Al-Mutanabbi is a message on the way to our culture

Professor Mahmoud Muhammad Shakir wrote the Mu'tazilah book in 1936 when he was 26 years old, at the request of Fuad Surour, editor-in-chief of Al-Muqtataf magazine. In truth, Professor Mahmoud Muhammad Shakir did not initially intend to author the book in the form we see now, but rather his aim was to write a study of about thirty-two pages as requested by the editor-in-chief of Al-Muqtataf, to be published on the anniversary of Al-Mutanabbi. But Allah made it easy for Professor Shakir, and the book was produced in a short period with a unique approach. Al-Muqtataf published the book Al-Mutanabbi by Professor Mahmoud Muhammad Shakir (issue issued on the sixth of Shawwal 1354 AH, January 1, 1936). The editor-in-chief, Fuad Surour, stated: “This issue of Al-Muqtataf differs from every issue issued in the past two years until today, as it is on one topic and by one author.” Know that I spent ten years of my youth, in bewilderment and intense misguidance, torn by doubts, until I feared for myself destruction, and losing my world and my hereafter, feeling shame for a sin that casts me into God's torment for what I have done. So, my only concern at that time was to seek a glimmer of light to guide me out of the grave of these all-encompassing darkness from every side. From the time I was seventeen years old in 1926, until I reached twenty-seven in 1936, I was immersed in the depths of a literary life that I began to feel vaguely and increasingly that it was a corrupt life from every aspect. I found no salvation except to reject, cautiously and carefully, more and more, all the literary, political, social, and religious approaches that at that time overwhelmed like a rushing flood, demolishing dams, and undermining everything that was within me and my innate nature. And at that time, I folded my soul with a firm resolve to go ahead: to start, alone and solitary, a very long, very distant, very arduous, and very exciting journey. I began by re-reading all Arabic poetry, or what I had at hand at that time, with careful, deliberate reading at every word and meaning, as if I were turning them over in my mind, weighing them (i.e., testing them), with my heart, feeling them with my sight and intuition, as if I wanted to feel them with my hands, and inhale (i.e., smell) what emanates from them with my nose, and hear the faint heartbeat of life within them with my ears — then I would taste them intellectually, emotionally, intuitively, with my fingers, nose, hearing, and tongue, as if I were seeking a hidden secret that the cunning poet concealed with his art and skill, and sneaking into a buried treasure that the poet unintentionally or unintentionally dropped from his poetry and meanings, without his intention or deliberate act.