Narrative
The Epistle of Forgiveness
رسالة الغفران
Abu al-Ala al-Maarri · 1033
Synopsis
A grammarian of Baghdad has written the poet a flattering letter; the reply imagines this correspondent as already dead and admitted, not without difficulty, to paradise. He strolls there, questions the poets and philologists of old about their verses and the way they were forgiven, catches sight of hell and converses with the devil. A second part answers the letter point by point and reviews hypocrites, heretics and other sinners.
Context
The text answers a letter that the grammarian Ibn al-Qarih had addressed to him around 1033: its author, then in his sixties and living in retirement in his town, turns it into a journey into the afterlife. It is written in rhymed prose and quotes dozens of poets, which also makes it a treatise on philology. Long transmitted in copies, it has been compared to the Divine Comedy, written nearly three centuries later.
Who it is for
A narrative in Arabic rhymed prose, to be read in an annotated edition; the text assumes some knowledge of the early Arab poets, dozens of whom it quotes.
Prizes and reception
Its author's most famous work, translated in full into French in 1984, then into English in 2013 and 2014, in a bilingual edition.