Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period

Risāla is a loosely used term in medieval Arabic literature. At its widest it merely refers to ‘a scroll which contains a small number of questions which belong to one kind’, as al-Jurjānī (d. 816/1413) defined it.¹ In its general character, it resembles a kitāb or ‘book’, the main difference between the two being length, or, as al-Tahānawī (d. after 1158/1745) put it:² ‘the difference between it and kitāb depends, as is commonly known, on completeness or deficiency, on addition or lack. A kitāb is a complete [exposition] of one discipline [fann] whereas a risāla is incomplete.’ Likewise, risālas often overlap with maqālas and both might be translated as essays; in fact, it is hard to see the difference between the various risālas and maqālas among, for example, al-Maqrīzī’s (d. 845/1442) works.

Risāla can thus, in the native tradition, be a short exposé of almost any field, and Ḥājjī Khalīfa (d. 1067/1657) shows³ how very wide the range of risālas was, both in earlier times and in the period under study here. One finds technical tractates of various kinds, scientific studies, Sufi manuals and brief discussions of various aspects of religious science, but also works belonging to belles-lettres. Risālas could roughly be divided according to a tripartite scheme into functional, technical and literary risālas, the first type being letters in the modern sense (conveying a message to the recipient), the second covering tracts or essays (brief studies of a limited subject) and the third consisting of various sub-genres that clearly fall within belles-lettres.

Writing risālas belongs to ‘ilm al-inshā’, ‘the science of (elegant) composition’. This science, or art, is of universal scope or, as Ṭāshkubrīzāde (d. 968/1560) puts it, ‘it derives help from all other sciences’.⁴ The term is extremely flexible, too, and Ṭāshkubrīzāde includes al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt under the heading.⁵ He ends his discussion of ‘ilm al-inshā’ by listing some of the sciences which are particularly important for epistolography, including calligraphy (an aspect of risāla which is easily forgotten when reading modern editions), knowledge of the Arabic language, religious sciences, history, and all like that.⁶ Al-Qalqashandī’s (d. 821/1418) gigantic Ṣubḥ al-a‘shā, a manual for epistolography, covers all these fields extensively. Al-Nuwayrī’s (d. 732/1332) Nihāya also contains extensive chapters on the subject and the author divides letters into several sub-genres.⁷ As one chapter heading puts it, ‘playing with words’ (al-tala‘‘ub bi’l-alfāẓ) has an important part to play in all letters.

A special section of ‘ilm al-inshā’ is ‘ilm al-tarassul, ‘the science of epistolography’ in a strict sense, a science of how letters should be written.⁸ Epistolographical manuals were written right up to the modern period,⁹ containing model letters grouped according to recipients and telling how one should express oneself in each situation, recipient and writer both considered. In such manuals, as well as in anthologies, ancient letters are found side by side with contemporary ones, which means that old material was recycled and influenced later letter writing.

It is the literary risāla which is our main concern here, but defining this is again far from simple. In belles-lettres, risāla is a rather general concept, partly overlapping with other, more easily definable genres, as can be seen from the confusion between different titles. The genres which come closest to risāla are munāẓara and maqāma; khuṭba is more clearly discernible from the risāla, as its oral character is strong even in cases where a particular khuṭba may never have in reality been delivered.

These genres may be defined as artistic prose of medium length, mainly in rhymed prose (saj‘) with a heavy emphasis on literary tropes and figures of speech, while the plot is of varying importance. Al-Suyūṭī, for instance, sees rhythmically arranged (manẓūm) discourse as the backbone of the risāla.¹⁰ Even letters purported to be ordinary private letters (although probably not without the ultimate idea of a wider circulation) do contain a great deal of saj‘. ‘Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī, on the other hand, warns against the excessive use of saj‘¹¹ but it seems that his words were little heeded in later centuries.

Functional letters, whether personal (ikhwāniyya) or official (dīwāniyya), share the style and sometimes even partly the content of literary letters. Both use heavily ornamented language and saj‘ lavishly, both may contain lengthy descriptive passages, and, in both, the actual content may be slight. A practical definition refers to the aim of the text: a functional letter is sent to convey a message, whereas a text written for its own sake is a literary risāla. Naturally, this definition is often hard to keep to, since many literary risālas end in panegyrical tones and are thus, in a sense, functional, and in a functional letter the actual subject matter may take up only a minor part of the whole.

Unambitious functional letters obviously fall outside the scope of literature and belong to the field of papyrology or history. Yet Arab authors did also circulate private letters for a larger audience and great care was used in their composition. These letters may employ complicated pieces of saj‘ and as such may both be enjoyable to read and show a great mastery of the language, but they rarely contain innovative features. Late compilations, for example, al-‘Aṭṭār’s (d. 1250/1834) Kitāb inshā᾽ al-‘Aṭṭār, contain model letters, where the functional subject matter is excised so that only the flowery formulae are left.

Epistolographical manuals contain various classifications for the more ambitious functional letters, usually arranged according to the subject matter. Ikhwāniyyāt include such classes as tahāni᾽ (felicitations), ta‘āzī (condolences), tashawwuq (longing), istizāra (invitation), mawadda (friendship), i‘tidhār (apology), shakwā (complaint), shukr (gratitude), ‘itāb (reprimand) and mudā‘aba (pleasantry), and these may be divided into further categories, for example felicitations according to the reason for sending congratulations.

Risālas were circulated separately, especially when longer, or in the ‘collected letters’ (Dīwān al-rasā’il or al-tarassul) of an author, or in anthologies and biographical dictionaries. The collected letters are usually functional, but they may contain individual literary letters or sometimes substantial passages of artistic value within a functional letter. Such, for example, is the case of Ḍiyā’ al-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr (d. 637/1239), whose Dīwān al-tarassul consisted of several volumes,¹² in addition to which a shorter selection also circulated. The preserved letters mainly contain non-literary letters but they do include some hunting risālas,¹³ as well as some model letters written purely for practice.¹⁴ In one letter, there is an interesting description of chess.¹⁵

Although technical risālas fall outside the limits of the present volume, there are cases which deserve some attention. Many authors were fond of the shorter form which the risāla presented and wrote a large number of short studies of essays on various subjects. One of the most prolific was certainly the Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Kamāl-Pāshā (d. 940/1533) whose rather vast production consists mainly of risālas, including religious, philosophical and aesthetical tracts, as well as texts such as Risāla fī tafḍīl banī Ādam ‘alā sā’ir al-makhlūqāt which fall within the limits of the munāẓara genre widely understood. In addition, he wrote many functional letters which were collected.

Ibn Kamāl-Pāshā also wrote a series of technical risālas on wine, opium and other products which were suspect in Islamic eyes. The brevity and flexibility of the genre provided an ideal medium for discussing novel ideas and taking stances on new features in Islamic society. Such tracts may be extremely dry and technical, but many authors provided an artistic perspective on the matter. Coffee, tobacco and drugs, mainly opium and hashish, were among the topics discussed in various risālas, sometimes from an Islamic point of view, sometimes out of literary interest.

Thus, one might mention, as works on the acceptability of coffee or tobacco, the Risālat al-dukhān by Sha‘bān ibn Isḥāq al-Isrā’īlī known as Ibn Ḥāfī (or Khāfī) al-Mutaṭabbib (eleventh/seventeenth century),¹⁶ or Risālat al-qahwa wa-taḥrīmihā by Yūnus al-Ghīthāwī (eleventh/seventeenth century), which is of a technical type, or, finally, the debate Mujālasat al-ikhwān wa-muṣāḥabat al-khullān fī mufākharat al-qahwa wa’l-dukhān by Aḥmad al-Ḥāfī, written in 1099/1687.

The literary risālas also show a wide variety. Among the features common to all is what might be called the risāla style, including a prolific use of rhymed prose (saj‘) and full use of the lexical possibilities (and sometimes impossibilities) of the classical Arabic language. This often resulted in extremely complicated diction. Further, one may note a strong descriptive element, as well as the use of poetry, either by the author himself or by well-known poets such as al-Mutanabbī, in order to balance the prose passages. Many risālas show a liberal use of literary allusions and are full of proverbs, parts of verses, Koranic phrases and ḥadīths. Such allusions are very often left unmarked, though they may be marked as quotations in modern editions. Noticing the quotations was a kind of literary game, where the author tested the wit of his reader. Thus, in risālas, verses often continue the syntax of the preceding prose, whereas in adab they are usually nicely marked off by some such phrase as wa-anshada yaqūl (‘and he recited as follows’).

Medieval authors themselves classified literary risālas in various ways, perhaps the most economic of which is the classification of al-Qalqashandī in his Ṣubḥ. His main interest lies in official and other functional letters, and from an artistic point of view the most interesting risālas are buried deep towards the end of the book, which in Arabic anthologies signifies lack of importance. Thus the literary letters, which al-Qalqashandī describes¹⁷ as ‘different kinds [funūn] of writings which the scribes send to each other, vying in writing them and which have no relation to the writing of royal, or other, documents’, come in the last book, which is divided into jiddiyyāt and a brief chapter on hazliyyāt.¹⁸ The jiddiyyāt are further divided into sub-chapters, beginning with maqāmas and followed by literary letters, which al-Qalqashandī lists¹⁹ as:

The two groups of royal letters, those of conquest and hunting, are indeed among the most popular and deserve more attention than the other sub-genres, with the exception of the equally important debates. These three were an outlet for the desire for narrative in Arabic literature. Popular literature (The Arabian Nights and its predecessors, popular sīras) was free to tell stories, but respectable literature lacked this freedom. Al-Qalqashandī himself calls this group ‘the greatest and loftiest of them all’.²⁰ In comparison with the ornate historiography (ta’rīkh) of the period, letters of conquest are distinguished not so much by their style, as by the personal, eyewitness point of view and the relative shortness of the risāla. Al-Qalqashandī quotes in full one such letter²¹ by Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir, written to celebrate and commemorate the conquest of Caesarea in 1265 by al-Malik al-Ẓāhir, that is, Baybars Ⅰ. In his preface, the author himself connects his letter with the genre of the travelogue (riḥla). Descriptions of travelling are prominent in both this risāla and in other works belonging to the same genre; the interest in describing travelling goes back to the pre-Islamic qaṣīda, but, in this case, the raison d’être of the description is not to prove the bravery of the author, but that of his patron. Another difference between the two is the exactness of the dates and routes as well as the persons involved, which connects the genre to both ta’rīkh and riḥla.

The other variety of royal letters, the hunting risāla, has deep roots in Arabic literature, going back to ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd al-Kātib (d. after 132/750). Al-Qalqashandī quotes one such letter by Tāj al-Dīn al-Bāranbārī,²² written to commemorate a hunt organized by the Sultan Qalā’ūn (d. 689/1290). In hunting letters, the formulae of hunting poems (ṭardiyya) often shine through. In general, poetry and ornate prose went hand in hand, and risālas benefited from all the stylistic devices developed in poetry.

Close to the risālat al-ṣayd, but in the taxonomy of al-Qalqashandī falling outside the risāla proper,²³ is the qidmat al-bunduq, a description of fowling by sling shot. Al-Qalqashandī gives two qidmas as examples, one by Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn al-Ṣā’igh al-Ḥanafī,²⁴ describing a fowling expedition that took place in 739/1338, the other²⁵ by Maḥmūd ibn Salmān al-Ḥalabī (d. 725/1325). In the same connection, one might mention risālas describing fishing, such as one by Ibn al-Athīr.²⁶

The second variety is the panegyrical letter, of which al-Qalqashandī first gives earlier examples (by al-Jāḥiẓ and al-Ma‘arrī) and then quotes one of his own, written in 814/1411 to eulogize Abū’l-Ma‘ālī Fatḥ Allāh.²⁷ Alongside the panegyrical letter is its opposite, the letter of invective, of which al-Qalqashandī gives as an example Yaḥyā ibn Ja‘far al-Ḥaṣkafī’s ‘Itāb al-kuttāb wa-‘iqāb al-alqāb.²⁸

The third variety, the debate, is one of the main genres of Arabic pre-modern prose and will be treated later. The fourth, al-as’ila wa’l-ajwiba, consists of questions, or riddles and quibbles, sent ‘either to inquire and ask to be granted some (knowledge) which the recipient has, or to test him, trying to show his incapacity’.²⁹ Although this device was used in belles-lettres (especially in maqāmas³⁰) the letter type itself clearly belongs to technical letters.

The fifth variety³¹ consists of various letters sent by scholars to each other to describe events in their life, in tenor not unlike the letters of hunting and conquest, but merely taking place outside the royal pastimes. This group is strongly autobiographical in character, although royal letters too were often very personal, even though the main focus was of course on the patron, not the author himself. In this group of letters, the focus is clearly on the author himself. Al-Qalqashandī first quotes a letter³² by the qāḍī᾽l-quḍāt Muḥyī al-Dīn Abū’l-Faḍl Yaḥyā, written in 629/1232 on his arrival in Cairo. The letter contains a description of his lamentable situation. When he received, in the middle of his misery, a note (ruq‘a) from his new patron, he found himself unable to answer in a similar vein of superb eloquence. However, inserted within the letter is a whole set of descriptive passages which almost exhaust the stylistic resources of the risāla. This risāla derives its name from the sudden appearance of a weasel (nims) and its subsequent description. At the end of the letter, Muḥyī al-Dīn Abū’l-Faḍl explains that he wrote the letter so that his patron could see with his own eyes what he was able to write. Thus, the end gives this thoroughly artistic letter a functional twist: it is not simply art for art’s sake but art written to impress the patron, despite the false modesty of its author.

Some of the letters of this group, such as that written by Fakhr al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Mukānis and addressed to Badr al-Dīn al-Bashtakī on the occasion of the unusual flood of the Nile in 784/1382,³³ are extremely elegant. In this letter, the flood/sea/water metaphors are maintained in a balanced and artistic way throughout the text, even in the panegyrical parts, which otherwise tend to become rather monotonous.

In addition to serious letters, al-Qalqashandī mentions³⁴ humorous texts that are written in risāla style without any serious pretensions and which we may count as comic literature together with other famous texts, such as Ibn Sūdūn’s (d. 868/1464) Nuzhat al-nufūs or the Hazz al-quḥūf by al-Shirbīnī (d. after 1099/1687).³⁵

Al-Qalqashandī’s categories do not exhaust the whole range of literary letters. Descriptions of cities,³⁶ also attested as maqāmas, are a clearly discernible type of risāla, even though they can of course be counted under the heading of the flexible group of ‘letters describing various events’. The master of the city risāla was perhaps Ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 776/1374) who wrote a series of such texts but who belongs more properly to Andalusian literature.³⁷

Risālas on plague (wabā’, ṭā‘ūn) form another sub-genre. The subject was also discussed by maqāma writers, and often the borderline is again very oblique. These risālas differ from medical (and thus technical) letters on other diseases by their literary approach. Perhaps the most famous risāla written on plague is that by Ibn al-Wardī (d. 749/1349), who wrote his risāla shortly before himself dying of plague.³⁸ Many such risālas were written in the tenth/sixteenth century, for example by Muṣṭafā ibn Awḥad al-Dīn al-Yārḥiṣārī (d. 911/1506), Idrīs al-Bidlīsī (d. 926/1520), Ibn Kamāl-Pāshā (d. 940/1533) and Ṭāshkubrīzāde (d. 968/1560).

Also a case worth attention are the various erotic risālas, whether titled as risālat al-‘ishq or circulating under some other name. An especially elegant and charming composition is the Risālat al-ṭayfby Bahā’ al-Dīn al-Irbilī (d. 692/1293), written in 674/1275. The text tells of the author falling in love with a lady from whom he is first separated and to whom he sends his messenger. Finally, the two meet to enjoy their mutual love, but the text ends with the author waking up from his sleep: the whole incident was a dream, the author thus using the same device as al-Wahrānī (d. 574/1178) in his Manāmāt (Dreams). The risāla could be called pseudo-autobiographical, as it claims to narrate a real incident in the life of the author, which, however, turns out to be a dream.

Within this frame, the author collected an anthology of love-related themes which he touches upon in his story (female beauty, separation, sleepless nights, messengers, rendezvous, etc.), providing excerpts from poetry, both his own and from earlier, as well as contemporary, poets, and his own elegant prose, which is not too heavily loaded with rhymes. Here again, the material and the style of the text resemble similar maqāmas,³⁹ and it is merely the frame which decides whether the text is a risāla or a maqāma; even then, the boundaries are often far from clear.

Such ‘love letters’ remained in vogue for the whole period, although, for example, the model letter by al-‘Aṭṭār⁴⁰ is only a distant echo of the superb risāla by al-Irbilī. As is obvious in the Arabic literary context, the beloved could also be male, and perhaps the most famous of all such letters is the Law‘at al-shākī by al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1363).⁴¹

Now we may turn to the third variety in al-Qalqashandī’s taxonomy, that of literary debate which, strictly speaking, should be taken as an independent genre. Yet debates often have titles such as risālat al-mufākhara/al-munāẓara bayna fulān wa-fulān (the risāla of the debate between X and Y), and may be taken as a special case of the risāla.

Literary debates have two different structures, with slight variation in the elements being possible. The debate may consist of a prologue which gives the reader the outward setting of the scene and may introduce the narrator, who usually is the author. The prologue is followed by a set of eulogies on oneself and, optionally, invective poured on one’s adversary, delivered either by the contestant itself (abstract concept, animal, plant, thing, human being) or by its proponent (ṣāḥib al- . . .). This is answered by the other participant in a similar vein and the debate is judged in an epilogue by an arbiter (ḥakam), who may also be the first-person narrator. There may, furthermore, be several participants in the debate, each speaking in turn. If P = prologue, E = Epilogue, A, B, C . . . = the eulogy-cum-invective by each participant, then this structure could be formalized as P + {A − B(−C − D− . . .)} + E.

The second variety is, with few exceptions, used only when there are no more than two participants. It consists, in addition to the prologue and the epilogue, of a series of short passages of eulogy-cum-invective by each participant in turn, and may be formalized as: P + {(A1 − B1) − (A2 − B2)− . . . − (Ax − Bx)} + E.

In the period under question, another technical extension of the genre was developed. This has to do with the general panegyrical tone of much of the literature in this period. To eulogize their patron, prose writers used the device of presenting him as the venerable judge who is above the contestants and whose intelligence, sagacity and knowledge are superior to theirs.⁴² This may be achieved by giving the name of the patron to the umpire but, even more strikingly, the text may be cut short of an epilogue, thus leaving the debate open-ended. This seems to have been especially favoured when the patron – or the would-be patron – was an intellectual figure who was up to the task of voicing his opinion and producing the final judgement on the debate. For example, al-Qalqashandī himself wrote several such debates, in the end leaving the floor to his patron. In one of his debates, written in 798/1396,⁴³ and addressed to qāḍī᾽l-quḍāt ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Bulqīnī (d. 824/1421), various sciences vie with each other about their superiority. Panegyrical notes start piling up when Physiognomy points to al-Bulqīnī as the best possible arbiter, quoting eulogistic statements ancient authorities would have heaped on him had they known al-Bulqīnī. Some other sciences join the chorus and ask Poetry to compose panegyrical verses on al-Bulqīnī, which is appropriately done, thus bringing the risāla to its end. The final judgement is absent and would probably have been added by al-Bulqīnī in his reply. The whole text is strongly panegyrical.⁴⁴

The arguments of the contestants also underwent a slight change. In earlier times, the argumentation was based more on what the participants of the debate could be used for⁴⁵ and less on authoritative quotations from literature, although even this aspect had never been lacking. In this period, authoritative quotations seem to grow in importance.

The personification of the contestants remains the same as in earlier periods, although there is a certain hesitation in portraying non-human contestants as speaking characters. Thus, in his debate of the sciences al-Qalqashandī explicitly states that the sciences ‘came together one day figuratively (ma‘nā), though not in actual form (ṣūra)’ and that they spoke with ‘the tongue of their state’ (lisān al-ḥāl).⁴⁶

The variety of participants in the debates is considerable in this later period, obviously at least partly in an effort to breathe new life into an old genre and, on the other hand, to react to the changes in the social and material culture. The all-time favourite, however, remained the same, viz. the debate between the sword and the pen (al-sayf wa’l-qalam), which is clearly not unconnected with the social positions of the men of the sword and the men of the pen whom they usually served. Al-Qalqashandī himself, before giving his own version of the debate (Ḥilyat al-faḍl wa-zīnat al-karam fī’l-mufākhara bayn al-sayf wa’l-qalam,⁴⁷ written in 794/1392), notes that ‘people have been prolific’ in this genre.⁴⁸

The wide variety of late munāẓaras, which still mainly remain unedited, may be exemplified by the Verzeichniss of Ahlwardt,⁴⁹ where we find such debates as Muḥāwarat al-layl wa’l-nahār (no. 8589) by ‘Alawān ibn ‘Aṭiyya al-Ḥamawī (d. 936/1530), or Mufākharat al-samā’ wa’l-arḍ (no. 8590:1) by al-Shihāb al-Ḥijāzī (d. 875/1470) who also wrote Mufākharat al-Nīl wa’l-baḥr (no. 8590:2) in quatrains. Metrical form was also used by Sha‘bān ibn Salīm al-Ḥāsikī al-Ṣan‘ānī (d. 1149/1736) in a debate (al-Kalima al-muḥkama fī’l-mufākhara bayn al-ḥurra wa’l-ama)⁵⁰ between a black slave girl and a white lady. This debate of some 200 rajaz verses also deserves attention for its rather unpretentious language which sometimes uses colloquial Yemenisms.

Debates may contain a fictitious isnād, borrowed from the maqāmas, which added to the confusion between the two genres. They could also be crossbred with the riḥla as in, for example, the Munāẓara ma‘a ‘ulamā’ al-rāfiḍa by ‘Abdallāh Efendī al-Suwaydī (d. 1174/1761),⁵¹ which could equally well be described as a travelogue.

The debate has survived into modern times and is still productive in oral literature in, for example, the dialects of the Arabian peninsula, not to mention the rather antiquarian efforts to keep the genre alive in classical Arabic.

In addition to debates, there are some interesting texts which do not clearly fall within the limits of any genre, such as the magnificent prose works of Ibn Ḥabīb al-Ḥalabī (d. 779/1377), which are not labelled as risālas by the author himself but which could with good reason be taken as belonging to the genre. Ibn Ḥabīb himself called his evocative and elegant prose simply faṣls (paragraphs), and collected them into books, such as al-Najm al-thāqib fī ashraf al-manāqib, in honour of the Prophet Muḥammad (written in 763/1362), or Nasīm al-ṣabā, full of wonderful descriptions, mainly of things connected with love or gardens (written in 756/1355). Ibn Ghānim al-Maqdisī (d. 678/1279) and his Kashf al-asrār fī ḥikam al-ṭuyūr wa’l-azhār, with its ishāras, is another such work which comes very close to a risāla.

Ibn Ḥabīb’s Nasīm al-ṣabā contains among its thirty paragraphs texts that resemble various types of risāla. Thus, his fifth faṣl (pp. 57–62), on the seasons, is actually a debate, with each of the four seasons eulogizing itself, and each being personified as coming to a majlis al-adab for the purpose. The tenth faṣl (pp. 85–90), containing the description of a boy, is very similar to some maqāmas, the twenty-second faṣl (pp. 151–8), on war and weapons, is almost a letter of conquest, and, finally the twenty-third faṣl (pp. 159–67), on ramy al-bunduq, could equally well be called a qidmat al-bunduq. The similarity is also enhanced by the narrative structure of most of the paragraphs: the author first places himself in some scene, before beginning the main part, linked by a phrase like ‘whilst I was . . .’. Taking into account the rather slight narrative element in many maqāmas, debates and risālas, Ibn Ḥabīb’s text does not much differ from them.

¹ al-Jurjānī, Ta‘rīfāt, p. 115.

² al-Tahānawī, Kashshāf, p. 584.

³ Ḥājjī Khalīfa, Kashf, pp. 840–901.

⁴ Ṭāshkubrīzāde, Miftāḥ, vol. I, p. 204

⁵ Ibid., p. 206.

⁶ Ibid., p. 208.

⁷ al-Nuwayrī, Nihāya, vol. Ⅶ, p. 4.

⁸ Ṭāshkubrīzāde, Miftāḥ, vol. I, p. 248.

⁹ The earlier history of the genre is summarized in al-Droubi, A Critical Edition, pp. 60–79.

¹⁰ al-Suyūṭī, Itqān, vol. Ⅱ, p. 153.

¹¹ al-Jurjānī, Asrār al-balāgha, p. 18, tr. in Ritter, Geheimnisse, p. 11.

¹² According to Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, vol. V, p. 392.

¹³ E.g. Ibn al-Athīr, Rasā’il, ed. al-Qaysī-Nājī, pp. 66–70.

¹⁴ I.e. ‘alā ḥukm al-riyāḍa. See e.g. Rasā’il, ed. al-Qaysī-Nājī, nos. 21 and 26.

¹⁵ Ibid., no. 35.

¹⁶ Ibn Ḥāfī used as his source a ‘Frankish’ (faranjiyya) tract written in Spain by a certain doctor Mūtārūs which he then translated into Arabic, see Ḥājjī Khalīfa, Kashf, p. 863.

¹⁷ al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ, vol. ⅪⅤ, p. 110.

¹⁸ Ibid., pp. 110–359, 360–5.

¹⁹ al-Qalqashandī also mentioned these in his table of contents (ibid., vol. Ⅰ, p. 31), with some interesting variants. To madḥ (panegyric) he added the counter-genre, dhamm (censure). Speaking about debates, he defined these as ‘debates between luxury items’, which does in fact accurately describe the main exponents of the genre. In Western scholarly literature, one tends to prefer the term munāẓara for this genre.

²⁰ Ibid., vol. ⅪⅤ, p. 139.

²¹ Ibid., pp. 139–65.

²² Ibid., pp. 165–72.

²³ Ibid., pp. 282–99.

²⁴ Ibid., pp. 282–8.

²⁵ Ibid., pp. 288–99.

²⁶ Ibn al-Athīr, Rasā’il, ed. al-Maqdisī, pp. 195–7.

²⁷ al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ, vol. ⅪⅤ, pp. 191–7.

²⁸ Ibid., pp. 197–214.

²⁹ Ibid., pp. 240–51.

³⁰ For the fatwās of faqīh al-‘arab in maqāmas, see Hämeen-Anttila, Maqāma, pp. 157–8, 269–70, 344.

³¹ al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ, vol. ⅪⅤ, pp. 251–81.

³² The Risālat al-nims, ibid., pp. 252–62.

³³ Ibid., pp. 267–81.

³⁴ Ibid., pp. 360–5.

³⁵ Cf. also the texts studied in Kern, Neuere ägyptische Humoristen. (See also Larkin’s contribution in this volume, Chapter 12.)

³⁶ Cf. e.g. al-‘Aṭṭār, Inshā’, pp. 67–70, on Damascus; pp. 86–7, on Jerusalem.

³⁷ See Hämeen-Anttila, Maqāma, pp. 291–6.

³⁸ Dols, ῾Ibn al-Wardī’s Risālah’. See also Ibn al-Wardī, Ta’rīkh, vol. I, pp. 350–3.

³⁹ See Hämeen-Anttila, Maqāma, pp. 340–1.

⁴⁰ al-‘Aṭṭār, Inshā’, pp. 66–70.

⁴¹ See Rowson, ‘Two Homoerotic Narratives’.

⁴² In addition, we have cases where the participants vie with each other in eulogizing the patron, e.g. Ahlwardt, Verzeichniss, no. 8591:4 (anonymous), on the virtues of Muḥammad Amīn Pāshā, c. 1160/1747.

⁴³ Risāla fī’l-mufākhara bayn al-‘ulūm, in al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ, vol. ⅪⅤ, pp. 204–30.

⁴⁴ al-Qalqashandī’s debate between the Sword and the Pen (ibid., pp. 231–40) shares the same open-ended structure. In this debate, the Sword and the Pen make a truce and decide to refer themselves to Abū Yazīd al-Dawādār al-Ẓāhirī. Here, too, the debate ends with panegyrical verses.

⁴⁵ A very realistic version may be found in Pahlavi literature where the debate of the Assyrian Tree (Draxt-i Asūrīg) is very much down to earth when the Goat and the Palmtree vie for superiority by listing what each, or the products derived from each, can be used for.

⁴⁶ al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ, vol. ⅪⅤ, p. 205.

⁴⁷ Ibid., pp. 231–40.

⁴⁸ See also van Gelder, ‘The Conceit’.

⁴⁹ Or see the index to GAL, s.v. munāẓara and mufākhara.

⁵⁰ See Kahl, Mufāḫhara.

⁵¹ See Ahlwardt, Verzeichniss, no. 6150.