Note 1 — PREFACE.

My learned friend, Count E. de Mulinen, called my attention to the work of Von Kremer on Abu’l-Ala. And I have seen copies of a certain German Asiatic Review in which were published translations, made by that eminent Orientalist, of many poems from the Luzumiyat. He speaks of Abu’l-Ala as one of the greatest moralists of all times, whose profound genius anticipated much that is commonly attributed to the so-called modern spirit of enlightenment.

Professor D. S. Margoliouth has also translated into English the Letters of Abu’l-Ala, which were published with the Arabic Text at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1898. Also Professor Raynold A. Nicholson, in his work, “A Literary History of the Arabs,” discusses the poet at length and renders into English some poems from the Luzumiyat. A work was published by Charles Carrington, Paris, 1904, under the title, “Un Précurseur d’Omar Khayyam, Le Poéte Aveugle: Extraits de Poémes et de Lettres d’Abu’l-Ala al-Ma’arri.” And another, “The Diwan of Abu’l-Ala,” done into English by Henry Baerlein, who must have helped himself freely to the Quatrains of Von Kremer. ↑