and Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī al-Tanūkhī, the poet famous—indeed, infamous—for his zandaqa (heresy), a noted philologist and the author of numerous collections of poetry and linguistic treatises.
He was born on a Friday at sunset, three days before the end of Rabīʿ al-Awwal in 363 AH. Struck by smallpox when he was four, or six, or seven, he lost his sight. He began composing verse at the age of eleven or twelve. In 399 AH he entered Baghdad and remained there for [six or] seven months, after which he fled in disgrace, hounded from the city because he had recited poetry that exposed his scant religion, knowledge, and sense.
That poem was his couplet:
A hand whose blood-money is five hundred dinars—
why is it severed for a quarter-dinar? (1)
A contradiction that leaves us only silence before it
and a plea that our Master protect us from the Fire.
[This is among his fabrications.]
He means: “Since the compensation for a hand is five hundred dinars, why do you cut it off when it steals a quarter-dinar?” Such reasoning reveals the poverty of his intellect and the blindness of his insight, for when a hand is wronged it is fitting that its compensation be great so that people refrain from aggression; but when the hand itself aggresses by theft, it is fitting that its value [and its blood-money] diminish, so that it refrain from seizing wealth and people’s property be safeguarded.
Hence someone remarked: “It was precious so long as it was trustworthy; once it betrayed, it became worthless.” When the jurists resolved to prosecute him for these words, he escaped and returned to his hometown, where he confined himself to his house and ceased to go out.
[One day he was in the caliph’s presence. The caliph detested al-Mutanabbī and belittled him, whereas Abū al-ʿAlāʾ admired al-Mutanabbī, exalted his stature, and praised him. Al-Mutanabbī was mentioned in that gathering and the caliph disparaged him. Abū al-ʿAlāʾ said, “If al-Mutanabbī possessed nothing but the ode that opens:
For you, O dwellings, dwellings abide within the hearts,
that alone would suffice him.” The caliph grew angry and ordered that Abū al-ʿAlāʾ be dragged out by the leg, face down, saying, “Remove this dog from before me.” Then he added, “Do you know what this dog intended by citing that poem? He meant al-Mutanabbī’s line in it:
When censure comes to you from one who is deficient,
it is proof that I am perfect.
Al-Mutanabbī has verses finer than this, but that is the one he had in mind.” Such was the caliph’s keen intelligence in discerning the point.]
Abū al-ʿAlāʾ then spent forty-five years of his life eating no meat, milk, eggs, nor any animal product, following the ways of the Brahmins among the philosophers.
It is said that a monk met him in a certain hermitage that took him in for the night and shook his faith. Thereafter he subsisted on plants; his main nourishment was lentils, and he sweetened himself with molasses and figs, and he would not eat