Epistle of Forgiveness

Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī (Author) Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī (363-449/973-1058) was a major poet and prose writer of the late Abbasid period. Born near Aleppo, Syria, he lost his eyesight in childhood and was renowned for his asceticism.Geert Jan van Gelder (Edited and Translated by) Geert Jan van Gelder was Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford from 1998 to 2012. He is the author of several books on classical Arabic literature, including Beyond the Line: Classical Arabic Literary Critics on the Coherence and Unity of the Poem and Of Dishes and Discourse: Classical Arabic Literary Representations of Food.Gregor Schoeler (Edited and Translated by) Gregor Schoeler was the chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Basel from 1982 to 2009. His books in the fields of Islamic Studies and classical Arabic literature include The Oral and the Written in Early Islam, and Paradies und Holle, a partial German translation of The Epistle of Forgiveness.

Van Gelder and Schoeler present one of the most complex and unusual texts in Arabic literature, by al-Ma'arri (d. 1057 AD), maverick, poet and vegetarian. (Banipal Magazine) While casual readers can pick up The Epistle of Forgiveness and enjoy a few pages of ancient satire and puns, more academic readers of eschatological literature and Arabic linguistics will appreciate the formidable efforts entailed in this translation's . . . present[ation of] a prose work by 'one of the great poets in Arabic literary history' to contemporary readers. (Al Jadid) A spirited, adroit translation. - Dame Marina Warner (author of Esmond & Ilia: An Unreliable Memoir)