In our postmodern age, with all things socially mediated, we often forget those wise sages of years past, who had deeper insights about how to live life, than we might have imagined.

We may consider ourselves more educated and more skeptically resistant to those myths that trapped our ancestors centuries ago, but that is not always the case. For example, it may come as a jolt to learn that Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī, a renowned Arabic poet who lived between 973 and 1057 CE, blind since the age of four, was a keen skeptic who rejected religious dogmatism and who advocated veganism.

This book is but a brief glimpse of Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī ’s remarkable and prescient poetry, which shares much in common with that other remarkable scientist-poet Omar Khayyam, who was born just decades later. Both saw through the pretense of religious authorities who claimed to know more than they actually did.

The following text contains pertinent excerpts from Henry Baerlein’s 1909 translation of The Diwan of Abu'l-Ala, as well as judicious quotes from Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī ’s other writings, such as Risalat ul Ghufran and Saqt al-Zand.