab, pp. 896–97.
10	An allusion to making fire by means of the friction between two pieces of wood, one hard and one soft.
11	The collection is often called al-Luzūmiyyāt.
12	For a good selection, with English translations, see Nicholson, “The Meditations of Maʿarrī.”
13	Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī, Zajr al-nābiḥ: Muqtaṭafāt.
14	Al-Maʿarrī, Luzūm mā lā yalzam, i, 188 (rhyme -īthī): “I see myself in my three prisons | (so do not ask me about my secret story) || Because of my loss of sight, being homebound | and my soul’s residing in an evil body.”
15	See, e.g., Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, i, 115.
16	Al-Qifṭī, Inbāh al-ruwah, i, 85.
17	Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, iii, 176–213; see Margoliouth, “Abū ’l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī’s Correspondence on Vegetarianism.”
18	e.g., Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, iii, 125.
19	Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, iii, 126; Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Bughyat al-ṭalab, p. 910 mentions “seventy poets from al-Maʿarrah.”
20	On speaking animals, see Wagner, “Sprechende Tiere in der arabischen Prosa.”
21	There are several versions of this anecdote, see, e.g., Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Bughyat al-ṭalab, pp. 879–80.
22	Gibb, Arabic Literature: An Introduction, whose “Silver Age” begins two years before al-Maʿarrī’s death, with the Seljuqs entering Baghdad.
23	Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, iii, 142; cf. e.g. Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Bughyat al-ṭalab, p. 865.
24	Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Bughyat al-ṭalab, p. 909, al-ʿAbbāsī, Maʿāhid al-tanṣīṣ, i, 52. The two snakes growing on the shoulders are reminiscent of al-Ḍaḥḥāk/Zahhāk/Zuhāk, the evil Arabian king of Iranian lore; see, e.g., E. Yarshater, “Zuhāk.” Ibn al-ʿAdīm gives the dream an interpretation that is favorable to al-Maʿarrī: the snakes are the false accusations of heresy and unbelief; the dream describes the sheikh’s life, not his afterlife.
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