Damascus, Once the World Leading Centre of Astronomy
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July 3, 2024
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The Syrian Poet Abu Al Alaa Al MaʼarriThe Syrian Poet Abu Al Alaa Al Maʼarria Non-Conformist in Early Islamic Syria
Al Ma’arri was a genius ahead of his time who deserves immeasurable respect, and regardless of what is thought of him, we should be proud of a fellow Syrian that expressed the importance of challenging the status quo and the freedom of expression.
Nowadays, in our society, we ideally want to be a community that accepts different beliefs and different people. However, in doing so, are we ready to stop being excessively offended by a person’s criticism of our own beliefs? We would like to believe that, as a people, we have become more accepting of others as well. Is this true? Have we become more accepting, or are we not very different from those who lived hundreds of years before us? The man we are about to present to you was a prolific, historical, blind Syrian poet by the name of Abu Al-Alaa Al-Ma’arri.
He was born on the 23rd of December, 973 and died in May of 1057 in Ma’arat Al Numan, a town located between the cities of Idlib and Hama, 77 km southwest of Aleppo in North-western Syria. He was a believer of God. However, he was a critic of religions and found them to be the “product of man’s superstitions”, and was firmly against religious leaders manipulating ignorant followers for personal gain.
Al Ma’arri is known for many works and was a critic of many Islamic beliefs from the time. He is mostly known for his work called Resalat Al Ghufran or ‘The Epistle of Forgiveness’. In this work, he mocks common beliefs, visits Heaven and Hell, and converses with the Devil and ‘heretics’ (Project Muse). This work has been theorized to be one that has inspired Dante’s Divine Comedy, which was written almost 300 years later and has inspired movies such as Tom Hanks’ Inferno.
Due to these combined characteristics of Al Ma’arri, he was considered a heretic and an apostate by many Muslim scholars. Moreover, he is disliked by many traditionalists and in 2007, Resalat Al Ghufran was banned from the International Book Fair in Algiers, Algeria. This hatred was evident during the war in Syria, when his statue was a target for extremists, who beheaded it back in 2013 (The Observers – France24). This poet was a genius ahead of his time that deserves immeasurable respect, and regardless of what is thought of him, we should be proud of a fellow Syrian that expressed the importance of challenging the status quo and the freedom of expression.
