Jss fgs006

Journal of Semitic Studies LVII/2 Autumn 2012 doi: 10.
1093/jss/fgs006
© The author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the University of Manchester.
All rights reserved.
ASTROLOGY BETWEEN POETICS AND POLITICS

IN THE ABBASID PERIOD:
ABU AL-‘ALA’ AL-MA‘ARRI AS CASE STUDY
Zahia Smail Salhi and Abeer Abbasi

UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
Abstract
It is the aim of this study to examine the astrological references in the

work of Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri, an outstanding reclusive misanthropic
poet who occupies a lonely eminence among the poets of the mid-
Abbasid period. He addressed the ordinary thoughtful citizen and
never put his talent at the service of politicians except when under
great financial pressure, nor did he lower himself to satirize a particu-
lar rival. Throughout his life he resisted the entanglements of love and
strove to keep his talent uncorrupted in order to awaken his audience
to the miserable realities of life.
The main concern of this study is to investigate al-Ma‘arri’s per-
sonal attitudes towards astrology, his level of knowledge of the prin-
ciples and concepts underlying the discipline, and the nature and
function of the astrological references in his works. We will also dis-
cuss the poet’s use of astrology, not mainly to ascertain whether he
regarded it as a valid or invalid science, but to discover how he sub-
jected its principles and techniques to his poetic vision, and how he
managed to appeal to the medieval Muslim audience, most of whom
seem to have trusted in astrology. The main research questions that
deserve our attention here are: How did al-Ma‘arri’s worldview affect
his poetry in general and his use of astrological references in particu-
lar? What was his intention in employing astrological references? And
what was his opinion on astrology and astrologers?
Introduction
The relationship between mankind and the celestial bodies, whether

mythical, religious or scientific, has been governed by the knowl-
edge and belief systems of particular societies, and it is evident that
for millennia the development of astronomy was closely linked to
that of astrology. Although Islamic culture rejects this connection,
Arabs saw in the heavens regular patterns of movement that not
347
astrology between poetics and politics
only enabled them to predict seasonal changes, but empowered

them, or so they believed, to lift the veil of the future and reveal the
unknown.
This subject is particularly important because a great deal of the

poetical material that has come down to us refers to astrological
principles and techniques, although many meanings are still obscure
to the modern reader who lacks a proper understanding of the astro-
logical reservoir from which the poets drew their meanings. This
study assumes that to appreciate the Arabic literary heritage it is
crucially important to understand the sources of its inspiration. A
good example to start with is the few lines composed by al-∑aÌib
ibn ‘Abbad (d. 385/995), a medieval Arab poet and vizier, when
addressing his patron, the Buyid ruler ‘Adud al-Dawla (d. 372/983),
he says:
.‫المريخ في برج الحمل‬
ِ ‫تــــــراج َع‬
ُ … ‫خبل‬
ٍ ‫ أبو‬،‫َّـــــــــجم‬
ٌ ‫خــــوَّفَّني من‬
1
‫سواء و زحل‬
ً ِ ‫فقلت دعني من أبـــاطيل‬
‫الح َي ِل … فــالمشــــتري عندي‬
An astrologer, father of fools, warned me that Mars was in Aries.
I replied, ‘Get away from me with your ridiculous lies; I hold there is
no difference between Jupiter and Saturn’.
How are we to interpret these lines? What is the significance of Ibn
‘Abbad’s astrological image, that ‘Mars has entered the sign of Aries’?
Was he simply expressing the view of a pious Muslim, who would
deny that the stars had any influence on human destiny, or did he
have a hidden agenda?
Although the poets of the medieval Islamic world were not expert
astrologers, they made use of the basic principles and techniques of
astrology to create imagery that may still arouse our admiration today
but becomes less puzzling to us once we grasp the key to a realm of
systematic knowledge in which they moved freely but which is now
unfamiliar.
The Abbasid poets’ astrological references were very various in
nature and function, ranging from war to love, from eulogy to satire,
from politics to faith. Moreover, they could be weapons — some-
times brandished, sometimes concealed — in the philosophical and
theological debates of the time. It seems astonishing that the medieval
Muslim poets were allowed to refer openly to such material in an age
1
Îusain ibn MuÌammad al-Raghib al-IÒfaÌani, Muha∂arat al-Udaba’ wa
MuÌawarat al-Shu‘ara’ (4 vols, Beirut 1961), 1, 145.
348
when astrology was prohibited by the official religion. While astrol-

ogy had enjoyed a secure social position in pre-Islamic Arab life, with
the coming of Islam it was severely condemned and attacked. More-
over, its practitioners were subject to the death penalty. Thus, an
important question addressed by the study is how, then, did astrology
manage to survive and establish itself firmly in Abbasid society only
two centuries after the coming of Islam?
The argument of this research is that despite the significant
changes Islam brought to Arab society, the belief in astrology did not
disappear, and indeed the discipline became a vital cultural force in
the Abbasid period. Our assumption is that, while its fortunes fluctu-
ated considerably, astrology played a profound role in almost all
aspects of life in general, and literature in particular. Poets employed
astrological material in the creation of their works, for example, to
lament ill fortune, rejoice at good fortune, advise princes, warn
tyrants, praise patrons and lovers, and scorn rivals and enemies.
Thus, this social phenomenon generated a rich and often controver-
sial literature.
The study of medieval astrology is particularly profitable because
of the contested nature of its theoretical assumptions and its prac-
tices, which inevitably led to its involvement in philosophical and
theological debates and disputes that often had a political resonance,
such as those on rationality versus faith and free will versus predes-
tination. These controversies are reflected in the poetry of the period,
which brings them vividly to life by showing that their meanings
were active in the lives of real people and were not confined to
learned and abstract discourses. We see how, for example, shifting
political authority, competing epistemologies and different interpre-
tations of Islam impacted on a hugely diverse group of people united
only by their devotion to a prestigious art form. It is this sense of
immediacy, of lived experience, that compels the reader’s attention
to what might otherwise be perceived as matters distant from our
own concerns. The variety and aesthetic richness of the poets’
responses may delight us, but their words serve to remind us that the
questions that perplexed them are echoed in those that trouble our
world.
Astrology between the Abbasid Court and Muslim Society
This study draws on the theory that holds literature to be an authen-

tic reflector of ideas and issues prevalent in particular societies. Al-
349
Ma‘arri’s work demonstrates that despite the strong opposition of

orthodox Islam, astrology affected almost all aspects of medieval Mus-
lim life.
George Saliba in ‘The Role of the Astrologers in Mediaeval Islamic
Society’2 conducted a thorough investigation of the social status of
astrologers in medieval Islamic society and demonstrates that astro-
logical activities were in high demand among almost all social groups.
He sums up by remarking that:
Astrologers played a very complex role in medieval Islamic society.
While trading in a craft which was both religiously and legally frowned
upon, they still managed to carve a niche for themselves which was not
too different from that occupied by other professional classes in that
society. Like other craftsmen, artists, and professionals they had to
depend on a patronage system for their sustenance, and they seem to
have exploited that system with some success.3
When astrology became a courtly activity, the paramount concern
of astrologers was to maintain its strong reputation. They, therefore,
endeavoured to build a solid basis for the expansion of their knowl-
edge and to make it acceptable intellectually as well as socially. As a
result, a group of expert astrologers, whose careers were heavily
dependent on translated sources, also composed original Arabic
materials in an attempt to build a theoretical framework for their
science, and Islamized a number of its principles so that they could
gain and sustain acceptance in the wider society.4 The same process
can be seen at work, according to Gutas’s theory, in all other sciences
whose development initially depended on the translation of foreign
texts:
Political considerations, ideological or theoretical orientations, or
practical need would initially occasion translations, their study and use
would result in original Arabic compositions in that particular field,
and the development of research on the particular subject in this way
2
George Saliba, ‘The Role of the Astrologers in Mediaeval Islamic Society’, in
Emilie Savage-Smith (ed.), The Formation of the Classical Islamic World: Magic and
Divination in Early Islam, (Aldershot 2004), 341–70.
3
Ibid., 362.
4
As they were accepted by the rulers, we assume that astrologers were also
accepted by the lower and less educated social strata and thus the targeted audiences
of astrologers were the religious men and scientists, whom they endeavoured to
satisfy by Islamizing some of the principles of their discipline and providing it with
a scientific theoretical foundation.
350
would further generate a need both for more accurate translations of

texts already available and for translations of new texts.5
Gutas’s study makes a substantial contribution to our understanding
of the intellectual role of astrology in that period, as it illuminates the
main stages of the historical development of the discipline of astrol-
ogy as an important part of the transmission of knowledge from the
classical world to the Islamic world. However, the texts cited as evi-
dence regarding the political and intellectual dimensions of the influ-
ence of astrology on that society are, though significant, of too lim-
ited a range to support his theory regarding the impact of astrological
knowledge. This is because his interest in these astrological texts is
focused on analysing the factors that gave rise to the translation
movement, in which astrological materials were not only among the
first texts to be translated into Arabic but were also of the greatest
political importance, since they were used to help establish the legit-
imacy of the Abbasid caliphs.
Considering that orthodox scholars took the view that the claims
of astrology regarding the prediction and possible avoidance of human
fate were incompatible with the essential teachings of Islam, astrolo-
gers had to struggle to make their science respectable. They were
aided in this by the achievements of the translation movement and
by the need of rulers to legitimize their power. The first gave their
discipline a measure of scientific credibility, and the second opened
the door to acceptance and even influence in the courts of caliphs and
princes.
Astrology by its very nature could not but be drawn into the debate
between the advocates of human free will and those who believed that
all events are divinely predestined. Those on both sides who regarded
astrology’s claims as spurious attacked it for their own reasons, which
were usually based on misunderstandings of those claims. These crit-
ics included many poets, who were generally not well versed in the
principles of the science, but saw that astrology could provide a rich
store of ideas and images that could enrich the treatment of genres
such as the panegyric, the love lyric and the satire. Since these basic
notions were common currency, poets could be fairly certain that
their astrological references would be readily understood by their
audiences.
5
Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Greco-Arabic Translation
Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbasid Society (2nd–4th/ 8th–10th centuries) (London
and New York 2002), 110.
351
Given astrology’s treasury of images, its controversial relationship

with orthodox theology, its ramifications into cosmology and phi-
losophy, its involvement with human fears and hopes about the
future, and its association with the magnificent spectacle of the
heavens, it is not surprising that it became so popular a subject
among medieval poets. But, generally speaking, the poets’ personal
view of its validity was of far lesser importance than their desire to
create striking metaphors and to please their patron. The more
thoughtful among them, however, also used astrological material to
express their own views of life and death, although when those views
were highly controversial, not to say dangerous, as al-Ma‘arri’s were,
they often had to conceal their true opinion under a cloak of dis-
similation. The scandalous Abu Nuwas may have openly flouted
convention, but he was able to do so only because he was supported
by the powerful caliph, al-Amin. Very few others dared to imitate
him.
It is important to understand that the medieval Arabs distinguished
between the two main branches of the science of the stars; Arabic
astrology was a branch of knowledge separate from, though not inde-
pendent of astronomy.
The Arabs of the pre-Islamic period had possessed considerable
knowledge of astral configurations and phenomena, which they
related to recurrent natural events and to the vicissitudes of human
destiny. The supposed predictive power of astrology, which at that
time was not distinct from astronomy, placed it among the tech-
niques of divination. With the advent of Islam, the distinction
between the two types of astrology was made absolute: human astrol-
ogy was prohibited and natural or metaphorical astrology was encour-
aged. From this point in history, astronomy was disassociated from
astrology and became an independent branch of knowledge while
astrology, needing to establish its credentials as a science, became
entirely dependent on astronomical data. Thanks to the translation
which introduced Greek and elements from the Indian and Persian
traditions, astronomy gained a sound theoretical base that had the
effect of separating it completely from its pre-Islamic manifestation,
which was based on methods inherited from a non-theoretical but
valid tradition. Astronomers sought to distinguish their science from
astrology, which many saw as parasitic upon their discipline, but even
those who did not reject astrology were fearful of persecution if they
admitted this opinion, since Islam condemned all kinds of divination
and any claim to the ability to penetrate the unseen, particularly
concerning human destiny.
352
Astrology was able to flourish because it was protected by men of

authority. Whenever a ruler was known to support astrology, for
example, Harun al-Rashid and al-Ma’mun, poems dedicated or
addressed to them contained astrological material used without fear
of the reaction of orthodox men of religion. Yet, whenever a ruler
opposed the idea of heavenly influence on human affairs, such as al-
Mu‘taÒim and al-Mutawakkil, poets either ridiculed astrology or were
careful to refer to the will of God when referring to the science.
It was evident that the poet’s personal attitude towards astrology
or belief in its validity and efficacy was not a prime factor in the use
of such material. Although some vehemently opposed the science,
they made use of it for their own poetic purposes, revealing to a
greater or lesser degree their personal view of life. The religious, polit-
ical and social restrictions imposed upon the expression of opinion
compelled many to disguise opinions which, if expressed explicitly,
could have had serious consequences: they might be accused of athe-
ism, arouse a ruler’s anger, or be accused of violating taboos. Many
also engaged in the contentious debate on the issue of free will and
predestination, often for personal reasons. Most of the poets whose
thoughts on this subject have survived seem to have been inclined to
take a deterministic view, particularly regarding their own failures and
weaknesses. Thus, responsibility lies with dahr (fate), Satan, or the
influence of the heavenly bodies; their fate is predestined, but they
are careful not to attribute the evils and misfortunes of the world, and
of their own life in particular, to God, either from prudent self-pro-
tection or because they could not bring themselves to accept such a
shocking notion, which conflicted so violently with the Islamic faith.
Al-Ma‘arri anguished over the problem of God’s responsibility for evil
and was sometimes bold enough to state his opinion unequivocally.
The often autocratic power exercised by medieval rulers drew
ambitious poets to their courts, where they made use of astrological
allusions in ways that they hoped would please their patrons. But
since preferment depended on the ruler’s whim, many found that
even the most fulsome panegyric did not bring the hoped-for reward.
More rebellious spirits, who were unwilling to be bound by the dom-
inant social mores, might allude to astrology in expressing opinions
that challenged the prevailing moral conventions. Few poets dared to
go so far, since to write in this way placed them outside respectable
society and condemned them to the marginal life of an outcast, no
matter how excellent the quality of their poetry.
What unified all these poets, irrespective of their views on the
issues of the day or the extent of their willingness to conform, was a
353
concern for their art. They were first and foremost poets, not phi-
losophers, theologians or astrologers, and their greater pleasure lay in
producing an elegant phrase or striking metaphor, or composing a
formally perfect poem. For this reason few poets took the trouble to
master the details of astrological theory, and even poets who were
also professional astrologers often subordinated accuracy to poetic
effect.
Although few Abbasid poets took an interest in the detailed com-
plexities of astrological theory, their poems bear witness to the degree
to which astrology had become integrated into all aspects of medieval
society. It appealed to the elites and the mass of people alike. Rulers
who believed in astrology or used it to legitimize their power pro-
tected astrologers from the criticism of orthodox men of religion, who
were subject to the ruler’s political authority, and relied upon him to
maintain their privileges. Astrologers who were insufficiently qualified
to serve the elite, or who were outright quacks, turned to the street
to seek a living by playing on the insecurities of the ignorant, target-
ing women especially. Many poets were merely sceptical of what they
saw as astrology’s fraudulent claims. Others were revolted by such
trickery and saw it as both a symptom and a cause of the corruption
of their society.
Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri and Astrology
Al-Ma‘arri, a deist and humanist, attacked astrology and its preten-

sions, addressing an audience he knew were inclined to believe its
claims. His goal was to bring his readers to an understanding of what
he considered to be the true nature of the universe, and to encourage
them to be sceptical of all inherited beliefs. He strove to turn people
away from what he regarded as superstition by encouraging them to
use their intellect as a guide to virtuous action. As a rationalist, he
regarded both astrology and revealed religion as not only false but
dangerous, since both could be used by unscrupulous power-hungry
men to dupe and mislead the gullible. For the most part, al-Ma‘arri
found it necessary to dissimulate his true opinions for fear of persecu-
tion, and we know that he was once formally accused of atheism. Like
many others, who held unorthodox views, he ‘was forced to lie’, that
is to pretend piety in a language of ironic metaphor whose true mean-
ings could be understood only by those who had learned it. If al-
Ma‘arri was able to attack astrology openly it was because no religious
scholar would have defended it.
354
Astrology was criticized not only by the orthodox but also by the
proponents of human free will, who saw it as essentially deterministic,
and by those who believed that all events, in their minutest details,
were predestined and so rejected on principle what they saw as astrol-
ogy’s claim to be able to alter human destiny. Astrologers themselves
took a less dogmatic and dichotomous view, dealing in probabilities
rather than certainties. Poets tended to be less sophisticated in their
judging and very few held strong principles regarding this issue,
though like al-Ma‘arri, most were inclined to determinism.
Those who depended on a powerful patron would not contradict
his beliefs. On the whole, they were content, for example, to praise a
commander who had won a great victory against his astrologers’
advice (such as at Amorium) without questioning whether the victory
or the commander’s exercise of ‘free will’ in the matter was divinely
determined. Few poets agonized over this knotty problem as al-
Ma‘arri did; they were content to find new approaches and new lin-
guistic means to express traditional concepts.
A belief in predestination was the prevalent mood in classical Ara-
bic poetry; mankind is not the master of his destiny, but a puppet
manipulated by forces he cannot control. While medieval Arabic
astrology claimed that a probable evil event could be avoided by dis-
covering the time of its occurrence and taking appropriate action,
which included making supplication to God, poets who were not
sceptical of astrology’s predictive claims tended to believe that what
was declared by the heavens must inevitably come to pass. This is a
fundamental feature of the astrological references in classical poetry.
Many poets were fatalists because they found it convenient to shift
the responsibility for their own weaknesses, vices or lack of worldly
success onto some external power, as mentioned above.
The attribution of an agency to the heavenly bodies was in fact not
the intent of medieval astrology, which held that they were only indi-
cators of a potential fate and unable themselves to determine worldly
affairs. Whether or not poets understood this distinction, they tended
to ignore theoretical subtleties in the interests of poetic expression.
This is true even of al-Ma‘arri, who wished to present the basic
assumptions of astrology as contrary to reason. And whether or not
poets were familiar with technical details, they generally felt free to
use astrological principles as they chose regardless of scientific accu-
racy. They would reinterpret the significance of stars and planets, find
contrary meanings in certain conjunctions, or even invent conjunc-
tions, in order to praise a lover’s beauty or a prince’s valour, or satirize
a rival’s folly or an enemy’s malice.
355
The Life of Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri6
We cannot understand or appreciate al-Ma‘arri’s work unless we are

aware of the factors that shaped his views of the world. An outline of
the key phases and events of his life will help us better understand his
ideology, which is expressed with great consistency in his works, and
this outline will provide a background for our discussion.
AÌmad Abu al-‘Ala’ ibn ‘Abdullah ibn Sulayman was one of the
most important men of letters of the Abbasid period and indeed in
the whole history of Arabic literature. He was born in 363/973 in
Ma‘arrat al-Nu‘man, a town between Aleppo and ÎimÒ in northern
Syria, and died there in 449/1058 at the age of eighty-five.
When he was three years old he contracted smallpox and as a result
lost his eyesight, a trauma that contributed to shaping his later philo-
sophical outlook. As a scion of the noble family of Banu Sulayman, who
had held the office of qa∂i (judge) for generations, ‘he was trained up to
assume his rightful place as a member of this social and cultural élite’.7
Despite al-Ma‘arri’s disability, his father devoted great efforts to
giving him a proper education in the religious, linguistic and literary
fields. He was instructed under the supervision of the leading sheikhs
(scholars) of Ma‘arra.8 He viewed his learning ‘not merely as a com-
6
The information in this study regarding al-Ma‘arri’s life is taken from ™aha
Îusain et al., Athar Abi al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri: Ta‘rif al-Qudama’ bi Abi al-‘Ala’ (Cairo
1965), which brings together biographical information collected from the following
sources: al-Tha‘libi’s Yatimat al-Dahr; al-Baghdadi’s Tarikh Madinat al-Salam, ‘Ali
al-Bakharzayi’s Dumyat al-QaÒr; Taj al-Islam al-Sam‘ani’s Al-Ansab, Abu al-Barakat’s
Nuzhat al-Albab; Abu al-Faraj ibn al-Jawzi’s Al-MuntaÂim; ‘Ali al-Qif†i’s Inbah
al-Ruwat ‘ala Anbah al-NuÌat; Yaqut al-Îamawi’s Irshad al-Arib ila Ma‘rifat
al-Adib; Sib† ibn al-Jawzi’s Mir’at al-Zaman; AÌmad ibn Khallikan’s Wafayyat
al-A‘yan; Isma‘il Abu al-Fi∂a’s Al-MukhtaÒar fi Akhbar al-Bashar; Shams al-Din
al-Dhahabi’s Tarikh al-Islam; ‘Umar ibn al-Wardi’s Tatimmat al-MukhtaÒar fi Akh-
bar al-Bashar; Shihab al-Din ibn Fa∂l Allah al-‘Umari’s Masalik al-AbÒar, Khalil
al-∑afadi’s Al-Wafi bi al-Wafayyat, al-∑afadi’s Nakt al-Himyan; ‘Abdullah al-Yafi‘i’s
Mir’at al-Jinan, al-ÎafiÂ ibn Kathir’s Al-Bidaya wa al-Nihaya, MuÌammad Ibn
al-ShiÌna’s Raw∂at al-ManaÂir; AÌmad ibn Îajar’s Lisan al-Mizan; MaÌmud
al-‘Ayni’s ‘Iqd al-Juman; Yusuf ibn Taghri Bardi’s Al-Nujum al-Åahira; Jalal al-Din
al-Suyu†i’s Bughyat al-Wu‘at; Abu al-FatÌ al-‘Abbasi’s Ma‘ahid al-TanÒiÒ; Ibn
al-Imad al-Îanbali’s Shadharat al-Dhahab, and other biographical works.
7
‘A’isha ‘Abd al-RaÌman, ‘Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri’, in Julia Ashtiany, et al. (eds),
The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: ‘Abbasid Belles-Lettres (Cambridge
1990), 328–38, see particularly p. 328.
8
For more details about his education and teachers see MuÌammad al-Jundi,
Al-Jami‘ fi Akhbar Abi al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri wa Atharih, edited by ‘Abd al-Hadi
Hashim, (Damascus 1962), 176–88.
356
pensation, but as a weapon’;9 that is to say, firstly, it compensated for

his blindness by enabling him to see and judge the conditions of his
society more clearly than his sighted contemporaries, whom he
thought of as intellectually blind. Evidence of his natural talent is
provided by Ibn al-‘Adim, in his monograph on Abu al-‘Ala’, in the
‘Chapter on Abu al-‘Ala’s deep understanding, natural talent, and
sharp memory, shining thought and penetrating insight’.10
Secondly, it provided him with an intellectual perspective that not
only served to deepen his view of life but also sharpened his intoler-
ance of those who were intolerant of his views, and who seemed ‘to
have more regard for mountebanks than for men of genuine learning’.11
The other great influence on al-Ma‘arri’s intellectual personality was
the poetry of al-Mutanabbi, whom he took as his model, particularly
in his youth and early manhood. He wrote: ‘It is as if al-Mutanabbi
was predicting my devotion to him when he said:
.‫صمم‬
ُ ‫من ِب ِه‬
ْ ‫ت كلما ِتي‬
ْ ‫أسمع‬
َ َ ‫أنا ا ّلذي‬
‫نظر الأعمى إلى ْأدبِى … و‬
It is to my writing the blind looked, and to whose words the deaf
listened.12
It seems not to have been al-Mutanabbi’s panegyrics, satires, or love
songs that made al-Ma‘arri acknowledge the earlier poet as a master,
rather it was those lines which express deep rational wisdom and
which we find scattered throughout al-Mutanabbi’s works.
Besides his discovery of al-Mutanabbi’s poetry, an event of great
personal significance occurred when al-Ma‘arri was thirty-two, in
395/1004;13 the poet was profoundly shaken by the death of his
father. This crisis seems to have been a turning point, indeed, a true
catastrophe in his life. ‘A’isha ‘Abd al-RaÌman comments that ‘the
blow had deprived him of a friend, teacher and guide’, and of the
elegy he wrote on this occasion, she says: ‘it is a portrait not only of
his father but of his own inner state and of the development which
his feelings of anguish and impotence forced on his poetry’.14
9
‘A’isha ‘Abd al-RaÌman, ‘Abu al-‘Ala’’, 328.
10
See Ibn al-‘Adim, ‘Al-InÒaf wa al-TaÌarri’, in ™aha Îusain et al. (eds), Athar
Abi al-‘Ala’, 551–64.
11
12
Ibn Khallikan, Wafayyat al-A‘yan, in ™aha Îusain et al. (eds), Athar, 183.
13
Some critics have claimed mistakenly that al-Ma‘arri’s father died when the
poet was fourteen years old. Farrukh refutes this, providing evidence that al-Ma‘arri
was thirty-two. See ‘Umar Farrukh, Îakim al-Ma‘arra AÌmad ibn ‘Abdullah ibn
Sulayman al-Ma‘arri (Beirut 1948), 17.
14
357
Soon after the loss of his father, al-Ma‘arri was once more bereaved
by the death of one of his paternal uncles, whom he greatly admired.
‘His already acute sense of human tragedy deepened […] he mourned
him in a poem which is really an elegy for all mankind’,15 from which
the following lines are selected:
.‫صاح هذي قبورنا تـــــملأ الـ … ّـرحـب فأين القبور من عهد عاد‬
.‫الوطء ما أظن أديـــــــم … هذه الأرض إلا من هذه الأجساد‬
َ ‫خفف‬
.‫لحد قد صار لحد ًا مرار ًا … ضــــــــــاحك ًا من تزاحم الأضداد‬
ٍ ‫رب‬
.‫دفيـــــــــــن … في طويـــــــــــــل الزمان و الآباد‬
ٍ ‫ودفين على بقايا‬
ٍ
.16 ‫راغــــــــــــب في ازدياد‬
ٍ ‫من‬
ْ َّ‫تعب كلُّــــها الحياة فما أعجب … إلا‬
ٌ
My friend, these are our graves filling the plain; but where are they all
from antique time on?
Tread softly; the whole face of the earth seems to me nothing but the
dead…the bones of the departed.
Many a grave has served time and time again, so as to rejoice in the
piling up of so many different men;
Body is buried on top of the remains of body, as the long ages roll on…
All life is a wearisome thing; the wonder is that any should wish to spin
it out.17
The shock of his father’s death drove him to think of leaving Syria
and travel to Baghdad, the most cosmopolitan city of the time, where
he took the opportunity to converse with several scholars in the
libraries of Dar al-‘Ilm (The House of Knowledge), Dar al-Kutub
(The House of Books), and Dar al-Îikma (The House of Wisdom).
An account of this journey is provided in his Diwan Saq† al-Zanad
(or The Spark from the Fire-Stick).
Al-Ma‘arri intended to settle in Baghdad, where the resources
available to him would nourish his constant hunger for books, but he
ran out of money and had no option but to compose panegyrics for
the notables of the city; a task that conflicted with his great sense of
dignity and extreme self-respect.
Eventually, a clash with one of these eminent men led to his leav-
ing Baghdad. In brief, this incident took place in the literary salon of
15
Ibid., 329–30.
16
For the whole 64 lines of this poem see Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri, Diwan Saq†
al-Zand (Cairo 1901), 81–5.
17
This translation is taken from ‘A’isha ‘Abd al-RaÌman, ‘Abu al-‘Ala’’, 330.
358
the ‘Alawi Sharif, al-Murta∂a (355–436/967–1044),18 who delivered

a strong criticism of al-Mutanabbi’s poetry in the presence of al-
Ma‘arri who, defending his master, remarked: ‘If he had written no
more than [the poem that begins] laki ya manazilu fi al-qulubi mana-
zilun (You abodes, there are abodes like you in [people’s] hearts), this
alone would be more than enough for him to be considered as the
best of all poets’.
The infuriated al-Murta∂a had him dragged by his feet out of the
salon. In justification of this rough treatment, al-Murta∂a asked his
guests: ‘Did you understand what he meant by referring to that par-
ticular poem?’ When they replied ‘No’, he told them that al-Ma‘arri’s
intention was to describe him as imperfect, as there is a line in that
poem where al-Mutanabbi says:
.‫ناقص فهي الشهادة لي بأني كامل‬
ٍ ‫و إذا أتتك مذمتي من‬
If I am criticized by someone who is imperfect it bears witness that
I am perfect.19
After the humiliation and disgrace he suffered at al-Murta∂a’s court
and after having fled Baghdad, al-Ma‘arri wrote in a letter: ‘I swear
that I did not intend to travel to gain fame. What I really wanted was
to stay in a place of learning, and I found the most precious of spots.
But fate did not allow me to stay there, and only a fool would quar-
rel with destiny’.20
Having returned to Ma‘arra, he was devastated by the news of
his mother’s death whom he mourned in two poems that express
his grief and wish to die before her. The subsequent loss of his two
brothers left him without companions, and he ‘wondered how it
was that the loss of parents and brothers had not destroyed him
18
Abu al-Qasim ‘Ali ibn al-Îusain ibn Musa was a grandson of the fourth
Orthodox Caliph ‘Ali ibn Abi ™alib. He was a Shiite of Mu‘tazili persuasion and
was one of the great scholars of his time and a respected man of letters. He wrote
many books on theology, literature and poetry. He was the elder brother of
al-Sharif al-Ra∂i, to whom the composition of the famous book Nahj al-Balagha is
attributed. See Khair al-Din al-Zirikli, Al-A‘lam (12 vols, Beirut 1969), 5, 89.
19
For the whole incident see al-Jundi, Al-Jami‘, 244. It is related that when
al-Murta∂a first saw al-Ma‘arri entering the assembly he asked ‘Who is that dog?’
Al-Ma‘arri responded, ‘Indeed, he is a dog who does not know the seventy names
of dog’; he then engaged with him in a literary discussion that showed his deep
learning. Impressed by the poet’s wit and knowledge, al-Murta∂a maintained a good
relationship with al-Ma‘arri until the incident related above took place. See ibid.,
242–3.
20
Ibn al-‘Adim, ‘Al-InÒaf’, in ™aha Îusain et al. (eds), Athar, 547.
359
utterly’.21 He subsequently cut himself off from the outer world,

condemned himself to domestic imprisonment which acquired him
the sobriquet Rahin al-MaÌbasayn, ‘the twofold prisoner’; doubly
imprisoned by blindness and seclusion, though he declared himself
to be a threefold prisoner in the following verse:
.‫أراني في الثلاثة من سجوني … فلا تســـــــأل عن ال ّنـــــبأ النبيث‬
22
.‫ و لزوم بيتي … و كـون النفس في الجسم الخبـيث‬،‫لفقدي ناظري‬
I see myself in my three prisons; so that you may cease to ask about
the evils I endure,
They are the loss of my sight, my seclusion, and this vile body that
confines my soul.
He remained a self-imprisoned recluse until his death. In one of
his letters al-Ma‘arri explains: ‘My soul did not consent to my
returning till I had promised it three things; seclusion as complete
as that of al-Faniq23 in the constellation of the Bull; separation
from the world like that of the egg-shell from the chick; and to
remain in the city even though the inhabitants fled through fear of
the Greeks’.24
Other restrictions he imposed on his personal life were that he
rejected marriage and fatherhood, fasted continually, became a vegan,
as he refused to eat any animal products, such as cheese, milk or
honey, so as not to cause harm to any living being,25 dressed in gar-
ments made of the coarsest cotton and slept on a prayer mat. These
renunciations were reflected in his poetry, and both were the product
of his philosophy of life which itself was a result of the combination
of his temperament and his circumstances.
His thought was influenced not only by his personal characteristics
but also by the political, social and economic conditions that marked
the life of the people of his time. It is important then to describe
briefly those trends, which impacted on both the poet and his audi-
21
Al-Ma‘arri, Al-FuÒul wa al-Ghayat, cited in ‘A’isha ‘Abd al-RaÌman, ‘Abu
al-‘Ala’’, 331.
22
Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri, Luzum ma la Yalzam (2 Vols, Beirut 1961), 1, 249.
23
Name of a distant star.
24
D.S. Margoliouth (trans. and ed.), The Letters of Abul-‘Ala’ of Ma‘arrat al-
Nu‘man (Oxford 1898), 43.
25
It is related that he once felt ill and a physician advised him to eat a chicken
as a cure for his malady. When the chicken was brought before him he commented:
‘They felt your weakness and so prescribed you; would they prescribe a lion cub
instead?’ He then refused to eat it. Al-Îamawi, Mu‘jam al-Buldan, 1, 407.
360
ence; this shared experience enabled al-Ma‘arri to express his inner-

most self to the outside world.
Al-Ma‘arri and Men of Authority
Al-Ma‘arri lived during the last quarter of the tenth and the first half
of the eleventh century ce;26 a time when the Muslim world was
experiencing a great many fluctuations in its political life. Aleppo’s
prosperity was a thing of the past. The reign of the powerful amir,
Saif al-Dawla had been followed by a period of decline during the
reign of his son and successor Abu al-Ma‘ali Sharif (r. 356–81/966–
91). The political autonomy of Aleppo was under threat from the
greater powers surrounding it: the Buyid rulers of Baghdad, the
Fa†imid Imams of Egypt and the Byzantine Empire centred in Con-
stantinople.
As a frontier zone between the Arabs and Byzantines, Syria was
under the continuous threat of a possible Byzantine attack. Saif
al-Dawla al-Îamdani (r. 333–56/945–67), the prince of Aleppo and
northern Syria, for example, ‘confronted the Byzantines in more than
forty battles’.27 In 351/962 a Byzantine army succeeded in conquer-
ing Aleppo and destroying the palace of Saif al-Dawla. A few years
later, in 358/969, Antioch was taken by the Byzantines and remained
under their control until it was returned to Islamic rule in 477/ 1084,
twenty-eight years after the death of al-Ma‘arri.
The Abbasid caliphs retained a spiritual authority acknowledged
by orthodox Muslims, but had no political power as the real rulers at
the centre were the Persian Buyids. Al-Ma‘arri witnessed the reigns
of four Abbasid caliphs: al-Mu†i‘ (r. 334–63/946–74), al-™a’i‘ (363–
81/974–91), al-Qadir (381–422/991–1031) and al-Qa’im bi Amr
Allah (422–67/1031–75). They were mere shadows of caliphs
appointed and dethroned by the Buyid rulers.28
Al-Ma‘arri witnessed the rule of five of the Fa†imid imams and it
was in the reign of al-Mu‘izz li Din Allah that Damascus came
under Fa†imid control in the year 358/969. It was followed by
Aleppo, which was seized from the Îamdanids in 406/1015, and
26
Al-Ma‘arri was very aware of the political situation of his time and alluded to
it in his works. For a valuable study regarding this matter see Pieter Smoor, Kings
and Bedouins in the Palaces of Aleppo as Reflected in Ma‘arri’s Works (Manchester
1985).
27
Th. Bianquis, ‘Sayf al-Dawla’, in E.I., IX, 106.
28
See MuÌammad al-Khu∂ari, Al-Dawla al-‘Abbasiyya (Beirut 1998), 348–77.
361
in 414, the Midrasi state took Aleppo back from the Fa†imids and
then besieged Ma‘arra bombarding it with catapults (manjaniq).
Knowing the great respect ∑aliÌ ibn Mirdas, the governor of Aleppo
and the establisher of the Midrasis state, had for al-Ma‘arri, the ter-
rified inhabitants of Ma‘arra pleaded that the poet should break his
seclusion and approach Ibn Mirdas as a peacemaker. Abu al-‘Ala’
went forth, leaning on a guide. ∑aliÌ was told that the gate of the
town had been thrown open and that a blind man was being led
out. He gave the order to cease fighting and received the poet cour-
teously, granted his request, and asked him to recite some of his
poetry.
These political conflicts, aggravated by natural disasters, resulted
in a deterioration of the social and economic conditions of the
medieval Muslim world. Witnessing how the people were suffering
while their rulers enjoyed the pleasures of luxury, uncaring of their
subjects and concerned only to safeguard their throne, al-Ma‘arri
was sternly critical of men of authority and laments that he is com-
pelled to live at a time when the people are abused and neglected by
their rulers:
ِ
.‫صلاحـــها أمراؤها‬ ‫أمرت بغي ِر‬
ْ ً ‫أعاشـــــــــــــر‬
… ‫أمة‬ ُ ‫فكم‬
ْ ‫قام‬
ُ ‫الم‬
ُ َّ‫مل‬
29 َ ‫ظلموا الر‬
.‫َّعية و استجازوا كيدها … فعـدوا مصالحها و هـم أجراؤها‬
My patience is exhausted; how long must I live among a nation whose
princes command what is not good for it?
They are unjust to their subjects, use the law to deceive them, and seize
from the state whatever may serve their own interests, although they
are paid to serve it.
On another occasion he ridicules the way the rulers conduct affairs

of state and expresses his disgust with them and with himself:
ُ ‫أمرهم و ُي‬
.‫ــقال ساسة‬ َ
ُ ‫فينفذ‬ … ‫عقل‬
ٍ ‫يسوسون الأمور بــغير‬
ُ ُ
30
ٍ ‫فأفَّ من الحيــــا ِة و أفَّ مني … ومن‬
.‫زمن رئاس ُت ُه خساسه‬
They guide our affairs, but their minds are absent,
And yet men call them politicians!
Faugh! I am disgusted by life, by myself
And by a state that is immoral and rotten.
29
Al-Ma‘arri, Luzum, 1, 54.
30
362
Characteristics of the ‘Ala’ian QaÒida

Although deeply interested in philosophy, Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri
was, as Reynold Nicholson notes, ‘first of all and essentially, a poet’;31
his work ‘is artistic in treatment and execution and should be weighed
by the standard which we apply to the Divina Commedia or Paradise
Lost’.32 Thus, for Nicholson, al-Ma‘arri belongs to the schools of
Dante and Milton,33 ‘and if he contemplates life with the profound
feeling of Lucretius, he handles his subject with a literary skill as fine
as that of Horace’.34 Whatever al-Ma‘arri’s power as philosopher and
social critic, it is as poetry that his work should be appreciated and
judged.
Al-Ma‘arri’s writings give us a full and candid picture of the poet’s
life and thought, as ‘A’isha ‘Abd al-RaÌman notes:
What is unique to al-Ma‘arri is that it is his literary works themselves,
rather than secondary bibliographical material, that provide us with a
convincing record of his life and development. Secondary sources are
of far less value in establishing a picture either of the writer or of the
man; his verse and prose give us an artistic appraisal of his worldly
circumstances, of the events and personalities that he witnessed and of
the details of the phases through which he passed from childhood
almost until his death, while the sincerity of his writing suggests a
congruity of feeling, thought and action which emphasizes the close
connection of the writer with his works, the thinker with his words.35
If this is so, we can say that al-Ma‘arri’s character was a combina-
tion of pessimism, fatalism and scepticism blended with uncompro-
mising rationalism and lucid intellect.
31
R.A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Poetry (Cambridge 1969), 44.
32
Ibid. Some scholars have suggested that Dante (1265–1321 ce), the author
of Divina Commedia, and John Milton (1608–74 ce), the author of Paradise Lost,
might have had access to al-Ma‘arri’s Risalat al-Ghufran (The Epistle of Forgiveness),
citing the many similarities regarding the main theme of these works, particularly
Dante’s poem. (See Farrukh, Îakim al-Ma‘arra, 120–8).
Risalat al-Ghufran, which is the most famous of all his prose writings, has a hero
called Ibn al-QariÌ, who is mockingly depicted as a hypocrite who visits Heaven and
Hell and engages in discussion with poets, scholars and heretics from earlier ages.
‘The book is a strange mixture of highly imaginative and sometimes daring satire,
among other things, on popular ideas on the hereafter and philosophical pedantry’.
G.J.H. Van Gelder, ‘Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri’, in J.S. Meisami and P. Starkey (eds),
Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature (2 vols, London and New York 1998), 24–5.
33
See Nicholson, Studies, 44.
34
Ibid.
35
363
His life and character were full of conflicts and contradictions: he

was a man of great energy but whose disability forced him to live a
restricted life, a man of strong worldly desires who was unable or
unwilling to fulfill them, a man eager for peace who lived in a trou-
bled period that witnessed many tragic incidents, a man of great
intellect who was surrounded by ignorance.
Al-Ma‘arri’s condition aggravated his pessimism; he viewed life as a
place of evil inhabited by devils in the form of human beings, especially
those who wielded power. He would have liked to live forever yet was
convinced, to some extent, that death meant annihilation; he was
materialist in his perspective to life, yet believed strongly in the exist-
ence of God. Some of these contradictions are expressed in his poems:
.ِّ‫مــــــــــن ر ّبـــ ِة ِدل‬
ْ … ‫الله‬
ُ ‫أيُّـها الدّ نيا! لحاك‬
36
.‫إن َظنَّ التَّسلِّي‬ ْ ‫ـك و‬ ِ … ‫ما تس ّلى خلـــدي عنـ‬
Curse you, life, for a coy mistress!
I cannot dismiss you from my mind, however much I think to do so.37
38
.‫أحتــــــرس‬
ُ ‫مهـــــــــــجتي ضـــــــدٌّ ُيحاربني … أنا مني كيــــــــــــف‬
My own soul is my adversary, who fights with me! What defence do I
have against myself?
39
.‫أهوى الحياة و حسبي من مصائبها أني أعيش بتمويه و تدليس‬
I love life, but it is enough to know that to live it I have to dissimulate
and be a hypocrite.
40
.‫ إذا هو لم يرزق بلوغ المآرب‬.… ‫انفراد و وحد ٌة‬
ٌ ّ ‫فما للفتى‬
‫إلا‬
Man has no option but seclusion if he fails to achieve his desires.
.‫فر ْس َنه‬ ِ
ّ ‫وأخطأت الظنون بما‬ ٍ ‫حليـــــــف‬
… ‫زهد‬ ُ :‫وقال الفارسون‬
41
.‫خيــــــارها عنِّي خنسنه‬
َ ّ ‫عن اللَّــــــذات‬
ّ‫إلا … لأن‬ ْ ‫أعرض‬
ْ ‫و لم‬
They scan my face and say, ‘A thorough ascetic!’, but their guess is wrong;
I have not turned my back on pleasures; it is they that have shunned
me.42
36
37
38
39
Ibid., 52.
40
Ibid., 1, 143.
41
Ibid., 2, 527.
42
364
Despite all life’s sufferings and sorrows, al-Ma‘arri censures the fate
that obliges man to leave life:
43
.‫مقيم‬
ٌ ‫ولست على إساءتها‬
َ ّ ‫و ما دنياك‬
… ‫إلا دا ُر سو ٍء‬
Your life is nothing but a house of evil, yet you will depart it.
Yet, he would have preferred not to have been born into this ‘house
of evil’. Al-Ma‘arri viewed the act of bringing the soul to life, or
procreation, as a sin against mankind. He wrote the following line
shortly before his death and asked for it to be inscribed on his grave:
44
.‫علي … وما جنيت على أحد‬
ّ ‫هذا جناه أبي‬
This is what my father committed against me; I have not committed
such a sin against anyone.
Al-Ma‘arri blames his father for his death, as he was responsible for
giving him life. Birth and death are the two extremes of the trail all
beings must tread. Thus, it is a sin to bestow life if the inevitable end
is annihilation.
Despite his self-imposed seclusion al-Ma‘arri felt a great responsi-
bility towards mankind. He devoted his talent to opening their eyes
to the miserable realities of the times, exacerbated by the corruption
of the elites and the ignorance of the masses. As a humanist, his ulti-
mate concern was to help spread peace among mankind regardless of
race, religion, or colour by encouraging virtue. He endeavoured to
make his message reach all people, and in doing so, he addressed
particular factions and their ideas rather than a general readership.
We are especially concerned with one of these target audiences; the
large faction who believed that the upper realm influenced worldly
affairs. This made him less concerned with conventional poetic sub-
jects than with the clear and direct expression of his thought. He
apologized to his readers for not catering for their expectations,
though his tone here, as so often, is ironic:
I have not sought to embellish my verse by means of fiction or fill my
passages with love idylls, battle-scenes, descriptions of wine-parties and
the like. My aim is to speak the truth. Now, the proper end of poetry
is not truth, but falsehood,45 and in proportion as it is diverted from
43
44
Al-Jundi, Al-Jami‘, 443.
45
He is referring to the famous maxim used by critics when judging a poem:
‘The best poems are the most false’.
365
its proper end its perfection is impaired. Therefore, I must crave the
indulgence of my readers for this book of ‘moral’ poetry.46
While most of the views expressed in his poetry are at first sight in
accordance with those of the orthodox mainstream, his speech could
not be unswerving. The religious environment was such that he was
compelled to disguise his opinions to escape any accusation of athe-
ism.
This strategy of dissimulation, or ‘the cautionary approach’ as
Îusain termed it,47 was necessary for al-Ma‘arri’s safety. He could
not proclaim the truth as he saw it, but had to speak in a low voice,
disguising his true opinions:
48
ُ ‫َّواب أط ْل‬
.‫ت همسي‬ ُ ‫وإن ُق‬
َ ‫لت الص‬ ْ … ‫رفعت صوتي‬
ُ َ ‫الم‬
‫حال‬ ُ ‫إذا ق ْل‬
ُ ‫ت‬
I raise my voice whenever I speak of the impossible,
But when I speak the truth, I do so under my breath.
Nicholson remarks, ‘Ma‘arri had good reason to cloak some of his
opinions, and being a sensible as well as a cautious man, he did not
court persecution, though in fact the most heretical passages of his
work are by no means the most obscure’.49 Al-Ma‘arri states explicitly
that he, and all those using their reason, must resort to lies — that
is, metaphors — to speak the truth. Thus, the poet’s intended mean-
ing is concealed from literal-minded enemies and revealed to those
who understand his method:
ُ
.‫العقول‬ ‫الكذب‬
ْ ‫َّت إلى‬ْ ‫اض ُطر‬
ْ ْ‫خبــــــــــير … قد‬
ٌ ‫الله فهو بنا‬
ُ ‫تعالى‬
50 ُ ُ
.‫ليس كما نقول‬
َ ‫الأمــــــــــر‬
َ َّ‫نقول على المجا ِز و قدْ علمنا … بأن‬
Praised be God! He knows us perfectly; And yet our minds are forced
to lie!
We speak in metaphor and know; things are not as we say they are!
Appreciation of al-Ma‘arri’s ‘skill in taking cover beneath this species
of irony is the key to much that puzzled European readers of the
Luzum’, adds Nicholson.51
Throughout his diwan al-Ma‘arri writes according to a single prin-
ciple: to make people comprehend the rewards of virtue and the
46
Al-Ma‘arri, preface to Luzum, 5–39, cited in Nicholson, Studies, 50.
47
See ™aha Îusain, Tajdid Dhikra Abi al-‘Ala’ (Cairo 1958), 261–3.
48
49
Nicholson, Studies, 54.
50
51
366
vanity of wickedness. The depth, complexity and beauty of the

diwan are intended to deepen our understanding of the nature of
mankind. Yet, the conclusion reached by this moral philosopher is
that a life of pure virtue is unattainable, as corruption is the essence
of life.
Although the prime task of this discussion is to examine the nature
of al-Ma‘arri’s astrological references, we cannot understand and
enjoy them without understanding how al-Ma‘arri conceived of God,
fate, the metaphysical world, life and death, and mankind. These will
be discussed in the following section, in connection with his opinion
on astrology. Before doing so, it will be useful to introduce briefly
the philosophical context in which al-Ma‘arri was writing, and which,
to some extent, influenced his thinking.
Although this period witnessed political and economic decline in
the Muslim world, it was also notable for the achievements of the
translation movement, which had started at the beginning of the
Abbasid period and was still flourishing at the time of al-Ma‘arri’s
birth. There was a proliferation of intellectual activity in all branches
of knowledge and the endeavours to unify Islamic principles and
secular ideologies bore fruit.52 In the arena of philosophy, al-Ma‘arri
lived at a time when the formative period of philosophy in the Mus-
lim world reached its culmination. Al-Kindi (158–220/801–73), who
was honoured by his contemporaries with the title ‘the philosopher
of the Arabs’, had paved the way for later philosophers by providing
‘an overview of the new Arabic philosophical terminology, with def-
initions based on Greek sources’.53 Al-Farabi (260–339/874–950),
who was of Turkish origin and was called the ‘Second Master’ —
Aristotle being the first — spent his later years under the patronage
of the Prince of Aleppo, Saif al-Dawla al-Îamdani. His legacy rests
on his attempts to articulate the ‘curriculum of philosophical study
within the new cultural context of the Islamic empire’.54 In the
thought of al-Ma‘arri’s contemporary Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (370–
428/980–1037) the two strand falsafa (Arabic Aristotelian and Neo-
platonic philosophy) and kalam (Islamic doctrinal theology) fused
52
For more information on the intellectual life of the time and its impact on
the development of various branches of knowledge see ™aha Îusain, Tajdid Dhikra,
79–101 and al-Jundi, Al-Jami‘, 135–70.
53
Peter Adamson, ‘Al-Kindi and the Reception of Greek Philosophy’, in Peter
Adamson and Richard Taylor (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy
(Cambridge 2005), 32–51 (particularly p. 33).
54
David C. Reisman, ‘Al-Farabi’, in Peter Adamson and Richard Taylor (eds),
The Cambridge Companion, 52–71 (particularly p. 55).
367
together and ‘post-Avicennian kalam emerged as a truly Islamic phi-

losophy, a synthesis of Avicenna’s metaphysics and Muslim doctrine’.55
Both al-Razi (Rhazes) (251–313/865–925) and the Ikhwan al-∑afa‘
(Brethren of Purity) influenced al-Ma‘arri. ™aha Îusain claims that
al-Ma‘arri was a member of the Brethren.56 Also living near to that
period is the great Islamic thinker Abu Îamid al-Ghazali (450–
505/1058–1111) and the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd (Aver-
roes) (450–520/1058–1126).
Al-Ma‘arri is known as the philosopher among poets and the poet
among philosophers; he was well versed in a great range of knowl-
edge, including Greek, Persian and Indian thought, besides being
familiar with the central principles of every form of religion practiced
at the time.57 In what follows we will compare his thought with the
most influential philosophical and religious views of the fifth-century
Muslim world. We will show that he had an independent mind and
produced a highly personal philosophy. He often disagreed with prin-
ciples and conclusions of the thinkers who influenced him, selecting
and modifying their ideas to produce a distinctive ‘Ala’ian philoso-
phy, which informs his mature poetry.
Al-Ma‘arri’s Use of Astrology
Al-Kindi defines philosophy as ‘the knowledge of things in their

true natures’.58 He proclaimed truth to be the supreme value, and
regarded reason as the only reliable arbiter in any dispute. Tradi-
tion from whatever source it may come should be closely examined
to test truthfulness. This view was uncontroversial among pagan
thinkers, but it was difficult to reconcile with the basic doctrines
of Islam because it seemed to challenge the primary truths derived
from prophecy and revelation. Al-Kindi’s immediate successor, al-
Razi, rejected the claims of revelation, considered religions as being
dangerous and believed that reason alone was the only guide that
could lead mankind to the truth. His conviction that reason alone
could yield certain knowledge may have been influenced by his
55
Robert Wisnovsky, ‘Avicenna and the Avicennian Tradition’, in Peter Adam-
son and Richard C. Taylor (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy
(Cambridge 2005), 92–136 (particularly p. 92).
56
See ™aha Îusain, Tajdid Dhikra, 141. MuÌammad al-Jundi, however, refutes
this claim; see al-Jundi, Al-Jami‘, 259–64.
57
See ™aha Îusain, Tajdid Dhikra, 253–61.
58
Adamson, ‘Al-Kindi’, 22.
368
profession; he was a physician who used a very solid method of

investigation based on observation and experimentation in his clin-
ical work.59
Like, al-Razi, al-Ma‘arri considered that the only guide that could
be trusted in mankind’s search for the truth about life is the mind.
He believed that we should always judge the truth of any proposition
by making use of our reason:
.‫إمام سوى العقـ … ـل مشير ًا في صبحه و المساء‬
َ ‫كذب الظن لا‬
60
.‫فإذا ما أطعته جلب الـرحـــ … ـمــــــة عند المسير و الإرساء‬
A mere passing thought is a liar! There is no imam but the mind, who
guides by day and night.
If you obey it, it will bring mercy upon you whether you go or stay.
The poet censures whatever seems to him superstitious and irrational.
Al-Ma‘arri vigorously and consistently defended the power of the
intellect even when this brought charges of atheism, as he rejected all
traditions grounded in the authority of revelation,61 as in the follow-
ing lines:
59
See Abdurrahman Badawi, ‘MuÌammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi’, in M.M. Sharif
(ed.), A History of Muslim Philosophy, with Short Accounts of Other Disciplines and
the Modern Renaissance in Muslim Lands (Wiesbaden 1963), 434–9, particularly
p. 439.
60
61
There is a story related by al-Ghazali in his Sirr al-‘Alamin (The Secret of the
Worlds) which tells how Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri was summoned to appear in the
court of Ma‘rra on charges of atheism and for having claimed that the Divine mes-
sage can be comprehended and received through pure intellect and not prophecy.
Fifty men were sent to his home to bring him to trial, but before their arrived, al-
Ma‘arri was forewarned by some of his friends. When the men arrived, he asked
them to wait for him until he had finished his prayer. He then went to the mosque
and asked his servant to determine for him the position of Mars and in which sign
of the zodiac it was, and ordered him to put a mark on the ground corresponding
to the position of Mars and to tie his hand to the mark with a tent peg. He then
began a supplication, saying ‘Oh, Cause of Causes, Who has no beginning, the
Creator of creatures, I am in your shelter in which no one may be unjustly treated;
the vizier, the vizier!, Al-Ma‘arri kept repeating this supplication until a great crash
was heard in the place where the men who had come to arrest al-Ma‘arri were sit-
ting; the roof had collapsed and killed forty-eight of them; and the action against
al-Ma‘arri was cancelled when the news came of the death of the vizier, who had
brought the charge. Abu Îamid al-Ghazali, Sirr al-‘Alamin wa Kashf ma fi
al-Darayn, ed. by Muwaffaq al-Jabr, (Damascus 1995), 62–3.
Although there is a poem written by al- Ma‘arri referring to this incident (see
ibid., 63), and the author who relates it is al-Ghazali, we doubt its veracity. How-
ever, it supports the claim that the poet was officially charged with atheism.
369
.‫جاءت أحاديث إن صحت فإنَّ لها … شأن ًا و لكنَّ فيها ضعف إسنا ِد‬
62
.‫خير مشي ٍر ضمَّه النادي‬ ُ
ُ ‫فالعقل‬ … ‫فشــاور العقل و اترك غيره هدر ًا‬
The traditions we receive, if they be true, are indeed of great impor-
tance,
But the chain that transmits them to us is weak!
So then, consult the mind, ignore all else,
For the best of all councillors is the mind.
Among the claims that al-Ma‘arri believed should be rigorously exam-
ined was the assertion that certain exceptionally privileged individuals
had access to the unseen. He vigorously denied this, arguing that the
intellect has no means of gaining experience of that realm, which is
known by God alone. He thus refuted the possibility that men could
become prophets and receive revelations; for him the true prophet is
the man who calls others to enter upon the path of virtue through
the exercise of pure intellect, and prophets’ revelations should be
replaced by intellection:
63
.‫عقل نبي‬
ٍ ُّ‫ فكل‬،‫بعقل … فاسألنَّه‬
ٍ ‫ إن خصصت‬،ُّ‫إيُّها الغر‬
Hey you who are easily persuaded, you have been privileged with a
mind;
Turn to it then and consult it; each mind is the prophet of its posses-
sor.
Although some medieval Muslim philosophers suggested that it was
possible that the intellect could receive revelations as well as those
gifted with prophethood, and that reason had the ability to bring
mankind to acknowledge the truth, which was no different from that
provided by revelations,64 they dared not claim that the Qur’an
and the traditions were in any way false or criticize the prophets.
Al-Kindi, for example, asserts that because of the purification of their
souls, prophets were able to receive revelations and discover the truth
regarding certain dogmas such as pertained to God, the resurrection,
and so on.
The only medieval Muslim thinker who dared openly to declare
his opposition to prophecy and revelation was al-Razi, who was
‘against prophecy, against revelation, against all irrational trends of
thought’.65 There is no evidence that al-Ma‘arri explicitly acknowl-
62
63
Ibid., 2, 642.
64
Adamson, ‘Al-Kindi’, 38–45.
65
Badawi, ‘MuÌammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi’, 440.
370
edged the influence of al-Razi or alluded to him under the cloak of

dissimilation in his poetry, but their ideas are so similar in many
respects that it is highly probable that the poet knew and was affected
by his predecessor’s radical philosophy.
Having dared to reject the ability of the prophets to receive revela-
tion, he was severe in attacking all those who claimed the ability to
speak with authority about anything beyond the material world. The
enemies of mind, reason, and the intellect were al-Ma‘arri’s enemies,
who included astrologers. He condemned them in a long poem, from
which we select the following lines, which are also significant in pro-
viding a picture of street astrologers totally different from that of the
court astrologers. They are presented as mere quacks and charlatans
who prey on the public, falsely claiming to know the future in order
to scratch a living:
.‫منجم‬
ٌ ‫ظهر الطريــقِ يدُ الحيا ِة‬
َ … ‫يشــــــن‬
ْ ‫لو كان لي أ ٌمــر ُيطاوع لم‬
.‫فاجــــــر … ن ّْو ُء الضَّلالِ بـه ُمـــربٌّ مثجم‬
ٌ ‫بصير‬
ٌ ٌ
‫ أو‬،‫بخيـــــل‬ ‫أعمى‬
.‫يديـــر أسطــــــــرلا َبه و يرجِّم‬
ُ … ‫يغدو بزخـــــرفة يحاول مكســــــب ًا‬
.‫عرين تهجم‬
ٍ ِ
‫الوقــوف على‬ ‫الورهاء و هي مكانـــــها … عند‬
ُ ‫وقفت به‬
ْ
.‫متـــــــــــغيب … فاهتاج يكتـــب بالرُّقان و يعجم‬
ٌ ‫زوج لها‬
ٍ ‫سألته عن‬
ِ
.‫الغيوب مرجِّم‬ ِ ‫اسم أم‬
‫ُّك؟ إنني … بالظَّن عمَّـــا في‬ ُ ‫كو‬ ِ ‫اسم‬ ُ
ُ ‫ويقول ما‬
.‫فصيحـها و الأعجم‬
ُ ‫ـــــــــــه … وله يديــــن‬
ُ ‫رق بي َت‬ ْ َّ‫ُيولي بأنَّ الجن‬
ُ ‫تط‬
.‫طعام يؤجم‬
ٍ ُ
‫تأكل من‬ ‫المرء يكدح في البلاد وعرسـه … في المصر‬ ُ ‫و‬
.‫ت إليه الأنجم‬ َ
ْ ‫نبـــــــذ‬ ّ … ‫يكرُّ على معيش ِته الفتـــــــــى‬
‫إلا بـــــما‬ ِ ‫أفما‬
.‫غيـــــم بالنوائب يسجـــم‬
ٌ ُّ‫البسيطـــــة لجَّ ٌة … والجو‬
ُ ‫ُّص و‬ ُ ‫كيف التخل‬
66 ٌ
.‫ضلال منجم‬ ‫رشاد ناجم … بيـــــــن الأنام ولا‬ ٌ ‫فسد الزمانُ فـــــــــلا‬
If I were someone whose commands were obeyed, no astrologer would
ever corrupt the streets.
Whether he be a blind miser or sharp-eyed scoundrel, the naw‘ of liars
brings abundant rain!67
He makes his way seeking a living, carrying his lies, turns his astrolabe
and tells fortunes.
A foolish woman stops as if close to a lion’s den,
66
Al-Ma‘arri, Luzum, 2, 403–4.
67
Naw’ is the meteorological term used by Arabs to describe the effect of certain
stars or constellations when they appear at a particular season.
371
She asks him questions — her husband’s absent;

He starts writing amulets and babbles: ‘Your name, and your mother’s?
I will reveal what is hidden in the unseen.’
He swears that jinn knock on his door, submit to him, whether elo-
quent in Arabic or gibbering in foreign tongues.
He travels high and low, seeking a living, while at home his bride eats
food she loathes.
Can a man not gain a livelihood except by gathering what the stars
throw down?
There is a dilemma! The Earth is corrupted; the sky is hidden by
clouds of disaster!
The time is corrupt: no hope that lies will vanish or that guidance will
appear.
The astrologer’s claim to be able to reveal the unseen is not compat-
ible with reason, and al-Ma‘arri scorns it as false and unworthy of
respect. In the following lines the poet mocks those who trust astrol-
ogers and ignore their intellect, and criticizes those swindlers who feel
no sympathy towards their gullible clients who truly believe and trust
them:
.‫وأنت علــى سناها عاشي‬
َ ‫أوقدت نار ًا بافتكارك أظـــــــهرت … نهج ًا‬
.‫لمعاش‬
ِ ٌ
‫تحيل‬ ‫وجميــــــــع ذاك‬
ُ … ‫ ومعــــــز ٌم‬،‫ومنجــــم‬
ٌ ،‫متكهــــــن‬
ٌ
68
.‫ولنائـــل ُبسطت على الإرعاش‬
ٍ … ‫ســـــــائل من كبر ٍة‬
ٍ ُ‫ت يد‬ ِ ‫قد ُأ‬
ْ ‫رع َش‬
Your intellect is a flaming torch lit by your thought,
Yet you miss its blaze in the darkness.
Soothsayer, astrologer, charlatan, all live by trickery.
The hand of the questioner trembles from great age,
And over that trembling hand hovers the hand of the taker.
Al-Ma‘arri also ridiculed a number of beliefs introduced by Islam
regarding the upper realm that did not accord with his state as anti-
metaphysic. A case in point is that of shooting stars, which are
believed to be weapons used by the angels to defend the heavens from
the jinn who attempt to steal prohibited information regarding the
future fate of human beings:
ٍ
.‫محمد جعلت رجوما‬ ِ
‫لبــــــعث‬ … ‫و لســـت أقول إن الشهب يوما‬
69
.‫غرب فيك و لا تعــوِّد … على القول الجراءة و الهجوما‬
َ ْ
‫فامسك‬
68
69
Ibid., 2, 431.
372
I do not believe that the shooting stars became missiles aimed at devils
with the coming of MuÌammad!
So close your mouth and never dare to argue against this [opinion] or
attack it!
He also ridiculed the pre-Islamic belief that attributed the sunrise to
a mysterious power which stipulates that the angels beat the Sun to
force it to leave its resting place below the horizon:
70
.‫و فد كذبوا حتى على الشمس أنَّها … تُهان إذا حان الشروق و تُضرب‬
They fabricated lies even about the Sun, claiming that it does not rise
until it has suffered the humiliation of being beaten.
For al-Ma‘arri, reason must overcome natural desires or inclinations,
even though the wise man’s truth is called a lie, and the liar is believed
to be telling the truth:
.‫نهاني عقلي عن أمــــــو ٍر كثير ٍة … و طــبعي إليها بالغريز ِة جاذب‬
71
ِ
.‫كاذب‬ ‫تصديق‬
ُ ‫صادق … على خبر ٍة منَّا و‬
ٍ ‫ومما أدام الر ُّْز َء تكــذيب‬
My mind prevents me from wrongdoings though I am instinctively
drawn to them.
What makes things worse is that the wise are called liars, whilst the liars
are believed!
Al-Ma‘arri advises people to follow their intellect not because it leads
to some transcendent truth, but because it leads to wisdom and,
above all, virtue by the power of moral bias; and thus it should lead
those wise enough to the ‘Right Path’, the ‘Path of Virtue’.
Astrology also aroused al-Ma‘arri’s derision and condemnation
because of the kind of clients it attracted, namely men of authority
and women. We discussed above how al-Ma‘arri viewed politicians
and men of authority in general as evil and held them responsible for
misleading and abusing their subjects.
If the support and encouragement the court astrologers of medieval
times received from men of authority were prominent among the
reasons that allowed the discipline to flourish, women were their
prime source of income sustaining street astrologers and were thus of
key importance for the flourishing of astrology at the popular level.
For al-Ma‘arri it was the poor level of women’s faculty of reason that
led them to believe in astrology’s deceitful pretensions. Women are
70
Ibid., 1, 88.
71
Ibid., 143.
373
therefore portrayed as easily duped into believing the astrologers’

untrustworthy claim to know the future:
َ ‫أخفَ ْي‬
.‫ت إبرازا‬ ْ ‫يق لما‬ ُ ِ‫ … فما َيط‬،‫عـه‬َ ‫لتس َم‬
َ ‫تصغين إلى حــــــــا ٍز‬
ّ ‫لا‬
72 ِ
.‫ِّسوان أحرازا‬ ‫ب للن‬ َ ‫كيف‬
ُ ‫ … فظلَّ يك ُت‬،‫أمكــ َن ُه‬ َ ٍ
‫قوت‬ ‫إحـــــراز‬
َ ‫أراد‬
َ
Do not listen to a quack who cannot reveal even something you hide
from him.
All he wants is to earn a living by any means, so he keeps deceiving
women with his amulets.
Since women’s intelligence was low, anything they believed to be true
could be discounted as false. Their foolish and misguided desire to
know the future should not surprise anyone:
73 ِ ‫بم ْن ِج‬
.‫مات‬ ُ ِ‫ـــن من الضَّلال‬
َ ‫فلس‬ ٍ
ْ … ‫سائلات‬ ‫جئـــــــن المنجِّم‬
َ ْ
‫وإن‬
To see them seeking the advice of an astrologer is not surprising; they
are confined within the sphere of those who go astray.
Sometimes, however, he seems to feel pity for those who are victim-
ized by unscrupulous quacks:
‫عائش من ده ِره؟‬
ِ ‫ كم هو‬:‫سألت منجمها عن الطفل الذي … في المهد‬
74
!‫ــــــمام وليدَ ها في شه ِره‬
ُ ِ ‫ليأخ َذ درهـــــمـ ًا … وأتى‬
‫الح‬ ً :‫فأجابها‬
ُ ‫مائة‬
She asked her astrologer about the child lying in his cot, ‘How long
shall he live?’
He replied, ‘One hundred’, thus naming his fee, Yet death took her
child that very month.
Al-Ma‘arri the Deist
Central to al-Ma‘arri’s opposition to astrology was his intense scepti-

cism regarding the metaphysical. For him, nothing existed outside the
material world but God, who was unknowable and beyond enquiry.
Accordingly, al-Ma‘arri rejected, for example, the existence of angels
and covertly ridiculed those who believed in them, as the open expres-
sion of such an opinion would have invited persecution by the ortho-
dox. Nicholson notes that one of the ‘Ala’ian devices consists in put-
ting forward an orthodox statement which is immediately discredited
72
Ibid., 625.
73
Ibid., 236.
74
Ibid., 570.
374
by the sequel, and reminds us that religious dissimulation (taqiyya) is

well understood by Muslims; almost every zindiq (freethinker)
employed it in self-defence, and it was cultivated as a fine art.75 This
dissimulation was necessary if al-Ma‘arri was to escape the wrath of
the gatekeepers of religious orthodoxy. It allowed him to cloak his
real opinions in such a way that they would be apparent to the dis-
cerning reader:
.‫لحم و لا دم‬
ٍ ‫لست أنفي عن قــــــــدرة الله … أشباح ضيا ٍء بغير‬
76
ٍ ‫فهـــــــلموا في ِح ْن ِد‬
.‫س نتصادم‬ ُ … ‫وبصير الأقوام مثـــلي أعمى‬
I do not deny Allah’s power to create luminous spirits not made of flesh
and blood!
Those who have sight are blind like me, so let us gather in the darkness
and blunder against one another.
The implication here is that God’s power to create angels, or any
other phenomenon, is undeniable; after all, the Divine power is limit-
less. Yet this statement is presented in an ironic tone; he himself does
not believe in ‘luminous spirits’ for lack of evidence and, moreover,
he suggests that those who do believe, though blessed with sight, are
intellectually blind. Thus, both he and the sighted are disabled, but
his physical blindness is a lesser disability compared to mental blind-
ness. However, since such questions are incapable of certain resolu-
tion they form part of the darkness of the unknowable in which the
blind sceptic and the sighted believer in angels and revelations blun-
der into one another. But the man who blindly follows a tradition
that is contradicted by reason is not, according to al-Ma‘arri, on the
right path.
As noted above, al-Ma‘arri’s concept of the Right Path does not
have a conventionally religious meaning, since it is the path of vir-
tue and not the path that leads to Paradise in the hereafter. Al-
Ma‘arri, the materialist, was sceptical concerning the Day of Resur-
rection. He could not accept the idea that a corpse could be restored
to life:
77
.‫لكن لا ُيعاد له سبك‬
ْ ‫زجاج و‬
ٌ ِ
… ‫ كأنَّنا‬،‫الزمان‬ ‫ريب‬
ُ ‫يحط ُِّمنا‬
Time destroys us as if we were glasses that, once shattered, cannot be
reassembled.
75
76
77
Ibid., 216.
375
His denial of the existence of a metaphysical world causes us to ques-

tion the state of his faith: was he a believer in God or a zindiq, a
theist or an atheist?
In accusing the philosophers of atheism, al-Ghazali (1058–1111),
in his Tahafut al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers),
identifies three main groups of philosophical schools: the materialists
(dahriyun), the naturalists or deists (†abi‘iyun) and the theists
(ilahiyun).78 The first group, the materialists, is among the earliest
philosophers. They deny the existence of a creator of the world and
believe in the immortality of the world that exists of itself, and that
everlasting animals have come from the seed of animals; thus they
conceive of a self-subsisting system that has existed eternally and
operates and develops by itself forever. These are, according to al-
Ghazali, the zanadiqa and irreligious people. The second group of
philosophers is the naturalists or deists, who believe strongly that the
perfection of the world is evidence of a wise Creator or Deity who
is aware of the purpose and aims of the things He has created. Yet,
they reject the spirituality and immortality of the human soul. Thus,
in their view ‘the soul dies and does not return to life, and they deny
the future life, Heaven, Hell, resurrection and judgment; there does
not remain, they hold, any reward for obedience or any punishment
for sin’.79 Al-Ghazali also judged this group of philosophers to be
unbelievers on the basis that though they believe in God and His
attributes, they deny the Last Day. As for the Greek philosophers,
Socrates, his pupil Plato, and Plato’s pupil Aristotle, along with the
Muslim philosophers who were influenced by Aristotle’s thought,
namely al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali identifies them as theists.
He charges this group of philosophers with infidelity on three
accounts: (1) their belief in the eternity and everlastingness of the
world; (2) their denial of God’s knowledge either of the universals
or of the particulars; and finally (3) their denial of bodily resurrec-
tion.
As al-Ma‘arri was not a systematic thinker but an independently-
minded poet, he cannot be confined to any one school of philosophy.
He seems to have been familiar with ancient Greek philosophy and
with the thought of his Muslim predecessors and contemporaries, but
his philosophy was informed as much by his own experience as by
78
See Abu Îamid al-Ghazali, Tahafut al-Falasifa, ed. Muris al-Yasu‘i (Beirut
1962).
79
W. Montgomery Watt (trans.), The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazali (Oxford
1994), 31.
376
his reading. We can say, however, that he had much in common with
al-Ghazali’s deists, in that he believed in the existence of God as
compatible with reason but rejected any form of religion. This view
led the orthodox to accuse him of atheism. Nicholson comments:
‘Partly on rational grounds and partly, perhaps, by instinct Ma‘arri
believed in the existence of a divine Creator.’80 However, because in
Islam, faith involves belief in the messengers of God and what was
revealed through them, he was accused of being a zindiq.
Thus, he ridiculed the three revealed religions, describing their
books as collections of mere fables fabricated by the ancients. Here
the cloak of dissimulation is discarded:
ُ
.‫إنجيل‬ ‫كفر و أنبا ٌء تقصُّ و ُفر … قانٌ ينصُّ و تورا ٌة و‬
ٌ ‫دين و‬ٌ
81
‫فـــهل تفرد يوم ًا بالهدى جيل؟‬
ْ … ‫جيل أبــاطيل ُيدانُ بـها‬
ٍ ِّ‫في كل‬
Faith and infidelity, and tales that are told, and a Qurˆan that is recited
and a Torah and a Gospel,
Lies are believed in every generation; and was any generation ever the
sole follower of the right path?
Although al-Kindi ‘wrote numerous “controversial” works, in which
he attacked both doctrines of other faiths and doctrines held by
theologians of Islam’,82 he did not dare to attack Islam itself. Rather,
he used philosophy ‘to defend and expound true theological doc-
trines, such as the Muslim belief in absolute [and] rigorous
monotheism’.83 Al-Ma‘arri, however, like his master al-Razi, was not
afraid to explicitly attack Islam alongside other religions. The main
reason al-Ma‘arri ridicules all forms of religion is that, and here he
precisely echoes al-Razi, they generate hatred between people of dif-
ferent religious ideologies:84
85
.‫إنّ الشرائع القت بيننا إحن ًا … وأورثتنا أفانين العداوات‬
Religions breed hatred amongst us and bequeath to us all manner of
enmities.
80
81
82
83
Ibid., 45.
84
Al-Razi not only criticises religions, including Islam, on the basis that they
generate hatred between nations professing different religions, he also prefers scien-
tific books over revealed scriptures, as the truths in the former are reached through
the use of reason. See Badawi, ‘MuÌammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi’, 446.
85
377
Thus, from the ‘Ala’ian perspective, the wise man rejects the author-
ity of all revelations:
86
.‫بالمذاهب و ازدراها‬
ِ َ
‫تهاون‬ … ‫الحصيف إلى ِح َجا ُه‬
ُ ‫رجع‬
َ ‫إذا‬
When the wise man consults his intellect he will reject all [religious]
doctrines and ridicule them!
As Nicholson puts it, ‘his whole creed might be expressed in some
such formula as “God, the Creator, is One: fear and obey Him”’.87
Formally, this demonstrates that al-Ma‘arri was no zindiq, but it is a
purely intellectual formulation that tells us nothing about the nature
of God except His unity and takes for granted that to obey Him means
to follow the path of virtue, relying solely on reason. Further than this,
al-Ma‘arri was not prepared to go. Nicholson explains: ‘Ma‘arri […]
believes in a Creator, whom he identifies with Allah. He emphatically
repudiates atheism … while it is necessary to have an intelligent belief
in the Supreme Being, speculation concerning His essence and attrib-
utes is futile, since the mind cannot comprehend them’.88
If Nicholson is right, and al-Ma‘arri’s creed was as he states, then
God must have at least two attributes: He must be pure rationality,
pure intellect, and He must also be perfectly virtuous. But, here al-
Ma‘arri, like so many others, encounters the problem of evil and
suffering in a world created by a virtuous, rational and benevolent
Deity. The problem is not solved by removing God from His crea-
tion by making Him merely a First Cause who absents himself after
setting the universe in motion. This problem tormented al-Ma‘arri
throughout his life.
It was his attempt to comprehend concepts such as ‘God’, ‘nature’,
‘universe’, ‘mankind’, ‘life’, ‘death’ and the ‘hereafter’ and to bring
together this network of interlocking and essentially mysterious
assumptions and subsume them into a unity through the faculty of
the mind that gave rise to his anguish. A person of faith would argue
that the poet’s starving soul was crying out for nourishment but found
only food fit for the intellect. ™aha Îusain asserts that if al-Ma‘arri
had been either an ordinary believer who submitted to a living God
and accordingly followed a conventional religious path, or a non-
believer who firmly denied the existence of God he would not have
suffered this state of ambiguity. He could not bring himself not to
86
Ibid., 2, 622.
87
88
Ibid., 158–9.
378
deny that the universe must have been created by a Wise Creator, yet
was unable to reconcile this belief with the reality of a troubled and
chaotic world. The very processes by which life is sustained appalled
him, as they seemed to have nothing to do with either reason or vir-
tue. He expressed himself on this subject with bitter irony:
89
.‫حكيم‬
ٍ ‫صنع‬
ُ ‫الخلق‬
َ َّ‫فساد و كونٌ حادثان كلاهما … شهيدٌ بأن‬
ٌ
The repetition of corruption and regeneration tells us that the world is
indeed the creation of a Wise God.
It is possible to see deism as an unsatisfactory compromise between
belief and non-belief, and al-Ma‘arri accepted the existence of God
but rejected His revelations, eager to attain the truth yet scornful of
any method other than reason, which he acknowledged was inade-
quate to deal with the metaphysical realm of the God in whom he
believed. This is the third imprisonment which he referred to when
complaining that ‘his soul was trapped in his vile body’, the prison
that Îusain called ‘the philosophical prison’.90 But, while the tension
of these contradictions caused him pain it also made him unique
among Arab poets. His works are still studied and enjoyed by schol-
ars in both the West and the East. Nicholson comments:
The words of the old blind poet, who died in Syria eight hundred and
sixty years ago, ring out today as a challenge to deep and irreconcilable
antagonisms in the nature of mankind. Is life to be desired or death? Is
the world good or evil? … What is the truth about religion? Does it
come to us from God, as the orthodox pretend? Are we to follow
authority and tradition or reason or conscience? Such are some of the
reflections with which Ma‘arri concerns himself.91
Before discussing al-Ma‘arri’s references to astrology, it will be use-
ful to examine his view on the matter of free will and predestination,
as the debate on this question was of the greatest importance in medi-
eval Islam, being among the prominent factors that helped to revive
astrology and forced its antagonists to be more tolerant of its claims.
Al-Ma‘arri and Divine Fate
The issue of freedom and responsibility held great appeal for poets
who claimed that dahr (fate), Satan or the orbiting spheres were the
89
90
See ™aha Îusain, Ma‘a Abi al-‘Ala’ fi Sijnihi (Cairo 1956), 32–50.
91
379
cause of their misfortune, refusing to acknowledge their own faults

and being particularly reluctant to attribute to God responsibility for
the world’s evil. Rejecting this deterministic view, some medieval phi-
losophers held man responsible for all his deeds. Al-Farabi asserts that
‘voluntarily choosing good and evil, by contrast, is directly the prov-
ince of the human will’.92 In consequence, the attainment of happi-
ness is subject to man’s will: through ikhtiyar (choice), ‘man actually
chooses to behave in a manner that is moral or immoral, and it is
through his choice that man can seek or not seek happiness’.93
Al-Ma‘arri was very concerned with the question of human free-
dom. He refers to the arguments concerning free will and predestina-
tion in the following lines:
.‫َّعون … إنّا على ما أردنــــــــــا ُقــدُ ْر‬ ٌ ‫جرى ُخ ُل‬
َ ‫ف و ادَّعى المد‬
.‫الجـــدُ ْر‬
ُ ‫معاشر لا نستطيـــع … بل نحن مثل الرُّبا و‬
ُ ‫و قالت‬
94
َ ‫صفو الحيـــــــــاة … و ذلـــك في َف َلـ‬
ٍ ‫ـــــ‬
.‫ك لم يــــدر‬ َ ُ
‫وك ٌل يؤمل‬
There was a debate: some argued that our will is free;
Others said no – we are like hills and walls.
All dream of a peaceful life; something that revolves in no orbiting
sphere.
The proponents of free will and of determinism alike, dream of a
peaceful life. But, for al-Ma‘arri this is a vain hope, which no heav-
enly influence can realize. He argues that, whatever the proponents
and opponents of free will may say, and whether or not man is
responsible for his bad deeds, a peaceful life is not possible in this
world. Besides being a pessimist, he was a determinist who did not
believe that man is privileged with free will. In his view free will is an
illusion, as God has preordained the course of events occurring in the
universe since the creation, determining not only the major aspects
of human fate but the smallest details:
.‫ما باختياري ميلادي و لا هرمي … ولا حياتي فهل لي بعد تخيير‬
.‫قض تسيير‬
َ ‫مسير إذا لم ُي‬
َ ‫ولا إقامــــــــة إلا عن يدي قد ٍر … ولا‬
I did not choose my birth, my life, or my old age.
Do any choices still remain to me? There is no staying or going that is
not preordained.
92
Reisman, ‘Al-Farabi’, 63.
93
Ibid.
94
380
So, unlike the majority of medieval poets, who could not bring them-
selves to attribute the world’s misfortunes to God, or did not dare to
do so, al-Ma‘arri explicitly attributes this responsibility to God, whose
subjects he views as mere puppets absolutely dependent on His pre-
destination:
95
.‫وعاد عليهم في تصرفهم سلبا‬
َ َ ‫أوجب‬
… ‫خلق ُه‬ َ ‫قضاء الل ِه‬
َ ‫رأيت‬
I believe that God has foreordained the fate of all his creatures; it
negates their freedom and makes them passive.
Al-Ma‘arri thus did not attribute human destiny to the power of fate,
as some medieval poets did, to escape criticism by the orthodox
authorities. Although his view of dahr is similar to that of jahili ide-
ology, in that it is eternal and infinite, he rejects the idea that it causes
destruction and brings annihilation. In his Risalat al-Ghufran he com-
ments on the nature of time as a dimension:
I have given a definition that well deserves to have been anticipated,
though I never heard it before, namely that Time is a thing whereof
the least part is capable of enclosing all objects of perception. In this
respect it is the contrary of Space, because the least part of the latter
cannot enclose a thing in the same way as a vessel encloses its contents.96
If fate cannot be blamed for the evils that befall mankind, and
God, in al-Ma‘arri’s view as a methodical determinist, is ultimately
responsible for the evils man commits, then mankind cannot be
blamed or justly punished, since we have no free will. On this matter
he states that: ‘if God wills the good only, then there are only two
explanations for the existence of evil in life; either He has prior
knowledge of it, which means He allows it to happen, and thus evil
should be attributed to Him or that it exists unwilled by God. In this
case He is no different from a weak prince who cannot prevent what
95
Ibid., 113.
96
Al-Ma‘arri, Risalat al-Ghufran, cited in Nicholson, Studies, 156.
This idea is expressed in his poetry: with regard to the nature of time he seems
to admit the possibility of eternal recurrence:
.‫قديم … و زمانٌ على الزمانِ تقادم‬ ٌ ‫خالق لا يشكُّ فيه‬
ٌ
.‫آدم على إثـــــــــ ِر آدم‬ َ
ُ ‫آدم هذا … قبله‬
ُ ‫يكون‬َ ‫جائ ٌز أن‬
I believe in a Creator whose existence is undeniable, and in an everlasting
Time.
It might be that there was an Adam before this Adam who will be followed by
another Adam.
381
he does not want to happen in his province’.97 It follows that, as

human beings have no choice in the matter of evil then punishment
for sin man is obliged to commit cannot be justified:
ُ
.‫يفعـــل‬ ٌ ‫إن كان من فعل الكبائر مجبر ًا … فعقابه‬
‫ظلم على ما‬
98 ُ
.‫تجعل‬ ‫الحداد البض منها‬
َ َّ‫عالم … أن‬
ٌ َ
‫المعادن‬ ‫و الله إذ خلــــــق‬
If he who commits sins is determined; to punish him for so doing is
injustice!
When God created metals He knew, out of them sharp swords would
be made.
Al-Ma‘arri’s determinism led him to reject the basic principles of
astrology, most importantly the claim to be able to avert an evil des-
tiny. If fate is divinely determined, free will is an illusion and choice
is meaningless. As a result, how could any astrologer claim that he is
able to alter the future?
Al-Ma‘arri acknowledges that at the human level we must behave
as if we had free will and choose to do good rather than evil. Since
reason tells us that good is to be preferred to evil, he asserts that the
only truth that can be attained with certainty from the unseen world,
through the exercise of reason, is that no one will ever regret a virtu-
ous act:
.‫لست أدري و لا المنجم يدري ما يريـد القضاء بالإنسان‬
.‫الغيب فيه مثل العيان‬
َ ‫غير أني أقول قـــول محقٍ قد يري‬
99
.‫عواقب الإحسان‬
ُ ‫لجميــــل‬
ٍ ‫إنّ من كان محـــــسن ًا ما بكته‬
Neither I nor the astrologer knows what fate has in store for mankind.
But as I can see the unseen as clearly as if it were visible,
I can say with certainty that no one will ever regret doing good.
Here the poet draws on his experience in life and distils a few words
of wisdom. He makes an ironic claim to be able to see the unseen
although he is blind, thus denying that either he or the astrologer can
foresee future events. The second line, however, can also be read as
affirming that he has access to the world of the mind, which is unseen
by those who do not use their intellect, and his mind yields a moral
truth: that whatever fate may bring, one can predict that ‘no one will
ever regret doing good’.
97
Ibn Îajar, ‘Lisan al-Mizan’, in ™aha Îusain et al. (eds), Athar, 316.
98
Ibid., 2, 273.
99
382
While it is good for us to believe that we are choosing to act

virtuously, al-Ma‘arri advises acceptance of the vicissitudes of life,
such as his own blindness and bereavement, since they are inescap-
able:
ْ ‫يا أيُّها المضمر هــــمَّ ًا لا تُهم … إنَّك‬
.‫إن ت ُْقدَ ر لك الحمَّى تحم‬
ّ
.‫جف القلم‬ ‫الع َلم … كيف توقيك و قد‬
َ ‫و لو علوت شاهق ًا مـــن‬
100
.‫َّام الصحاح و الس ََّقم‬
ُ ‫و ُخطَّ أي‬
Hey you burdened with anxiety – do not worry! If you are fated to
have a fever then a fever you will have.
Flee if you can to the highest mountaintop, how will you avoid your
fate once the Pen is dry?
The days of health and sickness are already written.
Human life and the nature of the world are such that fortune must
be followed by misfortune and all our privileges will be taken from
us sooner or later. God controls all destinies, so why seek to predict
the future?
.‫لجمع الدَّه ِر تفريقا‬
101
ِ َّ‫نحس و إن‬
ٌ … ‫يتبعه‬
ُ َ‫الله إنَّ السعد‬
َ ‫فراقب‬
ْ
Fear God; all fortunes are followed by misfortunes; whatever Time has
gathered will inevitably be scattered.
Given al-Ma‘arri’s uncompromising determinism, it is not surprising
that he should ridicule astrologers, who strive to unveil the secrets of
the future, which God alone has knowledge of:
ُ ‫كأن َّ منجمَّ الأقــــوام أعــمى … لديه الص ُّْح‬
.‫ـــــف يقرؤها بلمس‬
.‫العنـــــاء فكم يعاني … سطــــــور ًا عاد كاتبها بطمس‬
ُ ‫لقد طال‬
.‫أمـــر … فما تخليـــــك من قم ٍر و شمس‬
102
ٌ ‫ومــهما كان في دنياك‬
The astrologer is like a blind man reading scrolls with his fingertips!103
Hard is his labour; how long will he agonise over lines whose writer
penned them in code?
Whatever be your fate, your life will never be free of Sun and Moon.
100
Ibid., 272–3.
101
102
Ibid., 55.
103
It is interesting that the poet seems to be referring to the method of reading
used by blind people of that time, which was apparently similar to braille. Further
investigation is needed regarding this matter. See also al-Jundi’s remark in al-Jami‘,
183–4.
383
The astrologer is blind because his mind is dark. He is like some-

one who tries to decipher an encoded document by the sense of touch
which is a fruitless endeavour. In the ‘Ala’ian poetic lexicon, the Sun
and the Moon do not indicate parents, lovers, or men of authority;
the conventional meanings assigned by other poets. Rather, they sig-
nify the inevitable vicissitudes of life, its joys and sorrows. For al-
Ma‘arri, to challenge fate or seek to escape one’s preordained destiny
is futile; the only wise course is to submit to whatever God has
decreed:
.‫رددت إلى ملــــــيك الحق أمري … فلــــــم أسأل متى يقع الكسوف‬
104
.‫ام الفيلسوف‬
ِ ‫ـــــــم‬
َ ‫بالح‬ ِ ‫وج َل‬
ِ ‫وع‬
ُ … ‫فكم سلــــــــم الجهول من المنايا‬
I submit my destiny to the Lord of the Truth, so the timing of the
eclipse does not concern me.
Many an ignorant man has escaped death, while the philosopher was
surprised by it!
Al-Ma‘arri mocked not only those who were eager to know the hid-
den future regarding their destiny in this world and those who
claimed to be able to reveal it, but also the inability of astrology to
say anything about the hereafter. He asks astrologers to discover in
the stars the truth about life after death and whether the doctrine of
the resurrection is true or false:
.‫خذ المرآة و استخـــــبر نجوم ًا … ت ُِمرُّ بمطعم الأري المشور‬
105
ٍ
.‫ارتياب … ولكــن لا تدل على النشور‬ ‫تدل على الحمام بــــلا‬
Take your astrolabe and ask the stars that make the taste of honey sour.
They tell of death, no doubt, but about resurrection they are dumb.
Al-Ma‘arri then turns to mock the stars themselves for being unable
to reveal any truths about the hereafter:
ِ ‫وأشر‬
.‫ت للحكما ِء كلَّ ُم َشــا ِر‬ ْ … ‫شهب إنَّـــــــــك في السما ِء قديم ٌة‬
ُ ‫يا‬
106
.‫عـــــــن موت يكون منجم ًا … أ فتخبرين بحادث الإنشــــار‬
ْ ِ ‫أخبر‬
‫ت‬ ْ
O stars, you have been in the heavens for so long, you used to guide
wise men whenever they consulted you.
You used to tell an astrologer when a death would happen, will you
speak, then, about the resurrection?
104
105
Ibid., 1, 553.
106
Ibid., 583.
384
As we have seen, al-Ma‘arri denies the possibility of bodily resurrec-

tion, but he was less sure about whether the soul survived death, and
in what form it might do so. Al-Razi was far more definite; he was
convinced that death annihilated body and soul. We should not hope
for salvation or dread damnation. Men should not fear death, as ‘after
death nothing comes to man’.107
Al-Ma‘arri’s ironic questioning of the stars should be seen in the
context of the debate concerning the heavenly bodies’ ability to rea-
son, feel and comprehend like human beings; a matter that was for
long a contentious issue among medieval Muslim philosophers.
The emanation theory propounded by al-Farabi and others, most
notably Ibn Sina, explained the structure of the cosmos in the follow-
ing terms: the intellect of the First Cause, here meaning God, ema-
nates the incorporeal being of the first intellect, which is associated
with the first heaven, identified as the outer sphere of the universe,
which in turn produces the second intellect, which is associated with
the sphere of the fixed stars, which produces the substantiation of a
soul and body for the next stratum. Each intellect thereafter is associ-
ated with one of the seven planets known at the time until we reach
the Active or Agent Intellect (al-‘aql al-fa‘‘al), which governs the
world of generation and corruption, namely, the four elements, min-
erals, plants, and non-rational and rational animals. In accordance
with this process of emanation, the stars were thought to be agents
capable of performing what had been ordained for them by the divine
intellect of the First Cause. Al-Farabi regarded the heavenly bodies as
having souls and an intellect ‘more perfect than the human intellect’.108
Ibn Rushd argued that because the celestial bodies perform organised
motions in harmony with one another they possess intelligence. Al-
Kindi argued for the validity of astrology: he believed that the
motions of the heavenly bodies are an instrument by which God
brings about whatsoever He wills in the sublunary realm; thus when
we practice astrology, we are merely predicting the workings of divine
providence.109
For al-Ma‘arri the question whether the stars are agents capable
of thought was not a matter of great concern, but he was interested
in the connection between intelligence and feeling, since to live in
this world as a being endowed with intellect inevitably brings suffer-
ing:
107
Badawi, ‘MuÌammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi’, 448.
108
Reisman, ‘Al-Farabi’, 60.
109
385
ُ
.‫الكسوف‬ ‫يقع‬
ُ ‫أرقب متى‬
ْ ‫لقد عشت الكثير من الليالي … ولم‬
ُ
.‫الكسوف‬ ‫حين ُيدْ ِر ُكها‬
َ ‫فتعلم‬
ُ ٌ
… ‫عقل‬ ‫لطــــوالع الأقما ِر‬
ِ ‫فهل‬
110 ُ
‫بــــلاء أو تذوَّق أو تسوف؟‬
ً … ‫أتسمـــع أو تعاين أو تعاني‬
I have lived a great many nights and never concerned myself with ques-
tions such as when the eclipse is going to happen.
Do the stars have minds, so they can perceive when they will be afflicted
with an eclipse?
Do they hear, see, suffer pain, have a sense of taste? Are they able to
say ‘This will come to pass’?
He developed this notion in lines that compare human beings, even
the most illustrious, unfavourably with the stars, and again enjoins
mankind to be virtuous and, particularly, charitable:
.‫استحـــي من شمــس النهار ومن … قمر الدجى و نجومـه الزهـــــر‬
.‫يجــــرين في الفـــلك المــدار بإذن … اللـــــه و لا يخشـين من بهــــر‬
.‫و لهن بالتعظــيم فـــي خلـــــــــدي … أولى و أجدر مـن بنـــي فهـــــر‬
.‫ … الشهب كابيـــــــــة مــع الدهـــر‬:‫سبحان خالقــــهن لســـت أقـــــول‬
.‫حـجـــى … نجـــــس ًا يمزن به مــن الطــهر‬
ً ‫ هل رزقـــــن‬:‫لا بل أفكر‬
.‫أم هل لأنثــاها الحصـــان بــــذي … التذكير من قربى و مـن صــهر‬
.‫فبرئت من غــــــــا ٍو أخي سفــــ ٍه … متمـــــــــر ٍد في السر و الجـــهر‬
.‫ألغــى صلاة العصـــر محتقــــر ًا … ورمـــى وراء الظهر بالعـــصر‬
.‫ و لــو … نـــــــــزر ًا و لا تصرفه بالكهـر‬،‫ إن عراك‬،‫فامنح ضعيفك‬
111
.‫وارفــــع له شقـــــراء يرمح فـي … دهـــــــــــــماء مثل تــأرن المهر‬
I feel shame in the presence of the Sun of the day, the Moon of the
night and the luminous stars.
They run in the orbiting sphere, by God’s will, and have no fear of Mars.
I hold them in high esteem and place them even above the Banu Fihr.112
Praised be their Creator! I do not say that Time will bring them to an end.
No — but I wonder, are they endowed with mind so that they can
distinguish filth from cleanliness?
Are their females bonded in kinship or in marriage with their males?
I renounce the man who goes astray in his private and his public life,
110
111
Ibid., 1, 596.
112
The tribe from which Prophet MuÌammad was descended.
386
Who scorns the afternoon prayer and casts the noon prayer behind his
back.
Give the poor man alms, however small, even if it irks you.
But raise high for him in the darkness a flame that leaps like a colt.
Al-Ma‘arri’s moral injunctions are cloaked in conventional pieties
designed to convince the devout of his good faith, but he is sure of his
ground here: in ‘the moral domain he reaches a positive goal: virtue is
not in doubt, whatever else may be’.113 His opinions appear to be quite
orthodox: he esteems the heavenly bodies as signs of the Creator’s ulti-
mate power; he glorifies their Creator, and condemns those who scorn
their religious duties. However, he cannot resist a satirical dig at those
who believe that the stars are endowed with feeling and intelligence and
can form relationships. But he is careful to avoid a definite statement
and disguises his attack by posing a number of questions which he knew
reflected the controversies and speculations of his own time.
Sometimes the satirical tone is more blatant, as here, where there
is a bitter irony in his introduction of religious disputes, which he
believed were an inevitable evil flowing from the uncritical following
of traditions:
.‫يعلم‬
ُ ‫كالعالم الهاوي ُيحسُّ و‬
ِ … ‫العالم العالي برأي معــــــاش ٍر‬
َ
.‫ وأنَّها تتكل َُّم‬،‫العقول‬ ‫ـــــق‬
ُ ‫تس‬ ِ … ‫سيــــــاراته‬
ّ ‫زعمت رجال أن‬
114
.‫الكواكب مث ُلنا في دينــها … لا يتفـــــــــقن فهائدٌ أو مسلم‬
ُ ْ
‫فهل‬
The world high above us, in some people’s opinion, feels and reasons
like the fallen world.
Some have claimed that the planets have bright minds and can even speak.
So, do the planets, like us, argue and never agree on the matter of
religion; are some Jews, others Muslims?
If, on the other hand, the heavenly bodies do not feel or think, they
are more fortunate than mankind, as intelligence and sensitivity inev-
itably bring suffering, which afflicts the philosopher more acutely
than other men:
115
.‫بعاقل … هنَّأت ُُه ألاَّ ُي ِحسَّ ُمحاقا‬
ٍ ‫لو صحَّ أنَّ البدر ليس‬
If it is true that the Moon has no intellect, I would congratulate him
then, for he cannot suffer muÌaq.116
113
114
115
Ibid., 200.
116
The phase when the moon dwindles to a sliver. The nights in which the
387
While all sentient beings may suffer physical pain, only beings
endowed with a mind suffer the pain caused by the vicissitudes of life
in a troubled and unjust world and by the knowledge of their own
mortality. The more ignorant a man is, the less he is burdened by the
questions that plague the philosophers. The following lines partly
address the question of the prevalence of injustice; al-Ma‘arri here
endows the stars with human reason, but the purpose of the satirical,
ironic tone is to ponder whether injustice is part of the nature of the
cosmos:
.‫تسأم الرَّحل‬
ُ ‫عزَّ ربُّ النجــوم تـســ … ـري و لا‬
ُ ‫أينـــــــــام الس‬
.‫ ْأم … هو بالغمض مااكتـحل‬،‫ِّماك‬
.‫ وإن … كان في الخي ِر ذا محـل‬،‫جهِ ل المشتري‬
117
.‫ذنب أصـــــــــابه … فســـــــــما فـوقه زحل‬
ٍ َّ‫أي‬
Praised be the Lord of the Stars, which are always on the move and
never weary of travelling!
But I ask myself, does bright Simak sleep, or has it never slept a wink?
Jupiter is wondering, though his good deeds are well known, what fault
did he commit that Saturn is raised above him?
These apparently simple lines contain a wealth of meaning. Al-Ma‘arri
first pretends to be orthodox by praising God, he then asks whether
the stars (he means planets here) ever, like people, grow weary of their
constant journey through the heavens. He then wonders whether
Simak sleeps, since its brilliance is never dimmed. Jupiter, given a
human personality, wonders why malignant Saturn should be raised
above him in the spheres. Here al-Ma‘arri, in a concise image, medi-
ates on why, in this universe created by the Lord of the Stars, the
good suffer injustice and the bad prosper. Jupiter is given a mind to
articulate a question posed by the poet that implies that it is not the
stars that are to blame for injustice, and, by extending the metaphor,
it is not mankind either. The implication is that the one who is ulti-
mately responsible, according to al-Ma‘arri, is their Creator.
On another occasion he conceals himself in his cloak of dissimula-
tion so that only the reader who understands the poet’s use of savage
irony can grasp his meaning. Since he does not really believe that
moon is muÌaq were considered unfavourable by the Arabs. See Abu ‘Ali AÌmad
ibn MuÌammad al-Marzuqi, Al-Azmina wa al-Amkina (2 vols, Beirut 2002),
1, 254.
117
Al- Ma‘arri, Luzum, 2, 374.
388
either Mars or Saturn can be blamed, he manages to say the unsay-

able by affirming the negative; the implication is precisely the same
as in the previous example:
.‫دموعي لا تجيب على الرزايــا … ولولا ذاك ما فتئت سجوما‬
.‫حتم … ولا تظـــهر لحادثة وجوما‬ٌ ‫رضى بقضــاء ربك فهو‬ ً
118 َ
.‫تـلم الَّذي َخل َق النُّجوما‬
ْ ‫ولم ُزحلا أو المــــــــريخ فيها … ولا‬
ْ
My tears no longer respond to the calamity that befell me, otherwise
they would fall in abundance without cease.
They no longer fall because I am submitting to what your God deter-
mined for me; it is an absolute, therefore never be shocked by a disaster.
Blame Saturn, blame Mars, but never blame the One who created the
stars!
Yet elsewhere he seems to drop the cloak and state his opinion unam-
biguously:
.‫الكواكب‬
ِ
119
‫زعيم‬
ِ ‫كواكب سبع ٍة … وما هو إلا من‬
َ ‫نع من‬ ِ ‫يقولون‬
ٌ ‫ص‬
They are claiming that it [fate] results from the actions of seven planets;
indeed it is nothing but the act of the Commander of the planets.
In a line that recalls the poet’s shame before the sun, moon and stars,
he claims that if the celestial bodies were endowed with intellect they
would be shocked and dismayed by human conduct:
120
.‫ب‬
ُ ‫يتعج‬
ّ ‫من أفعا ِلـــنا‬
ْ ‫فيصبح‬
ُ … ‫ــــــــيل أو بد ُر تمِّه‬
ِ ‫نجم ال ّل‬
ُ ُ
‫يعقل‬ ‫أ‬
Did the night’s star or its full moon possess intellect, would they be
appalled by our deeds?
The question that should concern mankind then, is not whether the
stars are able to reason or not, but whether mankind can be induced
to behave less barbarously. But what, according to al-Ma‘arri, makes
mankind so prone to evil?
Mankind as the Epitome of Evil
Al-Ma‘arri’s pessimism was consistent with his view that mankind is

evil incarnate. It is not only women, but men of authority, including
118
Ibid., 431.
119
Ibid., 1, 144.
120
Ibid., 88.
389
prophets, rulers and men of religion, and charlatans whom al-Ma‘arri

condemns for reasons discussed above. Mankind in general is a target
of the poet’s vituperation in many passages scattered throughout his
diwan.
The poet makes use of the notion, commonly held at the time,
that everything in creation is composed of four elements: earth, air,
fire and water,121 but substitutes ‘soil’ for earth in the following line
for reasons that remain obscure:
.‫ … نا ٍر و ما ٍء و تربة و هوا‬:‫أربع مجمَّع ٍة‬
122
ٍ ‫الخلق من‬
ُ
The universe is a combination of four: fire, water, soil, and air.
This conception appears in conjunction with astrological elements in
a poem castigating man for the harm he does:
ْ ‫فــبعد ًا لكـــم‬
.‫من بشر‬ ُ ‫مــــواخيركم … سوا ٌء‬
ُ ‫مساجـــــــدُ كم و‬
.‫ــــــشر‬
َ ‫بالع‬ ِ
ُ ‫الحميد … ولا بالنَّخيل ولا‬ ِ
‫بالنبات‬ ‫وما أنتــــــــــم‬
َ ‫كثير الأذا ِة أ َبى‬

.‫غير شـــــر‬ ُ … ‫عــــــــــــديم الجنا ِة‬
ُ ‫قتاد‬
ٌ ‫ولكن‬
ْ
.‫شرف وانتـشر‬ٌ َ ‫وإن‬
‫بان لي‬ ْ … ‫و ما ســـرَّني أنَّني في الحـيا ِة‬
123 ً
.‫سبعة … وتلــــك نوازل في اثنا عشر‬ ‫أرى أربــــــــع ًا آزرت‬
Mankind, your mosques are no different from your wine shops; I wish
I were rid of you all.
You are not a good kind of plant, neither a palm tree nor an‘ushar.124
Rather you are spikes; you yield no benefit but do immense harm, and
are intent on causing evils.
Living this life does not delight me, even though I am a man of great
honour and fame.
I see nothing but a body of four [elements] overseen by seven [planets]
which abide in twelve [zodiacal signs].
Al-Ma‘arri begins by insulting Muslims, equating their places of wor-
ship with wine shops, and goes on to attacking all mankind as evildo-
ers. He claims to take no pleasure in being alive since he has to live
among them, and scorns honour and fame. Examining mankind, he
sees no more than a body composed of four elements and governed
121
This conception was formulated by Empedocles in the fifth century bce and
was later developed by Aristotle. It was introduced into the Muslim world by the
translation movement.
122
123
Ibid., 1, 614.
124
A kind of plant that produces glue.
390
by impersonal cosmic influences. He speaks of ‘a body’ only; there is

no mention of intellect or soul here.
The poet’s gloomily reductive view is expressed in another poem
excoriating mankind in which the human being, as a body only, is
identified as ‘four governed by seven located in twelve’ and compared
to a carrion crow:
.‫أنت َب َشــــر‬
َ ‫وتواض ْع إنّما‬
َ … ،‫ بشر‬،‫جــــاء‬
َ ‫الش َّر إذا‬
ّ ‫إدفع‬
.‫يا ُغــــراب ًا َهم ُُّه فـــي غار ٍة … يتمنى أقـِــــــط ًا فوق َم َشـر‬
.‫أربع تلحظها … سبع ٌة راتــــبة في اثنا عشر‬
125
ٍ ‫جســــــــدٌ من‬
Seek refuge from evil whenever a human being approaches; be humble,
for you too are only human.
Hey you crow, whose only concern is to hunt high and low in hope of
finding food scattered over the ground,
You are nothing but a body of four governed by seven which abide in
twelve.
The source of mankind’s intellectual guidance, the mind, and man-
kind’s spiritual essence, the soul, are absent from this depiction of
man as a scavenger concerned only with satisfying his bodily desires.
Here al-Ma‘arri creates metaphors by playing on the effect of the
rhymed sounds of sharr (evil) and bashar (human being), thus making
mankind a near synonym for evil. The first couplet can be read in
two ways: either as ‘ward off evil by evil’ or ‘seek refuge from evil’
(bi-sharr) whenever a human being (bashar) approaches’, depending
on the reading of the word (bi-sharr/bashar), which al-Ma‘arri left
without clarifying the vowels, which appear as macrons above the
consonants. So we are left with two choices: bi-sharr where the word
is to be read as ‘by evil’, or bashar where the word is to be read as
‘human being’. However, in the second hemistich al-Ma‘arri deliber-
ately uses the word bashar (human being), when advising mankind
to be humble, and this determined the translation of the first hemi-
stich.
We see from these lines that al-Ma‘arri, like other poets, made use
of certain theories in common currency during his time regarding the
influence of the upper realm on mankind in a way that fitted his own
poetic purposes.
In a parody of the Qur’an’s ‘invisible pillars’, al-Ma‘arri invents a
satirical image of the cosmos in the following line:
125
391
126
.‫هو فو َقنا أركانا‬
َ ‫لمن‬
ْ ‫ت‬ْ ‫أربع … ُج ِع َل‬
ٌ ‫أركانُ دنيانا غرائ ُز‬
The corners of our world are made of four desires; they are the pillars
of the world above us.
In this line the poet replaces the four elements constituting the sub-
lunary realm with the four desires, which are unspecified but may be
the lusts for power, wealth, fame and sex. Moreover, he calls them
the pillars which support the upper realm, implying that the entire
universe is corrupt.
Al-Ma‘arri’s pessimistic view of the world and its inhabitants is
expressed in the image of the dominant power of Saturn and Mars.
The poet saw this desperate state of affairs as virtually eternal. His
language here would have been understood by anyone with the slight-
est knowledge of astrology:
.‫ظاهر الغَ َلب‬
َ ٌ
‫زحل … فأصبــح الشَّرُّ فينا‬ ‫فوق ا ُلمشتري‬
َ ‫لقد ترف ََّع‬
.‫فجع و من َس َلب‬
127
ٍ ‫المريخ مابقيــــا … لا ُي ْخ ِليا ِنك من‬
َ َ
‫كيوان و‬ َّ‫وإن‬
Saturn is elevated above Jupiter, thus evils prevail among us;
As long as Mars and Saturn exist, they will never let you alone unless
they seize and shake you.
Yet he asserts that mankind in their evil are more powerful than the
most malefic planets, even having a destructive effect on the upper
realm:
128
.‫ذبيح‬
ُ َّ‫النجوم ببعضهِ ن‬
ِ ‫مدى … َح َم ُل‬
ً ُ ‫الحوادث ما‬
‫تزال لها‬ َ ‫إن‬
The evil events will keep expanding until they reach the Ram of the
Stars and slaughter it!
Thus, while Saturn or Mars or any of the malefic astral bodies may
influence mankind, mankind deliberately aggravates the power of evil
in this world:
129
.‫عود‬
ُ ‫أنت فيه ُس‬ ٍ
َ ‫زمان‬ ‫نحوس لأه ِلها … فما في‬
ٌ ‫ألا إنَّما الدنيا‬
Indeed, life is anything but auspicious to those who live it; nowhere
can be auspicious where you [mankind] exist.
Al-Ma‘arri’s usage of astrological allusions to express a personal view
is sometimes undisguised by simulations of piety. Pointing to the
126
127
Ibid., 1, 153.
128
Ibid., 288.
129
Ibid., 315.
392
injustice of this world, he ironically identifies the supreme power that

he considers to be its source:
. ِ‫حكيم قاد ٍر … متفــــــــــر ٍد في عزِّ ِه بكمال‬ َ
‫ـــــــك ٌم تــــــدُ لُّ على‬‫ِح‬
ٍ
.‫جاء بالإهمال‬ َ ‫مـــوت‬
ٌ ‫والفقر‬
ُ … ‫غيـــر َمدا َف ٍع‬
َ ِ ‫والمال ِخدْ نُ الن‬
‫َّفس‬ ُ
130
.‫بيــــت المال‬
ُ ُ … ‫ُّجـــوم مصوِّر ًا‬
‫بيت الحيا ِة يليه‬ ِ ‫أوما ترى ُح ْك ُم الن‬
What great signs that attest to the wisdom and capability of their Cre-
ator who is unique in His perfect dignity!
Money is equal to the soul, without doubt, and poverty is a death
brought about by mistreatment!
Can you not see that according to the Judge of the Stars, the house of
life is followed by the house of money?
These lines argue that we are in a world in which money is of equal
value to the soul. In this world, subject to divinely determined fate,
the mansions must be reconfigured in accordance with more realistic
astrological principles, so that the house of life is followed by the
house of money, yet this state of worldly affairs has been decided,
according to him, by a Wise, Capable God who is Unique in His
perfect dignity. This is biting satire, not praise.
Al-Ma‘arri was not simply a stern and uncompromising moralist
with an extremely pessimistic view of the world; he was also acutely
aware of the contradictions and absurdities of life in a fallen world
and expresses the ambiguity of life in the following obscure lines:
ٌ
.‫هــــــــلال و قمر‬ ‫صبح و دجى … ونجو ٌم و‬
ٌ !‫عجب ًا للــــدَّه ِر‬
ٍ
.‫ودوان ليــــــــــس فيهن ثمر‬ ً
… ‫نائية‬ ُ
‫وغـصونٌ أثمــــــــرت‬
ٍ
.‫ـــــسك و اعتمر‬‫حج ل ُن‬
ّ ‫وغـــــــــــويٌّ كرَّ في حيرته … بعدما‬
.‫عام في الغَ ْم ِر زمـــــان ًا فنجا … وانثنى الآن غريق ًا في الغُ َمر‬
َ
.‫واجــــــــم يصحبه … ُز َه ِريُّ الط َّْب ِع غنَّى و َز َمـــر‬
131
ٌ ٌّ‫ُزحــــلي‬
What a mystery is dahr; day and night, stars, crescent and moon!
There are branches heavy with fruit that are out of reach and others
that are reachable but bear no fruit!
A man who has gone astray falls victim to his worries, though he has
performed both hajj and ‘umra!132
130
Ibid., 2, 357.
131
Ibid., 1, 609.
132
A religious ritual in which Muslims perform duties similar to those required
for the hajj.
393
Someone swam for ages in deep water, yet drowns in a cup!

A frowning Saturnine individual is accompanied by a Venusian char-
acter singing and whistling!
Having discussed how aspects of al-Ma‘arri’s philosophy are reflected
in his treatment of astrological theories, we will turn now to discuss
how he drew on practical astrology to reflect on his society’s prob-
lems.
Human Society, Politicians and the Stars
Al-Ma‘arri sees no point in worrying about a life that will assuredly

end in annihilation of the body. As for the soul, its eventual fate is
uncertain and revelations about life in the hereafter are not to be
trusted. Moreover, from his point of view, life is too short to consult
the stars on every conflict we might face:
133 ْ ‫تكون محلل ًا … عقدُ الحيا ِة‬
.‫بأن ت َُحلَّ الزيجا‬ َ ُ
‫يعجل أن‬ ‫الوقت‬
ُ
There is not enough time to solve the complexity of life by using a zij.134
The pessimistic poet has no desire to predict coming events by
means of masa’il or ikhtiyarat as his unhappy fate has already been
determined:
.‫المقام‬
ُ ‫أطلت‬
ُ ُ ‫أرحـ‬
‫ فإنــــي قد‬،‫ــــل عن هذه الـ … دُّنـــــــــيا‬ َ ‫ربِّ! متى‬
135 َ ‫مذ‬
.‫ جرى و استقام‬،‫كان‬ ْ ،‫َّحس‬
ِ ‫ و لكنه … في الن‬،‫لم أد ِر مــــــــــــــا نجمي‬
Oh, my God, when shall I depart this life? I have remained here so
long!
I do not know what my star may be, but it is fixed in an inauspicious sign.
What is the point of predicting someone’s fate at their birth since evil
is innate in mankind and human beings cannot help but wreak
destruction?:
136
.‫قائف … و كم من نوا ٍة أنبتت سحق ًا ُعمَّا‬
ٍ ٍ
‫مولد حكم‬ ‫ولست أرى في‬
I do not consult a diviner to judge a destiny at birth; from how many
seeds grows massive destruction!
133
134
Tables of astronomical data from which astrologers claim predictions can be
made.
135
136
Ibid., 417.
394
Al-Ma‘arri refers to mundane astrology to express some of his ideas

regarding the uncertainty of the metaphysical world. He admits the
limited ability of reason to penetrate that world; the mind is unable
to comprehend matters beyond the material world. In the following
lines he allays his anxiety by affirming the primacy of reason as the
only trustworthy guide and asserting that the only certainty is the
annihilation of the body:
ُ ‫يجمعهم الفَ ــــ َل‬
.‫ك‬ ْ ‫مات لم‬
َ ‫من‬
ُ َّ‫ … وهـــب‬،‫قدم‬
ٍ ‫ من‬،‫لو صح ما قال رسطاليس‬
.‫ك‬ ُ ‫الأرض أو ما تحتها َم َل‬
ِ ٌ ‫يكن في سمـــــــا ٍء فوقنا‬
‫بشر … فليــــس في‬ ْ ‫لم‬ ْ
ْ ‫إن‬
.‫ وسبيل ًا واحـــــــد ًا سلكوا‬،‫ … ثمَّ انقضوا‬،‫مــم‬ ُ
ٍ ‫من أ‬ ْ ،ُّ‫حيث تبنَّي الحي‬
ُ َّ‫كم حل‬
ْ
137
.‫عن الأوائــــــــــــــــل إلا أنهم هلكوا‬ َ
ْ … ‫العقل لا ُيوجــدك من خب ٍر‬ ْ
‫إن تسأل‬ ْ
What if what Aristotle said came true? But again, what if the dead will
not be gathered in one sphere?
If there are no human beings in the heavens above us, then there should
be no angels on this Earth or in what lies beneath!
How many nations have replaced others in the same district where you
are building, and they all left following the same path!
If you ask mind it will say nothing about the ancestors except that they
have all been annihilated!
He ridicules the trappings of the metaphysical world by saying that
since there are no human beings in the heavens it follows that there
are no angels on Earth. This logic is faulty but al-Ma‘arri is making
an ironic point, which is that belief in angels is irrational. Reason
unaided by faith also tells us that all our forebears have trodden the
same path to destruction.
Having seen in the recent past how some dynasties such as the
Fa†imids came to power by claiming a certain lineage and how the
claims of some religio-political movements, notably the Carmathians,
gained support by claiming their leader to be the Mahdi, al-Ma‘arri
ridiculed them and their absurd doctrines. Here he attacks the Car-
mathians in terms that would satisfy the most devout, apparently
without irony, as if his hatred of schismatics and their violent behav-
iour drove him to make common cause with orthodox Islam:
ِ
.‫المساجد‬ ‫هجر‬
ُ ‫َّــــاس‬ ْ … ‫صـب ًة َه َجــــــــــــر ّي ًة‬
ِ ‫فمن رأيِها للن‬ َ ‫رأيتـــــم ُع‬
ْ ‫إذا ما‬
ِ
.‫هــــــــــاجد‬ َّ‫وللدَّهــــر سـرٌّ ُمر ِقـــــــــــدٌ كلَّ ساهـ ٍر … على ِغ ّر ٍة أو ُمو ِق ٍظ كل‬
ِ
.‫الأمـــــــــاجد‬ ‫َّين آثا ِر السراة‬
ِ ‫من الد‬
ْ … ‫ــــــــــير‬
ٌ َ‫ان ُمغ‬ َ ِ‫تأثيــر القـ‬
ِ ‫ــــــر‬ ُ َ
‫يقولون‬
137
Ibid., 219.
395
‫الأمر السَّمـــــــــــاويَّ لا ُي ِفدْ … ســــــوى شبح رمح الكمي المناجد‬

َ ُ ‫متى‬.
‫ينزل‬
ِ
.‫واجد‬ ُ ‫ت مثل ًا له‬
‫نفس‬ ٌ ‫الإســــــــــلام َخ ْط‬
ْ َ‫ب يغضُّه … فــــــــما وجد‬ ُ ‫لح َق‬ِ ‫إن‬
ْ ‫و‬
138 ِ
.‫ت واحــــــد ًا … يكونُ له كيوانُ أو ََّل ساجــــــــــــــد‬ َ
ُ ‫كيوان عظ َّْم‬ ‫و إن عظ َُّموا‬
Whenever you see a band of Hajarites,139 their advice to the people is,
‘Forsake the mosques!’
Time hides a secret whose disclosure will instantaneously put to sleep
all who are awake and arouse all who slumber.
They say that the influence of a planetary conjunction will destroy the
religious institutions established by the noblest leaders of men,
And that, when the heavenly fate descends, the champion’s spear will
be as effective as motes are in blocking a sunbeam.
Even if Islam has on occasion been overtaken by calamities which low-
ered its prestige, yet no one ever saw such a prophecy fulfilled.
And if they revere Saturn, I revere One of whom Saturn is the most
ancient worshipper.
The claim that the heavens have announced that a certain dynasty or
religion will prevail for a particular period is seen by al-Ma‘arri as a
trap set for the ignorant that allows the claim to be fulfilled in reality:
.‫ستر على الأديان فانـخـــــرقا‬ ٌ ‫وكان‬ َ … ‫أمر الل ِه أرســلـــه‬ُ ‫ــــــرانُ و‬
َ ‫الق‬ َ ‫جاء‬ َ
َ ُ
.‫َّف إلاَّ َشتَّ و افـــــــــــــــترقا‬ َ َّ‫الم ْلــــــــك إلا‬
َ ‫عاد ُم ْن َتـقص ًا … ولا تأل‬ ُ ‫ما أ ْب ِر َم‬
.‫الفكر فيـــــــها ت ُْعطِ ه الأرقا‬
َ ْ … ‫ جع ُلوها من معـــــــــايشهم‬،‫مذاهب‬
‫من ُي ْع ِم ْل‬ ٌ
140
The conjunction has come, God’s command sent it! There was a veil
on religions, now it is torn away!
No matter how firm a kingdom is, it will become unstable; no matter
how coherent it is, it will be scattered.
Doctrines have become a means of living; whoever employs his mind
truly must be perturbed!
In the following lines al-Ma‘arri censures the rulers of his time for
their self-indulgence and indifference to the people’s sufferings, and
deplores the people’s longing for a religious leader, for such leaders
are no different from others:
.‫ والجــــو ُر شأنكم في النَّساء‬،‫ فزتم بنـــسء الـ … ُعم ِر‬،‫يا ملــوك البــــلاد‬
.‫ناطــــق في الكتــــــــــب ِة الخرساء‬
ٌ … ‫يقـوم إمـا ٌم‬
َ ‫َّــــــــاس أن‬
ُ ‫يرتـــــجي الن‬
138
Ibid., 1, 364.
139
Hajar in BaÌrayn was the Carmathians’ capital.
140
396
.‫لجـــــلب الــــــدُّنيا إلى الرؤساء‬

ِ ‫ب‬ ِ
ٌ … ‫هـــــذ ِه المــــــــذاهب أسـبـــــــا‬ ‫إنَّما‬
.‫لدمع الشَّـــــــــماء و الخنـــــساء‬
ِ ‫القـــوم متع ٌة لا ي ِرقُّــــــــــــو … َن‬
ِ ‫غرض‬
ُ
141 ُ ،‫ْــج بالـــــبــ … ـصرة‬
.‫والق ْر َمطـــــــــيَّ بالأحساء‬ َ ‫كالَّــــــذي قام يجمع الزِّن‬
Hey you kings of the countries, you have been privileged to have the
moment of your death postponed;142 all your concern is a long life.
People hope that an imam will rise among the silent ranks of the dumb.
These doctrines serve to bring life to the leaders,
Who demand to be entertained, careless of their people’s cries,
Such as those who gathered the Zanj at Basra and the Carmathians in
AÌsa’.
Al-Ma‘arri condemns the propaganda used by would-be rulers to
deceive the people, whose dreams will inevitably be crushed by the
grim realities of life:
.‫بالخبيث المار ِد‬
ِ ٌ ‫ـــــــ‬
‫ك ُي َبر ُِّح‬ ٌ ‫ويقوم َم ْل‬
َ ‫ … َم َل‬،‫ كأنه‬،‫ــــك في الأنـــــــــام‬ ُ
ِ
.‫بالحديد البارد‬ ‫يضرب‬
ُ ِ
‫َّسيف‬ ٍ
‫مخالف … بال‬ ِّ‫َص َن ُع اليدين بقـــتل كــــــــل‬
.‫بسهم صاد ٍر‬
ٍ ٌ
‫عادل … يرمي أعـــــــادينا‬ ‫سيم ِل ُكنا إمـــــا ٌم‬
ْ ‫قــــــــــــــالوا‬
.‫يوم فارد‬
ٍ ‫ضغــــــائن … ما أسمحت بســــرور‬
ٍ ‫موطن ِشرَّ ٍة و‬
ُ ‫الأرض‬
ُ ‫و‬
143
.‫السعود و كاتب ًا كعطـارد‬
َ ‫ولو أنّ فيــــــــــها ناظر ًا كالمشتري … ُيعطي‬
ْ
A king shall rise amongst mankind like an angel that torments the
wicked;
His hand will slaughter all evildoers with cold iron.
They said: ‘A just man will come to rule us and pierce our enemies
with well-aimed arrows’.
Earth, where evils and envies dwell, is never joyful, not for a single day.
Even if it were governed by Jupiter, the watcher, bestowing blessings,
or a writer like Mercury!144
While informing those believing in astrology that he is well aware of
the attributes of Jupiter, the beneficent, he insists that its theories are
invalid. The astrologers’ claim that a pious ruler will appear and
replace violence with peace, corruption with regeneration and make
141
142
This is totally an anti-orthodox opinion; Muslims believe that the moment
is never to be postponed or escaped.
143
144
The poet may be referring to himself as the writer who ceaselessly advises
people to tread the path of virtue but whose efforts are in vain since evil is the
essence of life.
397
the Earth a paradise is a delusion; the Earth has always been and will
always be the abode of evils. In another poem he attacks such naïve
and unrealistic hopes and adds that even if the nature of the malefic
Mars and Saturn were transformed into its opposite, death would still
be inescapable:
.‫طم‬ ُ ‫ ف َت ْضب ُِط أسدَ الغابة‬،‫ ُع ْص ٌر … ُيرضى‬،‫ بعدَ نا‬،‫سوف يــــأتي‬
ُ ‫الخ‬ َ ْ ‫ُيقال‬
‫أن‬
145 ْ ‫كائن‬
.‫قط ُم‬ ٌ ٍ
‫زمان‬ ‫ب … في كلِّ صقــــــــر‬ ٌ ‫منطق َك ِذ‬
ٌ ‫هيــــــــــهات هيهات هذا‬
.‫الشرِّ يلتطم‬
ّ ‫باب‬ ُ ‫زحل … فــــــــــــلا‬
ُ ‫يزال ُع‬ ٌ ‫المريخ أو‬
ُ ِ ‫مـــــــــادام في الفَ َل‬
‫ك‬ َ
.‫فالــــــوهدُ ُي ْبنى فوقه الأطم‬
ْ ‫َّعد‬ ُ
ِ ‫الأفلاك و انعــــــــكست … بالس‬ ‫َّرت‬ ْ
ْ ‫وإن تغي‬
146
.‫أليس راعي المــــــــنايا خلفه حطم‬
َ … ‫هـب الفـــــــــتى نال أقصى ما يؤَ مِّله‬
ْ
It has been said that, after our generation, there will come a time when
nations will live content under rulers who will command even the
lions of the jungles!
Nonsense! That is nonsense, it is a lie; in every age hawks seek flesh to
feed on, love to fight and mate.
Hence Mars and Saturn are running in their spheres, great evils are to
be expected.
Even if their nature were transformed and became auspicious, castles
are built over pits.
Let us imagine that man were granted all his wishes; would not the
Guardian of Death be waiting to annihilate him?
Whenever a leader who claims to be the glorious one, promised by a
particular conjunction, who will bring peace and happiness to the
world, proves the prediction false by his cruel deeds, the deluded do
not renounce their hopes but keep expecting the Mahdi to appear at
another conjunction:
147 ِ ‫رجوتم إمام ًا في ال ِق‬
.‫ … فلمَّا مضى ُقـــلتم إلى سنوات‬،‫ ُم َضلَّل ًا‬،‫ران‬
You expected an imam, a misguided one, to appear at the conjunction
of the planets;
And when it passed, you said, ‘His coming has been put off for a few
years.’
The people’s hope for salvation by a perfect imam is, al-Ma‘arri con-
tends, a harmful illusion. But if astrology were true, and a conjunc-
145
Qa†am, is the desire for meat, war and women. See Ibn ManÂur, Lisan
al-‘Arab, 12, 448.
146
147
Ibid., 1, 224.
398
tion could signal the beginning of a transformation, he wishes it to

fulfill another function rather than foretell of a coming saviour to
guide people to the right path, the path of virtue:
148
ُ ‫قران هذا النجم يثني … إلى ُط ِر ِق‬
.‫الهدى أمم ًا َحيــارى‬ َ َّ‫لــــــــعل‬
I wish for a conjunction of this star to guide confused nations to the
right path!
Conclusion
Al-Ma‘arri deserves to be called the philosopher among poets and the

poet among philosophers since his poetry is predominantly philo-
sophical in character, but he cannot be counted among the great
philosophers of the medieval Islamic world such as al-Kindi, al-Far-
abi, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd. While this study has not been able to
explore his philosophical thought in much depth owing to its focus
on the astrological references to be found in his poetry, it has given
an idea of the main themes of his thinking.
Al-Ma‘arri’s thought is not a form of disinterested and systematic
enquiry into the nature of the universe and mankind’s place within
it, nor is he at all interested, as al-Farabi was, in reconciling prophetic
religion with rational philosophy. It is rational, certainly, but it is
marked and informed by his sufferings and driven by his personal
concerns and prejudices as much as by reason. It is not merely
expressed in poetic form, it is essentially poetic in character, revealing
al-Ma‘arri’s deepest feelings.
Al-Ma‘arri is above all a moralist, despite his determinism, and a
humanist, despite his misanthropy; he is determined to salvage what
he can from the political and social turmoil of his age. This does
not mean that he attempts to construct a system of ethics, however,
since he is content to assert his essential beliefs, which are grounded
in a conviction that the intellect is the only true guide to right
action.
As a deist, his thinking is troubled by the problem of the existence
of evil in a world created by a benevolent God. This problem is cen-
tral to al-Ma‘arri’s thought and one of the causes of his anguish. His
logic leads him to do what his predecessors and contemporaries did
not dare to do: he blames God for the misfortunes of the world. But
this does not mean that human beings are absolved of responsibility.
148
Ibid., 74.
399
Although al-Ma‘arri regards mankind generally as evil, he cannot

allow that man should merely become a ‘carrion crow’ concerned
only with satisfying his physical appetites. He can see the conse-
quences of this behaviour all around him and deplores them, just as
he deplores the consequences of misguided religious zeal.
While it is better never to have been born into this ‘house of evil’,
we must, says al-Ma‘arri, be charitable to those who lack the intel-
lectual power to recognise and act in accordance with the demands
of virtue. He condemns men of authority for their greed and selfish-
ness, and for what he sees as their cynical use of ideologies, including
astrology, to dupe their followers or subjects, but exhorts all men,
even the powerful, to act charitably towards the weak and disadvan-
taged.
As a humanist he seeks to spread peace among mankind. Men
should do good not in expectation of reward or fear of punishment;
al-Ma‘arri’s motto is ‘virtue is its own reward’. Whether or not one
believes in the hereafter, one should do good for its own sake, not for
any reward awaiting the pious. What is between man and God is a
personal matter that should not be dictated by religion, but what is
between man and man is a public matter and should be built on a
firm ethical ground.
Al-Ma‘arri’s treatment of astrology reveals much about his method
of work and about the pervasiveness of belief in the power of science
in his time. It is clear that he regarded astrology as a form of supersti-
tion and astrologers as quacks, but he used astrology’s basic principles
as material to communicate his moral messages, because astrological
terminology was commonly understood. He is uninterested in techni-
cal details or in displaying his knowledge, unlike some poets of the
Abbasid period, because simple ideas, such as the relative positions of
Jupiter and Saturn, suit his purposes better. The same can be said of
his treatment of cosmological ideas such as the four elements, the
structure of the universe, and the supposed rationality of the heavenly
bodies. He often subverts the conventional meanings of these ideas
in order to provoke his readers into thinking for themselves, since he
is concerned to stimulate rational thought rather than to force an
uncritical acceptance of his views. This is why so many of his poems
ask questions, although they contain no shortage of vehement asser-
tions.
Al-Ma‘arri’s poetical output covers a wide range of philosophical
subjects, some of which have been considered in this study, such as
the existence of God, religion as based on revelation and prophecy,
the causes of evil in this world, the possibility of human free will, and
400
life after death. He attempts to secure a rational understanding of the

chaotic and corrupt world about him and manages only to affirm the
imperative of virtue’s action. In this cause he enlists astrology, despite
his scepticism as to its validity, since even what is false can be used
to lead men to the truth.
Al-Ma‘arri’s poems are both intensely subjective and addressed to
a wide readership; they also ‘leave no aspect of the age untouched,
and present a vivid picture of degeneracy and corruption, in which
tyrannous rulers, venal judges, hypocritical and unscrupulous theolo-
gians, swindling astrologers, roving swarms of dervishes and godless
Carmathians occupy a prominent place’.149 They not only articulate
a personal philosophy but tell us much about the impact of astrology
on medieval Islamic culture and show that astrology could be profit-
ably used, even by those who condemned it, particularly on intel-
lectual or religious grounds, to express strong opinions on the nature
of human life.
Address for correspondence: z.salhi@leeds.ac.uk
149
Von Kremer, Die Philosophische Gedichte des Abu ’l-‘Alá, cited in Reynold
Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (London 1914), 324.
401

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Journal of Semitic Studies LVII/2 Autumn 2012 doi: 10.

ASTROLOGY BETWEEN POETICS AND POLITICS

Zahia Smail Salhi and Abeer Abbasi

It is the aim of this study to examine the astrological references in the

The relationship between mankind and the celestial bodies, whether

only enabled them to predict seasonal changes, but empowered

This subject is particularly important because a great deal of the

when astrology was prohibited by the official religion. While astrol-

Astrology between the Abbasid Court and Muslim Society

This study draws on the theory that holds literature to be an authen-

Ma‘arri’s work demonstrates that despite the strong opposition of

would further generate a need both for more accurate translations of

Given astrology’s treasury of images, its controversial relationship

Astrology was able to flourish because it was protected by men of

Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri and Astrology

Al-Ma‘arri, a deist and humanist, attacked astrology and its preten-

The Life of Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri6

We cannot understand or appreciate al-Ma‘arri’s work unless we are

pensation, but as a weapon’;9 that is to say, firstly, it compensated for

the ‘Alawi Sharif, al-Murta∂a (355–436/967–1044),18 who delivered

utterly’.21 He subsequently cut himself off from the outer world,

ence; this shared experience enabled al-Ma‘arri to express his inner-

Al-Ma‘arri and Men of Authority

On another occasion he ridicules the way the rulers conduct affairs

Characteristics of the ‘Ala’ian QaÒida

His life and character were full of conflicts and contradictions: he

vanity of wickedness. The depth, complexity and beauty of the

together and ‘post-Avicennian kalam emerged as a truly Islamic phi-

Al-Ma‘arri’s Use of Astrology

Al-Kindi defines philosophy as ‘the knowledge of things in their

profession; he was a physician who used a very solid method of

edged the influence of al-Razi or alluded to him under the cloak of

She asks him questions — her husband’s absent;

therefore portrayed as easily duped into believing the astrologers’

Al-Ma‘arri the Deist

Central to al-Ma‘arri’s opposition to astrology was his intense scepti-

by the sequel, and reminds us that religious dissimulation (taqiyya) is

His denial of the existence of a metaphysical world causes us to ques-

Al-Ma‘arri and Divine Fate

cause of their misfortune, refusing to acknowledge their own faults

he does not want to happen in his province’.97 It follows that, as

While it is good for us to believe that we are choosing to act

The astrologer is blind because his mind is dark. He is like some-

As we have seen, al-Ma‘arri denies the possibility of bodily resurrec-

either Mars or Saturn can be blamed, he manages to say the unsay-

Mankind as the Epitome of Evil

Al-Ma‘arri’s pessimism was consistent with his view that mankind is

prophets, rulers and men of religion, and charlatans whom al-Ma‘arri

َ ‫كثير الأذا ِة أ َبى‬

by impersonal cosmic influences. He speaks of ‘a body’ only; there is

injustice of this world, he ironically identifies the supreme power that

Someone swam for ages in deep water, yet drowns in a cup!

Human Society, Politicians and the Stars

Al-Ma‘arri sees no point in worrying about a life that will assuredly

Al-Ma‘arri refers to mundane astrology to express some of his ideas

‫الأمر السَّمـــــــــــاويَّ لا ُي ِفدْ … ســــــوى شبح رمح الكمي المناجد‬

.‫لجـــــلب الــــــدُّنيا إلى الرؤساء‬

tion could signal the beginning of a transformation, he wishes it to

Al-Ma‘arri deserves to be called the philosopher among poets and the

Although al-Ma‘arri regards mankind generally as evil, he cannot

life after death. He attempts to secure a rational understanding of the

Address for correspondence: z.salhi@leeds.ac.uk

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Journal of Semitic Studies LVII/2 Autumn 2012 doi: 10.