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"AL-MA'ARRI: SUFI & PHILOSOPHER Selected Poems (Large Print & Large Format Edition) Translation & Introduction Paul Smith Born in Ma'arra, south of Aleppo in Syria in 973 A.D., he achieved fame as one of greatest of Arab poets. Al-Ma'arri was stricken with smallpox when four and became blind. His early poems in ruba'i form gained great popularity as did his other poems. As he grew older, he was able to travel to Aleppo, Antioch and other Syrian cities. He spent months at Baghdad, then the centre of learning and poetry, leaving to return to his native town. There he created the Luzumiyyat, a famous collection of 1592 poems. In his passionate hatred of the vile world and all the material manifestations of life, he was like a dervish dancing in sheer bewilderment; a holy man, melting in tears before the distorted image of Divinity. In his aloofness, as in the purity of his spirit, his ecstatic negations can only be translated in terms of the Sufism. If others have symbolised the Divinity in wine, he did it in Reason, which is the living oracle of the Soul; he embraced Divinity under the cover of a philosophy of extinction. Here is a large selection of poems in all the forms in the correct rhyme. Introduction: The Life and Works of al Ma'arri, The Ruba'i & Qit'a, Ghazal & Qasida. Selected Bibliography. Large Print (18pt), Large Format (8"" x 10""). 183 pages. Paul Smith (b. 1945) is a poet, author and translator of many books of Sufi poets of the Persian, Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, Pashtu and other languages, including Hafiz, Sadi, Nizami, Rumi, 'Attar, Sana'i, Jahan Khatun, Obeyd Zakani, Nesimi, Kabir, Anvari, Ansari, Jami, Khayyam, Rudaki, Yunus Emre, Lalla Ded, Mahsati, Amir Khusrau, Bulleh Shah, Iqbal, Makhfi, Nazir, Seemab, Jigar, Huma, Dard, Mir, Hali and many others, as well as his own poetry, fiction, plays, biographies, children's books and 12 screenplays. amazon.com/author/smithpa"

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