Around the year 400 AH he travelled to Tripoli, whose libraries held a vast collection of books. On his way he passed through Latakia and lodged at a monastery where a philosophizing monk resided. The monk’s discourse reached Abū al-ʿAlāʾ’s ears and stirred doubts for which he had no guiding light; a certain loosening of belief ensued, betrayed by the verses he later composed and recited. It is said, however, that he repented of this and came back to his senses.(1)

Despite everything, men of learning continued to make their way to his door and receive knowledge from him. He had first studied language with his father, and in Aleppo with the grammarian Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Saʿd. His yearly income was about thirty dinars, half of which he set aside for the servant who attended him. He lived on lentils and the like; his sweets were dried figs. He wore cotton clothes, slept on a felt pad laid over a rush mat,(2) and possessed a proud spirit that would not accept favors.

When his charitable endowment was challenged, he journeyed to Baghdad in the year 399 AH to seek justice, and there he recited passages from Saqṭ al-Zand.(3)

People say he could memorise everything that reached his ears, and he rarely left his house, styling himself “the prisoner of the two confinements”—his home and his blindness. He began composing poetry while still very young and would dictate his writings to his students entirely from memory.

Ṣāliḥ ibn Mirdās, the ruler of Aleppo, then marched forth and laid siege to Maʿarrat al-Nuʿmān.