# The Luzumiyat — Character guide

> Key figures in The Luzumiyat by Abu al-ʻAlaʼ al-Maʻarri.

- [Abu al-ʻAlaʼ al-Maʻarri](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_luzumiyat_se/characters/abu_al_ala_al_maarri.md): Al-Maʻarri sits at the center of this collection as its presiding voice — a man whose closed eyes became, in Rihani's image, a doorway to the highest road, and whose verse moves through graveyards, caravans, and starfiel
- [Professor D. S. Margoliouth](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_luzumiyat_se/characters/professor_margoliouth.md): Margoliouth stands at the threshold of the book, the learned hand that carries al-Maʻarri's Arabic across into English and supplies the context a Western reader needs. His task is delicate: to honor a poet who mocks dogm
- [Omar Khayyam](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_luzumiyat_se/characters/omar_khayyam.md): Khayyam hovers over the Luzumiyat as a brother-in-doubt, invoked in Rihani's dedicatory poem where the Saki's antique cup passes from one poet's hand to the other. Where al-Maʻarri turns inward through blindness, Khayyam
- [Professor Reynold A. Nicholson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_luzumiyat_se/characters/professor_nicholson.md): A noted orientalist and translator whose works on Arabic poetry are referenced in the commentary.
- [Adh-Dhahabi](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_luzumiyat_se/characters/adh_dhahabi.md): A medieval historian and biographer cited for his accounts of al-Maʻarri's life.
- [Von Kremer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_luzumiyat_se/characters/von_kremer.md): A 19th-century scholar whose studies on Arabic literature are referenced in the introduction.
- [Allah](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_luzumiyat_se/characters/allah.md): Allah is not a character in any narrative sense but a presence the poems continually turn toward and away from, as in the verse that asks how a God who made sun and moon could give all light to one. Al-Maʻarri's address 
- [Fate](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_luzumiyat_se/characters/fate.md): Fate moves through the Luzumiyat as an almost physical antagonist — the moving hand that raises dunes from ancestors, the loom on which Zaqqum's fibre is woven into the tapestry of dreams. Al-Maʻarri does not submit to i
- [The Sultan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_luzumiyat_se/characters/the_sultan.md): A symbolic figure of worldly authority and power critiqued in the poems.
- [Rabbi](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_luzumiyat_se/characters/rabbi.md): A religious figure mentioned in al-Maʻarri's critiques of organized religion.
- [Jannat](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_luzumiyat_se/characters/jannat.md): A poetic personification of paradise or a beautiful woman in al-Maʻarri's allegories.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_luzumiyat_se/characters