Al-Ma'arri's written works exhibit a fixation on the study of language and its historical development, known as philology He was pessimistic about life, describing himself as "a double prisoner" of blindness and isolation.
21 Facts About Al-Ma'arri
2.
Al-Ma'arri attacked religious dogmas and practices, was equally critical and sarcastic about Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism, and became a deist.
3.
Al-Ma'arri advocated social justice and lived a secluded, ascetic lifestyle.
4.
Al-Ma'arri held an antinatalist outlook, in line with his general pessimism, suggesting that children should not be born to spare them of the pains and suffering of life.
5.
Al-Ma'arri wrote three main works: The Tinder Spark, Unnecessary Necessity, and The Epistle of Forgiveness.
6.
Al-Ma'arri never married and died at the age of 83 in the city where he was born, Ma'arrat al-Nu'man.
7.
Al-Ma'arri was a member of the Banu Sulayman, a notable family of Ma'arra, belonging to the larger Tanukh tribe.
8.
Al-Ma'arri lost his eyesight at the age of four due to smallpox.
9.
Al-Ma'arri started his career as a poet at an early age, at about 11 or 12 years old.
10.
Al-Ma'arri was educated at first in Ma'arra and Aleppo, later in Antioch and other Syrian cities.
11.
Al-Ma'arri returned to his native town of Ma'arra in about 1010 and learned that his mother had died before his arrival.
12.
Al-Ma'arri remained in Ma'arra for the rest of his life, where he opted for an ascetic lifestyle, refusing to sell his poems, living in seclusion and observing a strict moral vegetarian diet.
13.
Al-Ma'arri enjoyed great respect and attracted many students locally, as well as actively holding correspondence with scholars abroad.
14.
Al-Ma'arri was a skeptic who denounced superstition and dogmatism in religion.
15.
Al-Ma'arri taught that religion was a "fable invented by the ancients", worthless except for those who exploit the credulous masses.
16.
Al-Ma'arri criticized many of the dogmas of Islam, such as the Hajj, which he called "a pagan's journey".
17.
Al-Ma'arri rejected claims of any divine revelation and his creed was that of a philosopher and ascetic, for whom reason provides a moral guide, and virtue is its own reward.
18.
Al-Ma'arri remarked that monks in their cloisters or devotees in their mosques were blindly following the beliefs of their locality: if they were born among Magians or Sabians they would have become Magians or Sabians.
19.
Al-Ma'arri was an ascetic, renouncing worldly desires and living secluded from others while producing his works.
20.
Al-Ma'arri is controversial even today as he was skeptical of Islam, the dominant religion of the Arab world.
21.
Al-Ma'arri's third work is a work of prose known as The Epistle of Forgiveness.