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Al-Maʿarri Quotes

Abu al-ʿAlaʾ al-Maʿarri was a blind Arab philosopher, poet, and writer. Al-Maʿarri held and expressed an irreligious worldview which was met with controversy, but in spite of it, he is regarded as one of the greatest classical Arabic poets.

Born in the city of Maʿarra during the Abbasid era, he studied in nearby Aleppo, then in Tripoli and Antioch. Producing popular poems in Baghdad, he nevertheless refused to sell his texts. In 1010, he returned to Syria after his mother began declining in health, and continued writing which gained him local respect.

Described as a "pessimistic freethinker", Al-Maʿarri was a controversial rationalist of his time, citing reason as the chief source of truth. He was pessimistic about life, describing himself as "a double prisoner" of blindness and isolation. He attacked the dogmas of religion, criticized and rejected Islam, and became a Deist. He was equally critical and sarcastic about Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. He advocated social justice and lived a secluded, ascetic lifestyle. He became a vegan, entreating: "do not desire as food the flesh of slaughtered animals / Or the white milk of mothers who intended its pure draught /

for their young". Al-Maʿarri held an antinatalist thought, in line with his general pessimism, suggesting that children should not be born to spare them of the pains and suffering of life.Al-Maʿarri wrote three main works that were popular in his time. Among his works are The Tinder Spark, Unnecessary Necessity, and The Epistle of Forgiveness which may be considered a precursor to Dante's Divine Comedy. Al-Maʿarri never married and died at the age of 83 in the city where he was born, Maarrat al-Nuʿman. In 2013, a statue of al-Maʿarri located in his Syrian home town was beheaded by jihadists from the al-Nusra Front.

✵ 973 – 1057
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Al-Maʿarri: 5   quotes 9   likes

Famous Al-Maʿarri Quotes

“The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts:
Those with brains, but no religion,
And those with religion, but no brains.”

Al-Maʿarri

As quoted in The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1984) by Amin Maalouf, p. 37
Variant translations:
The world holds two classes of men; intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern (1906) by John Mackinnon Robertson, Vol. I, Ch. VIII: Freethought under Islam, p. 269
The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.
This form of the statement has been most commonly misatributted — to Avicenna, in A Rationalist Encyclopaedia: A Book of Reference on Religion, Philosophy, Ethics, and Science (1950) by Joseph McCabe, p. 43, and later to Averroes, in The Atheist World‎ (1991) by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, p. 46.
Original: اِثْنَانِ أَهْلُ الْأَرْضِ ذُو عَقْلٍ بِلَا دِينٍ وَآخَرُ دَيِّنٌ لَا عَقْلَ لَهُ

“A little doubt is better than total credulity.”

Al-Maʿarri

As quoted in Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out (2003) by Ibn Warraq, p. 68

“If you will do some deed before you die,
Remember not this caravan of death,
But have belief that every little breath
Will stay with you for an eternity.”

Al-Maʿarri

As quoted in The Diwan of Abu'l-Ala (1909) by Henry Baerlein, XLVII

“They recite their sacred books, although the fact informs me that these are a fiction from first to last. O Reason, thou (alone) speakest the truth. Then perish the fools who forged the (religious) traditions or interpreted them!”

Al-Maʿarri

As quoted in "The Meditations of Al-Maʿarri", Studies in Islamic Poetry (1921) by R. A. Nicholson, Verse 129, p. 110

“Do not unjustly eat fish the water has given up,

And do not desire as food the flesh of slaughtered animals,

Or the white milk of mothers who intended its pure draught
for their young, not noble ladies.
And do not grieve the unsuspecting birds by taking eggs;
for injustice is the worst of crimes.
And spare the honey which the bees get industriously
from the flowers of fragrant plants;
For they did not store it that it might belong to others,
Nor did they gather it for bounty and gifts.
I washed my hands of all this; and wish that I
Perceived my way before my hair went gray!”

Al-Maʿarri

As quoted in "The Meditations of Al-Maʿarri", Studies in Islamic Poetry (1921) by R. A. Nicholson, Verse 197, pp. 134–135

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