Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī

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Historical account of al-Maʿarrī

Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī ( Arabic أبو العلاء المعري, DMG Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī , Latin also Abulola (Moarrensis) , * 973 in Maʿarra ; † 1057 in Maʿarra) was an Arab philosopher and poet. Despite his unorthodox views, he is considered one of the greatest classical Arab poets. He was born in the northern Syrian city ​​of Maʿarra, went blind as a child, studied in Aleppo , Tripoli and Antioch , became a well-known poet in Baghdad and returned to his native city in 1010, where he died unmarried at the age of 83.

Al-Maʿarrī was a free thinker, skeptic and rationalist and oriented himself to reason as the sole source of wisdom. He leaned religious dogmas vehemently and practiced sharp criticism of Islam , Judaism , Christianity and Zoroastrianism . He himself lived an ascetic , secluded lifestyle and was a strict vegan . As an antinatalist , he was of the opinion that children should not be born in order to spare them from life's agonies. Al-Maʿarrī's best-known works are “The Tinder Spark”, “The Prescription That Is Not Required” and the “Epistle on Forgiveness”, which is often compared to Dante's Divine Comedy . For this reason it is controversial in Muslim conservative circles.

Life

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Al-Maʿarrī was born in December 973 in the northern Syrian city ​​of Maʿarra near Aleppo , today's Maʿarrat an-Nuʿmān . The city belonged to the Abbasid Caliphate , the third Islamic caliphate . He belonged to the respected Banu Sulayman family, which was part of the Tanukh tribe. One of his ancestors was the first Qādī of Maʿarra. The Tanukh tribe formed the Syrian aristocracy for centuries, and several family members were known as poets. His father, Abdallah ibn Sulaiman, was also known as a philologist and poet. At the age of four, Al-Maʿarrī lost his eyesight due to smallpox . His later pessimism can partly be explained by his blindness , describing himself as a “double prisoner” of blindness and isolation. He made up for his handicap with his excellent memory.

He made his first attempts at poetry at the early age of eleven or twelve. In his hometown and in Aleppo , and later in other Syrian cities and in Antioch , al-Maʿarrī studied Islam and the Arabic language and literature . Among his teachers in Aleppo were companions of Ibn Hālawaih . This grammarian and scholar died in 980 when al-Maʿarrī was still a child. Nonetheless, in his poem Risālat al-Ghufrān, he mourned his death. According to a report by Ibn al-Qiftīs , al-Maʿarrī was on his way to Tripoli when he overheard a debate in a Christian monastery near Latakia about the Hellenistic philosophy that influenced his later skepticism and irreligiousness .

1004/1005 al-Maʿarrī learned of the death of his father, to whom he dedicated an elegy. He later moved to Baghdad . There he made the acquaintance of numerous scholars and, although it was controversial, was a welcome guest in the scholarly salons of the city. During this time there was also a dispute with the writer al-Murtadā . After a heated dispute about the rank of poetry al-Mutanabbis had al-Maʿarrī dragged by the feet from his literary salon.

After a year and a half in Baghdad, al-Maʿarrī returned to his hometown in 1010 for reasons unknown. Possibly he returned because his mother was ill, perhaps also for financial reasons, as he refused to sell his works in Baghdad. His mother had died when he arrived. He spent the rest of his life in Maʿarra, where he chose an ascetic life in seclusion. He only had to leave his home once, when violence hit the city. Although his life was so limited, he continued his poetic work and collaborated with others. He enjoyed the utmost respect and attracted numerous students. He became wealthy despite refusing to sell his works. He maintained a lively correspondence with the leading scholars of his time. Al-Maʿarrī died unmarried in May 1057 in his hometown.

philosophy

Irreligion

Al-Maʿarrī was a skeptic and denounced superstition and religious dogmatism. Because of his negative worldview, he was called a pessimistic free thinker . A recurring theme in his works is the right of reason against traditions, customs and authority. Al-Maʿarrī taught that religion was "a fable devised by the forefathers" with no value except for the exploiters of the gullible masses. During al-Maʿarrī's lifetime, several caliphates arose in Egypt, Baghdad and Aleppo , all of which used religion to support their power. He rejected the truth claims of Islam as well as other religions:

The claims of the prophets should not be taken to be true; they are all inventions. People were fine until they came and botched life. The holy books are just collections of useless stories as they could and have produced all times.

Al-Maʿarrī criticized many dogmas of Islam, such as B. the Hajj , which he called a "pagan procession". He rejected any divine revelation . His convictions were those of a philosopher and ascetic for whom reason provides a moral guide and virtue is a reward enough for itself. Al-Ma'arri's religious skepticism affected not only Islam, but also the other well-known religions of his time:

Muslims like Nazarenes declaim their illusion.
The simplicity of the Jews as with the Zoroaster Legion.
There are only two kinds of people in the world: they are happy with reason,
but without religion, and other religious, then removed from the understanding.

Al-Maʿarrī wrote that monks in their monasteries or believers in mosques would blindly follow the beliefs of the place - had they been born among magicians or Sabians , they would have become magicians or Sabians. In another poem, as a blind man, he describes the world as blind:

I am amazed at Cosroes and his followers when I see that they wash their faces with the urine of a cow; about Christians, that they claim that God has endured shame and injustice without defending himself or taking revenge; of the Jews, that they believe that God takes pleasure in hearing the noise made by the running blood which flows from the opened veins of a dying animal; and so also of a nation that comes from one end of the earth to throw pebbles and kiss a stone. Incomprehensible opinions! Is the whole world then blind that no one can see the truth?

Asceticism

Al-Maʿarrī was an ascetic who renounced worldly pleasures and rejected violence. In Baghdad, where he was a popular guest at the salons, he decided not to sell his works. He later became a strict vegan and did not eat meat or animal products. He wrote:

Do not covet the meat of slaughtered animals,
Or the white milk of the mothers who want to give the drink to their young, not noble daughters. [...]
I washed my hands off it; And wish I knew
my way before I got old

Antinatalism

Al-Maʿarrī's pessimism is evident in his anti-natalist recommendation not to father children in order to save them from the torment of life. In an elegy that he wrote on the occasion of the death of a relative, he combined his grief with thoughts about the short-lived nature of life. He describes the surface of the earth as a mere collection of corpses and advises the reader to move slowly in the open air so as not to trample on the remains of God's servants. Even on his epitaph , he wished, as an inscription, that his life was an iniquity committed by his father, not himself.

Works

Edition of al-Maʿarrīs al-Luzumiyyat

Al-Maʿarrī wrote both poetry and prose . The Siqt az-zand ("tinder spark"), a collection of more conventional poems, including mourning over the death of his parents and poems in praise of the people of Aleppo and the Hamdanid king Sa'd al-Dawla , falls in his youth and Baghdad period . With this very popular collection of poems he was able to establish himself as a poet. The poems written after the stay in Baghdad, collected in the Luzum ma la yalzam ( The rule that is not prescribed لزوم ما لا يلزم أو اللزوميات), on the other hand, deal with philosophical topics in a complicated rhyme technique.

His most extensive prose writing is a reply to a letter from a certain Ibn al-Qarih that has also been preserved . This, a rather unsuccessful poet, turned to al-Ma'arri with a request for financial support. Ibn al-Qarih had quite shabbily abandoned his former patron al-Maghribi, a Fatimid state secretary, when his family fell out of favor with the caliph . In his letter to al-Ma'arri, Ibn al-Qarih tries to wash himself off from this behavior.

Al-Ma'arri's answer, the risalat al-ghufran (" Epistle on Forgiveness"), has often been compared to Dante's Divine Comedy . In his imagination, the poet sends the still living Ibn al-Qarih on a journey through hell and paradise, in which he meets the Arab poets of the pre-Islamic period , which completely contradicts the Islamic doctrine that only those who believe in God can achieve salvation. The work has often been compared with the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, written 100 years later, and with Ibn Shuhayd's Risala al-tawabi 'wa al-zawabi , although there is no evidence that Dante was from Al-Ma'arri or Al-Ma 'arri could have been inspired by Ibn Shuyhad.

al-Fusul wal-ghayat ("Sections and Ends"), a collection of homilies in rhyming prose , has been described as a parody of the Koran .

reception

Al-Ma'arri is considered one of the greatest Arab poets. Even so, 1000 years after his death, it is still controversial: In 2007, Algeria banned the “Epistle on Forgiveness” from the International Book Fair in Algiers . In 2013 a statue in his honor was beheaded by jihadists from the Al-Nusra Front in Syria.

expenditure

A complete edition of his works is so far neither in German nor in English. So far:

  • Paradise and hell. The journey to the hereafter from the “Epistle on Forgiveness”. Translated by Gregor Schoeler. Munich 2002.
  • Risalat ul Ghufran, a Divine Comedy. Translated into English by G. Brackenbury, 1943.
  • The Epistle of Forgiveness: Volume One: A Vision of Heaven and Hell. Translated into English by Geert Jan Van Gelder and Gregor Schoeler. Library of Arabic Literature, New York University Press 2013.
  • The Epistle of Forgiveness: Volume Two: Hypocrites, Heretics, and Other Sinners. Translated into English by Geert Jan Van Gelder and Gregor Schoeler. Library of Arabic Literature, New York University Press 2014.

literature

Web links

Commons : al-Maʿarri  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Museum of Lost Objects: The unacceptable poet - BBC News ( en-GB ). Retrieved March 9, 2016.
  2. ↑ Philip Khuri Hitti: Islam, a way of life , p. 147
  3. ↑ humanistictexts.org ( Memento from November 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ A b Reynold Alleyne Nicholson: A Literary History of the Arabs . Routledge, 1962, p. 318
  5. ↑ Lamia Ben Youssef Zayzafoon: The Production of the Muslim Woman . Lexington Books, p. 141
  6. ↑ James Hastings: Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Part 3 . Kessinger Publishing, p. 190
  7. ^ Reynold Alleyne Nicholson: A Literary History of the Arabs . Routledge, 1962, p. 319
  8. ^ Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, 1962, A Literary History of the Arabs , Routledge, p. 317.
  9. ^ Reynold Alleyne Nicholson: A Literary History of the Arabs . Routledge, 1962, p. 323
  10. ↑ original text [1] :
    هفت الحنيفة والنصارى ما اهتدت
    ويهود حارت والمجوس مضلله
    اثنان أهل الأرض ذو عقل بلا
    دين وآخر دين لا عقل له
  11. ↑ In the German translation of the Oriental Library by Barthélemy d'Herbelot (Halle, 1785) translated as follows ( text from Google Books ):
    The Christians wander back and forth on their way, and the Mohammedans are completely astray.
    The Jews are nothing more than mummies, and the skinny Persian are dreamers.
    The division of the world is thus made into two peoples, one of which has understanding but no religion.
    The other has religion but little understanding.
  12. ↑ Quoted in English in Cyril Glassé: The New Encyclopedia of Islam . Rowman & Littlefield, Washington DC 2001, ISBN 0-7591-0189-2 , TB ISBN 0-7591-0190-6 , p. 278; 4th rev. ed. 2014, ISBN 978-1-4422-2348-6 pp.?
  13. ^ Reynold A. Nicholson Adapted from Studies in Islamic Poetry Cambridge University Press, 1921, Cambridge, England. p.1-32
  14. ↑ Translated by D'Herbelot, Bartholom., Orientalische Bibliothek ., 1st vol., Halle 1785, p. 62.
  15. ^ DS Margoliouth : Abu 'l-ʿAla al-Maʿarri's correspondence on vegetarianism . In: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , 1902, p. 289, Textarchiv - Internet Archive .
  16. ↑ Syrian rebels have taken iconoclasm to new depths, with shrines, statues and even a tree destroyed - but to what end? . Retrieved July 13, 2015.
  17. ↑ Oliver Leaman: The Biographical Encyclopedia of Islamic Philosophy . Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015, ISBN 978-1-4725-6946-2 .
  18. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica
  19. ↑ bbc.co.uk
  20. ↑ observers.france24.com
  21. ↑ independent.co.uk
personal data
SURNAME Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Abu l-'Ala al-Ma'arri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Arab poet
DATE OF BIRTH 973
PLACE OF BIRTH Ma'arra
DATE OF DEATH 1057
Place of death Ma'arra