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

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СКАЧАТЬ Paradise and Hell

      The Paradise of the Demons

      The Poetry of the Demons

      Abū Hadrash al-Khaytaʿūr’s Heroic Deeds

      Animals in Paradise

      In the Furthest Reaches of Paradise; A Conversation with al-Ḥuṭayʾah

      The Conversation with al-Khansāʾ

       Hell

      The Conversation with Satan

      The Conversation with Bashshār ibn Burd

      The Conversation with Imruʾ al-Qays

      The Conversation with ʿAntarah

      The Conversation with ʿAlqamah

      The Conversation with ʿAmr ibn Kulthūm

      al-Ḥārith ibn Ḥillizah

      The Conversation with Ṭarafah

      The Conversation with Aws ibn Ḥajar

      The Conversations with the Hudhalī poets Abū Kabīr and Ṣakhr al-Ghayy

      The Conversation with al-Akhṭal

      The Conversation with Muhalhil

      The Conversation with the Two Poets Called Muraqqish

      The Conversation with the Two Brigand Poets, al-Shanfarā and Taʾabbaṭa Sharrā

       Return to Paradise

      A Meeting with Adam

      The Snakes of Paradise

      The Sheikh’s Return to his Paradisical Damsel

      In the Paradise of the Rajaz Poets

      The Joys of Paradise

       Notes

      Glossary of Names and Terms

      Bibliography

      Further Reading

      About the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute

      About this E-book

      About the Editor-Translators

      Library of Arabic Literature

       Editorial Board

      General Editor

      Philip F. Kennedy, New York University

      Executive Editors

      James E. Montgomery, University of Cambridge

      Shawkat M. Toorawa, Cornell University

      Editors

      Julia Bray, University of Oxford

      Michael Cooperson, University of California, Los Angeles

      Joseph E. Lowry, University of Pennsylvania

      Tahera Qutbuddin, University of Chicago

      Devin J. Stewart, Emory University

      Managing Editor

      Chip Rossetti

      Volume Editor

      James E. Mongotmery

      Letter from the General Editor

      The Library of Arabic Literature is a new series offering Arabic editions and English ‎translations of key works of classical and pre-modern Arabic literature, as well as anthologies ‎and thematic readers. Books in the series are edited and translated by distinguished scholars of ‎Arabic and Islamic studies, and are published in parallel-text format with Arabic and English ‎on facing pages. The Library of Arabic Literature includes texts from the pre-Islamic era to the ‎cusp of the modern period, and encompasses a wide range of genres, including poetry, poetics, ‎fiction, religion, philosophy, law, science, history, and historiography.‎

      Supported by a grant from the New York University Abu Dhabi Institute, and established in ‎partnership with NYU Press, the Library of Arabic Literature produces authoritative Arabic ‎editions and modern, lucid English translations, with the goal of introducing the Arabic ‎literary heritage to scholars and students, as well as to a general audience of readers.‎

      Philip F. Kennedy

       General Editor, Library of Arabic Literature

      To our spouses, Sheila and Christa, asking their Forgiveness for spending so many hours in al-Maʿarrī’s company instead of theirs.

      Acknowledgments

      We are grateful for the encouragement and help we received from the LAL editors, in particular Philip Kennedy, Shawkat Toorawa, and James Montgomery. Our labors were alleviated by the great efficiency and expertise of the LAL managing editor, Chip Rossetti; of the digital production manager Stuart Brown; of Carolyn Brunelle, who extracted a Glossary from our endnotes; and from the copy editor, Kelly Zaug. Of all these it was James Montgomery who contributed most, with his countless stylistic and linguistic improvements and his editorial accuracy. If, on very rare occasions, we disagreed with him and stuck to our own ideas, we hope for his forgiveness—which is, after all, the leitmotiv of the present work.

      Abbreviations used in the Introduction and Translation

EI2	Encyclopaedia of Islam, New [= Second] Edition
Gh	Risālat al-Ghufrān / The Epistle of Forgiveness
IQ	Risālat Ibn al-Qāriḥ / The Epistle of Ibn al-Qāriḥ
L	(in prosody) long syllable
O	(in prosody) overlong syllable
Q	Qurʾan
S	(in prosody) short syllable

      Introduction

The lengthy, mocking reply by a cantankerous maverick, obsessed with lexicography and grammar, to a rambling, groveling, and self-righteous letter by an obscure grammarian and mediocre stylist: this does not sound, prima facie, like a masterwork to be included in a series of Arabic classics. It is even doubtful whether it firmly belongs to the canonical works of Arabic literature. The maverick author, Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī, was certainly famous, or infamous, as we shall see, but in the entry on him in the biographical dictionary by Ibn Khallikān (d. 681/1282),¹ СКАЧАТЬ