a European translation of the anonymous Kitāb al-Miʿrāj (of which Latin, French, and Castilian versions were popular) was probably known to Dante. It has also been suggested that Dante may have been inspired by a Hebrew version of a work by Avicenna, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, describing an imaginative “cosmic” journey.35
Nicholson rightly remarks36 that while the Risālat al-Ghufrān “faintly” resembles the Sixth Book of Virgil’s Aeneid, where Aeneas visits the Underworld, the Divine Comedy, or the Zoroastrian, Middle Persian Book of Ardā Vīrāf, a more significant parallel can be found in Lucian (d. ca. ad 180), who like al-Maʿarrī was a Syrian, though Greek-educated. In his ironically entitled True Histories (or True Fictions) Lucian describes his fantastic journeys on earth and even to the moon. He visits a Blessed Isle, the delights of which are depicted in some detail; there he meets not only ancient worthies such as heroes of the Trojan War but also Homer, whom he questions about his poetry.37 All this is written in a lively and very irreverent style, altogether akin to that of al-Maʿarrī, who shared Lucian’s rationalism, skepticism, and pessimism. It must not be supposed, however, that al-Maʿarrī knew Lucian’s work, for he was not translated into Arabic and al-Maʿarrī did not know Greek. But Lucian was popular with the Byzantines: his works were much copied, annotated, imitated, and taught in schools38 and one could imagine that some of Lucian’s themes reached al-Maʿarrī orally. One also notes that the motif of the tree woman, exploited in The Epistle of Forgiveness, admittedly known in Arabic popular lore,39 is also found in Lucian’s True Histories.40
It has been suggested41 that Risālat al-Ghufrān was inspired by Risālat al-Tawābiʿ wa-l-zawābiʿ by the Andalusian Arab poet and prose-writer Ibn Shuhayd (d. 426/1035), who composed it only a few years before al-Maʿarrī wrote his work. In this short, incompletely preserved work, translated by James T. Monroe as The Treatise of Familiar Spirits and Demons,42 the author takes as his starting point the ancient Arab idea that a poet is inspired by a demon or genius, an idea that survived in Islamic times even though many would not take it more seriously than European poets would literally believe in the existence of the Muses or a personal muse. Ibn Shuhayd describes his imagined conversations with the demons of some famous poets: the pre-Islamic Imruʾ al-Qays, Ṭarafah, and Qays ibn al-Khaṭīm, and the Abbasid poets Abū Nuwās and Abū Tammām; he boldly expands the idea by assigning similar demons to prose writers such as ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ibn Yaḥyā, Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī, and al-Jāḥiẓ (who no doubt would have been surprised by the fancy), and by describing some animal genii: a mule and a goose. It is not impossible that al-Maʿarrī (who in fact composed a short epistle on the same topic)43 was aware of this work, but one would underestimate his powers of invention if one assumed he was unable to compose his Epistle without such inspiration.
The Epistle of Forgiveness builds to some extent on his own Risālat al-Malāʾikah (The Epistle of the Angels), mentioned above as a work on morphology. In this work, composed probably a few years before the Epistle of Forgiveness, al-Maʿarrī imagines that he himself discusses oddities of the Arabic lexicon with angels in the afterlife. He surprises the angels with his analysis of the word for “angel” (malak, pl. malāʾikah),44 and he discusses other words with them. He argues that those who end up in heaven enjoying the ḥūr (black-and-white-eyed damsels) and other delights such as the sundus and istabraq (“silk and brocade”) should at least be aware of the morphology and etymology of these words.45 The imagined conversations are at times very similar to those in al-Ghufrān, for instance when al-Maʿarrī quotes poets and grammarians to prove a point, whereupon an angel exclaims, “Who is this Ibn Abī Rabīʿah, what’s this Abū ʿUbaydah, what’s all this nonsense? If you have done any pious deeds you will be happy; if not, get out of here!”46 There is clearly some self-mockery here.
Similarly, although al-Maʿarrī is clearly mocking Ibn al-Qāriḥ in al-Ghufrān, one suspects that many of the philological concerns of the latter were also his own. Ibn al-Qāriḥ’s fictional persona often uses obscure and rare words, which he immediately explains in plainer language; it looks as if he is being mocked for his pedantry. However, al-Maʿarrī does the same when he writes in his own voice; he appears to flaunt his extraordinary knowledge of the Arabic lexicon. A passage in Part Two hints at another, practical reason why he added his glosses: our blind author fears that his dictations, with their recondite diction, may be misunderstood or garbled by his scribes.47 Likewise, one assumes that some of the criticism voiced by Ibn al-Qāriḥ on points of grammar and versification is shared by al-Maʿarrī. A similar preoccupation with philology is found in other works by him, such as The Epistle of the Neigher and the Brayer. It is clear that for al-Maʿarrī and, as he imagines, for Ibn al-Qāriḥ the expected delights of Paradise are not primarily sensual but intellectual. The various delights provided by pretty girls, music, food, and drink are generally described in a somewhat ironical vein and the comparisons of heavenly substances with earthly equivalents are couched in ludicrously hyperbolic expressions; but the pleasures of poetry and philological pedantry are taken, on the whole, rather more seriously, even though here, too, a modicum of mockery is not altogether absent.
It is not surprising that in almost all translations of The Epistle of Forgiveness such passages about grammar, lexicon, and prosody have been drastically curtailed or omitted altogether, for a combination of reasons: they will not greatly interest those who do not know Arabic, they will seem an annoying interruption of the narrative to those who read the text for the story, and not least because they are rather difficult to translate and in need of copious annotation. When Bint al-Shāṭiʾ published her adaptation of Part One of the Epistle of Forgiveness for the stage, as a play in three acts,48 she naturally excised much of the philology, even though she lets the actors discuss some matters regarding grammatical case endings and poetic meters on the stage. It is not known if the play has ever been performed and one cannot but have some doubts about its viability.49
Al-Maʿarrī’s rationalist critique of religion has influenced and inspired neoclassicist and modernist Arabic writers and poets, such as the Iraqi poets Jamīl Ṣidqī l-Zahāwī (1863–1936) and Maʿrūf al-Ruṣāfī (1875–1945). The former wrote a verse epic, Thawrah fī l-jaḥīm (Revolution in Hell, 1931) in which he offers an interesting and subversive interpretation of the Epistle of Forgiveness, involving many well-known figures from Western and Arab history and culture. Heaven is the place for the establishment, Hell for the maladjusted and the socially ambitious, who are punished for their courage. Finally, supported by the angels of Hell, they storm Heaven, claiming it as their rightful place since it is they who have advanced mankind.50 Ḥadīth ʿĪsā ibn Hishām (The Story of ʿĪsā ibn Hishām), a well-known work of fiction first published serially between 1898 and 1902 by the Egyptian author Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī (1858?–1930), is often linked with the Maqāmāt of Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (d. 398/1008) but it has several things in common with Risālat al-Ghufrān: a protagonist who is resurrected from the dead before an imaginary journey, implicit and explicit criticism of contemporary beliefs and customs, and a style in which rhymed prose alternates with ordinary prose.
The varied fate of the text, with its incomplete, truncated translations and its transformation into a play, clearly shows how difficult it is to classify it, to those who love neat classifications. Although called a risālah and addressed to one person, it is not an ordinary letter, nor is it intended to be read only by the addressee. While containing a narrative complete with a lengthy flashback it is not a normal story, qiṣṣah, ḥadīth, khabar, or ḥikāyah. It incorporates much of what normally belongs to the genre of philological “dictations,” amālī. It contains, in al-Dhahabī’s words quoted above, “much adab,” which here has all its meanings of erudition, literary quotations including much poetry, moral edification, and entertaining anecdotes. Searchers for the “organic unity” of this heterogeneous literary work will have an arduous task. One could argue
