Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī, Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Sulaymān al-Tanūkhī (27 Rabīʿ I 363–449/26 December 973–1057), a distinguished Arab poet and thinker who was blind. His life was a relatively uneventful one, and spent mostly as a recluse, away from human contact. He was born in Maʿarrat al-Nuʿmān, a small town between Aleppo and Ḥamā. He was descended from a line of distinguished and eminent individuals, the majority of…