At the height of the Islamic Golden Age, in the first half of the 11th century, the Arab poet and freethinker Abu al-ʻAlaʼ al-Maʻarri touched off an entire literary scene around himself in his hometown of Maʻarra, Syria. With a religious skepticism bordering on atheism, al-Maʻarri attacked the established religious orthodoxy of his day, venturing to criticize Islamic, Christian, and Jewish doctrines alike. Calling himself “thrice-imprisoned” by his blindness, isolation, and physical embodiment, he argued for the ethical position of antinatalism and lived a life of asceticism (becoming in the process one of the first recorded individuals who intentionally lived what contemporary individuals might call a “vegan” lifestyle). These concepts all emerged in his poetry, part of which has survived in a collection known as the Luzumiyat or Unnecessary Necessity, a title referring to a challenging rhyme scheme that he invented and adopted for his quatrains. This Standard Ebooks edition of the Luzumiyat is based on Ameen Rihani’s translation. Rihani, a notable Syrian-American poet and author in his own right, was one of the first major translators of al-Maʻarri into English. This translation is not a complete translation of the Luzumiyat, which even today is not generally available to the English-reading public, but is a selection of quatrains presented alongside some from an earlier poetry collection, the Saqt az-Zand. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

This is a collection of some of the verses of Abu'l-Ala and a lengthy preface outlining the life and work of the great poet by Ameen Rihani. The author was himself, a child prodigy and began to write at a very early age, becoming a revered writer and poet in his own right.

Sir Charles G. D. Roberts' 'New Poems' is a collection that showcases the author's exceptional poetic talent and mastery over the craft. The poems in this collection delve into themes of nature, love, and the human experience, all written in a lyrical and evocative style that captivates the reader. Roberts' use of vivid imagery and symbolism adds depth to his verses, creating a rich tapestry of emotions and ideas. As a prominent Canadian poet and founding member of the Confederation Poets, Roberts' deep connection to nature and his keen observation of the world around him greatly influenced his work. His background in biology also shines through in his verses, as he often incorporates elements of the natural world into his poetry, making it both beautiful and thought-provoking. I highly recommend 'New Poems' to readers who appreciate exquisite poetry that reflects the beauty of nature and the complexities of human emotions. Roberts' timeless verses will resonate with anyone who enjoys poetry that is both visually striking and intellectually stimulating.

Free-thinking poet, grammarian, social critic, and satirist, Abū al-‛Alā' al-Ma‛arrī (973–1057 CE) remains one of the more celebrated and intriguing personalities in the history of Arab Islamic civilization. Although the controversies surrounding his skepticism, cynicism, and anticlericalism have never been completely resolved, his more disquieting writings are commonly available in the Arab world, cited in standard histories of Arabic literature, and the subject of scholarly studies. Al-Ma‛arrī is universally recognized as a giant among the litterateurs of Islam, deservedly famous for the role that he played in the development of Arabic verse as a more serious vehicle of religious-political thought and social criticism. The centrality attributed to al-Ma‛arrī as innovator has been linked to a strain of inquiry that has been particularly paramount to Westerners: To what extent did al-Ma‛arrī and other unconventional thinkers stray from the course of mainstream Islamic thought? In this book, R. Kevin Lacey places al-Ma‛arrī within the broader context of Arab Islamic political and intellectual history up to the mid-eleventh century and identifies the coherencies and incoherencies within his overall thought in an effort to determine the extent to which he deviated from his inherited faith. Al-Ma‛arrī and his like were hardly representative, and their imprint on their co-religionists may be questionable, but they must be taken into consideration in order to do full justice to the intellectual history of Islam.

The author investigates the configurations of power implicated in the production of the discourses on the 'muslim woman' in the West and North Africa. She argues that as a single category, the 'muslim woman' is an 'invention', whether in the Western discourses of Orientalism (Isabelle Eberhardt) and psychoanalytic feminism (De Beauvoir, Irigaray, Cixous and Lacan), or in the discourses of islamic feminism (Djebar and Mernissi) and Maghrebian nationalism (Habib Bourguiba and Tahar al Haddad).