The first of the two d?w?ns of the blind Syrian poet and litterateur, Ab? al-A?l?´ al-Ma?arr? (973-1058 CE), Saqt? al-Zand (“The Sparks of the Firestick”), consists, I argue, largely of poems written in response to particular social, political and poetic obligations and challenges—in stark contrast to the self-imposed strictures of his second d?w?n, al-Luz?miyy?t (“Self-Imposed Compulsions”). To understand the poetics of Saqt? al-Zand, I have relied on performance and speech act theory, along the lines proposed by Austin and Searle, to interpret the variations in qas??dah-structure and themes of individual poems as meticulously formulated responses to their individual challenges and circumstances. Quite distinctive of al-Ma?arr?’s odes of praise is the frequent appearance of the middle journey section (rah??l), which had largely fallen into desuetude in the ‘Abb?sid era, and further, the nocturnal nature of these journeys. The present paper will examine, in light of performance theory and recent studies of qas??dah-structure, first, the shared features of al-Ma?arr?’s night journeys, and second, al-Ma?arri’s many manipulations of form and theme in particular poetic circumstances. For example, 1) Qas??dah no. 14 in which a night rah??l allows the poet to introduce constellations of stars to suggest the cosmic power of the ?Alaw? patron; 2) Qas??dah no. 15, in which the qas??dah-form is wrenched out of shape in a poem of praise and consolation to a fellow poet who has just been dismissed by his patron. Here there is a confusion and inversion of roles and themes, whereby the addressee of the poem, rather than the poet, undertakes a night journey rah??l, and the night-crossing represents the retreat of a poet who has failed to obtain his patron’s bounty--rather than the journey of the poet to the court of a munificent patron; and 3) Qas??dah no. 51, a highly lyrical (rather than martial-heroic) and very short praise poem in which there is no concluding third part (the mad?h? or praise section), but rather the praise is implied in, or folded into, the imagery and diction of the night-journey rah??l. The paper will conclude by addressing the vexed issue of whether al-Ma?arr?’s pronounced preference for the night rah??l is the result of his own blindness or of the structural and expressive possibilities of the metaphor of a night followed by morning to the poet’s hardship and deprivation followed by the ease and bounty that await him at the patron’s court.