Saqt az-Zand

[5][9] Although it occupies a central place in the canon of Arabic literature it is relatively unknown to readers who do not speak the language, perhaps because of the extraordinary difficulty of translating its dense, erudite verse.

[11] In the preface to the work, the Khutbat Saqt al-Zand, al-Ma’arri stated that he had not composed poetry with the aim of obtaining reward and expressed his reservations about the traditional praise function of the qasida.

[1][8] The final poem in the collection is his Farewell Ode, in which al-Ma’arri said goodbye to his admirers in Baghdad and expressed his regret at his failure to establish himself there as he had hoped to do, before returning to his hometown of Ma'arrat al-Nu'man.

[10]: 341 In Ma’arrat al-Nu’man there is a marble monument to al-Ma’arri on which is carved a verse from Saqt az-Zand: "Let the rain refrain from watering me and my land, if its clouds do not cover the whole country.” This line is preceded by another in the same vein: "If immortality had been offered to me exclusively, I would not have accepted to be the sole beneficiary.”[13] The first scholarly study of Saqt as-Zand was undertaken by al-Ma’arri himself.

This commentary, known as Dhou as-Saqt (ضوءالسقط or “The Light of the Spark”) was dictated to his amanuensis Aboû Zakaryâ at-Tabrîzî, but never put into circulation.

The young at-Tabrizi, drawn to al-Ma’ari by his desire to learn from the author of Saqt as-Zand, later made a new, much larger commentary of his own.

[5] The first publication of selections from Saqt az-Zand in a European scholarly work was in the collection Specimen Arabicum, a 1638 anthology of Arabic literature by Johann Fabricius published in Gdansk.