Summary: Tom Shakespeare challenges stereotypical ideas about creativity and disability by celebrating five disabled artists, discussing how their impairments fuelled their genius. Abul 'Ala Al-Ma'arri was born near Aleppo in the year 973 AD, became partially sighted in childhood and went on to become the most famous poet in the Arab world. Although welcomed in the literary salons of Baghdad, Al-Ma'arri became an ascetic, who avoided other people, and refused to sell his poetry.
