Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period

The maqāma is a prolific genre of Arabic literature which, as far as we can tell, was invented in the late tenth century by Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Hamadhānī (358–98/968–1008), known as Badī‘ al-Zamān (the Marvel of the Age), and has lasted until the twentieth. Literary maqāmāt (sing. maqāma), traditionally translated as ‘Assemblies’ or ‘Sessions’ in English and ‘Séances’ in French, are brief episodic or anecdotal texts – usually between two and ten pages – written in elaborate rhymed and rhythmic prose, often embellished with ornate rhetorical figures and an admixture of verse at key junctures. Though individual maqāmas have been written as independent texts, many occur in collections which comprise series of episodes based on a running gag. In the classical form, a clever and unscrupulous protagonist, disguised differently in each episode, succeeds, through a display of eloquence, in swindling money out of the gullible narrator, who only realizes the identity of the protagonist when it is too late. Despite al-Hamadhānī’s precedence, the genre’s most famous work is that of his admitted emulator, Abū Muḥammad al-Qāsim ibn ‘Alī al-Ḥarīrī (446–516/1054–1122). Though al-Ḥarīrī has overshadowed other authors in the genre, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Arabic maqāmas have been produced over the past millennium. Early on, the genre was borrowed and adapted into Persian, Syriac and Hebrew, flourishing for centuries in the latter. Already in 1928, the Spanish Arabist Gonzalez Palencia suggested that the maqāma played a role in the rise of the picaresque novel.¹ It proved one of the most vital genres in the rapidly changing world of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Arabic literature and, indeed, cannot be said to have died out completely at present.² Modern claims abound concerning the maqāma’s critical influence on such diverse modern Arabic literary forms as drama, the novel, the short story and even the newspaper article.

Little attempt has been made to compile a systematic list of extant literary Arabic maqāmas or to comb biographical works for information on maqāmas no longer extant. Brockelmann’s Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, for example, lists ninety-nine works entitled maqāmāt. Chauvin’s catalogue of Arabic works presents the Maqāmāt of al-Hamadhānī and al-Ḥarīrī, then lists fifty-nine so-called imitations, the majority of them unpublished but listed in manuscript catalogues. Blachère and Masnou list seventy-five authors of maqāmāt beside al-Hamadhānī and al-Ḥarīrī.³ Many of the works included in these lists do not belong to the literary genre of maqāmāt at all, let alone represent imitations of the works of al-Hamadhānī and al-Ḥarīrī. The works attributed to al-Sulamī and al-Suhrawardī probably treat spiritual stations or saints’ miracles. The collection attributed to Abū Sa‘īd is the well-known Persian work on that saint’s miracles by Muḥammad ibn al-Munawwar (d. 598/1202), Asrār al-tawḥīd fī maqāmāt al-Shaykh Abī al-Sa‘īd.⁴ The works of al-Ghazālī contain harangues or sermons, that is, maqāms, and not maqāmas per se. These lists are no more than surveys of texts entitled maqāmāt; a more complete catalogue of literary maqāmāt and a tentative history of the genre have only recently been provided by Hämeen-Anttila.

A more detailed definition of the classical literary maqāma must be based on the works of al-Ḥarīrī and al-Hamadhānī. While it has been pointed out that several of al-Hamadhānī’s maqāmas do not adhere to the structure followed consistently by al-Ḥarīrī, al-Hamadhānī’s corpus as a whole gives sufficient evidence that this basic pattern is important in his work as well. A work in the classical genre is a series of episodes, each set in a different city of the Islamic world, which involve two characters, a gullible transmitter – al-Hamadhānī’s ‘Īsā ibn Hishām and al-Ḥarīrī’s al-Ḥārith ibn Hammām al-Baṣrī – and a clever protagonist transmitter – al-Hamadhānī’s Abū’l-Fatḥ al-Iskandarī and al-Ḥarīrī’s Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī. These characters interact according to a prescribed pattern, whereby the protagonist succeeds in swindling money out of the narrator or a third party through a clever ruse involving a display of eloquence, whether it be invective, panegyric poetry, a sermon or an eloquent description. In general, the transmitter does not recognize the protagonist at first, but only realizes his identity after the eloquent performance. The plot of the typical maqāma may be represented in the following scheme:⁵

1. The transmitter arrives in a city;

2. Formation of an assembly or gathering for learned discussion;

3. The protagonist enters the assembly;

4. The protagonist undertakes an eloquent performance;

5. Rewarding of the protagonist by the transmitter or other character;

6. The protagonist leaves assembly, which breaks up;

7. The transmitter realizes the protagonist’s true identity;

8. The transmitter follows the protagonist;

9. The transmitter accosts or reproaches the protagonist;

10. Justification by the protagonist;

11. Parting of the two;

12. Departure of the transmitter from the city (implicit).

The centrepiece of each maqāma is the eloquent display (no. 4).⁶ Both al-Hamadhānī and al-Ḥarīrī, well known for their verbal pyrotechnics, used the maqāma as a vehicle in which to display their accomplishments. In the course of a contest of literary skill, al-Hamadhānī once dictated an elegant epistle on inflation and the debasement of coinage, backwards! Similarly, al-Ḥarīrī gained renown for his Risāla sīniyya, an epistle in which every word included the letter sīn (s), and al-Risāla al-shīniyya, in which every word included the letter shīn (sh). Al-Hamadhānī’s Maqāmāt include, for example, a scathing exchange of invective in al-Dīnāriyya (43), a moving sermon in al-Wa‘ẓiyya (26) and a brilliant description of a horse in al-Ḥamdāniyya (29), but it is in al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt that displays of technical or mechanical expertise with language come to the fore. These include a letter which may be read backwards or forwards and make sense either way (al-Qahqariyya (17)), poetry composed entirely of palindromic verses (al-Maghribiyya (16)), a letter in which alternating words are made up of all pointed or all unpointed letters (al-Marāghiyya (6)), a letter in which pointed and unpointed letters alternate (al-Raqṭā’ (26)), etc. Other displays of specialized linguistic knowledge also occur: answers to thorny problems in inheritance law (al-Faraḍiyya (15)); answers to one hundred trick legal questions (al-Ṭaybiyya (32)); answers to difficult grammatical questions (al-Qaṭī‘iyya (24)); riddles (al-Malaṭiyya (36); al-Shitwiyya (44)). A number of the maqāmas feature a sermon: al-ṣan‘āniyya (1); al-ṣāwiyya (11); al-Rāziyya (21); al-Samarqandiyya (28); al-Ramliyya (31); al-Tinnīsiyya (41); al-Baṣriyya (50). Because of such verbal acrobatics, the maqāma has often been viewed as an entirely didactic genre, the essential purpose of which is to teach students obscure vocabulary, eloquent style and recherché rhetorical figures. To see this as the only feature of the genre, however, is to do it an injustice; certainly, the humour of the form was not lost on medieval readers, nor is it on their modern counterparts.

The Maqāmāt are inherently dramatic, humorous and parodic, and it is these features which have attracted so many nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors to adapt the genre to modern Arabic literature. Dramatic irony dictates the structure of the maqāma. The narrator is unaware, at the outset, that he is going to be duped by the same eloquent scoundrel yet again, though this is obvious to the audience. The maqāma may therefore be thought of as falling into two sections, one public (nos. 1–6) and one private (nos. 8–12), hinging on the narrator’s realization of the protagonist’s identity (no. 7). The private section, in which the protagonist is unmasked and his subterfuge exposed, undoes the public section, showing the performance which occurred there to be merely a linguistic manipulation of perceptions based entirely on false pretence. This structure imparts to the maqāma a tension which, together with the lively description of the characters’ interaction and the technique of the eloquent display, heightens the enjoyment of the reader. The basic humour of the genre derives from repetition and the resultant expectation; the reader knows that the protagonist is going to swindle the narrator, but his or her curiosity is piqued to see the exact form his conniving will take in this particular episode.

Despite his dastardly deeds and questionable motives, the protagonist of the classical maqāma is not without charm. The audience is titillated by his cleverness and scoffs at the narrator’s naïveté. The narrator does not retrieve his money when he confronts the protagonist, who has in effect earned it through the eloquent and clever, though dishonest, display. The eloquent display partakes in any of a variety of genres, including literary criticism, panegyric, prayers, sermons, invective, debates, and so on. The fact that it will be shown false, meant to take in the gullible narrator and the equally gullible audience, creates room for humour, often expressed in parodic imitations of the genres invoked. Nevertheless, this parodic tendency does not necessarily detract from the impressive effect of the eloquent display on the reader in its own right. The protagonist then justifies his actions, usually in verse, expressing a materialistic and opportunist philosophy associated strongly, in the Maqāmāt themselves, with the Banū Sāsān, professional beggars skilled in ruses by which to take advantage of their contemporaries’ piety and generosity. The insatiable greed of the protagonist and his constant resort to mendicancy (kudya) is the driving force of the maqāma.

Much of medieval Arabic fiction presents itself not as fiction but as being made up of factual anecdotes, and the maqāma, no exception in this regard, is the framed speech of a narrator. The fact, however, that al-Hamadhānī uses ḥaddathanā (‘he reported to us’) consistently as the verb of transmission which begins each episode attracts special attention. This was of course a technical term associated closely with the transmission of ḥadīth, though it appears in other contexts. Kilito observes that the maqāmāt evoke the structure of ḥadīth, and suggests that they perhaps represent a pastiche or imitation of that form.⁷ He sees that the texts to which this aspect of the maqāmāt call attention are the ṣiḥāḥ or major compilations of prophetic ḥadīth and pseudo-historical akhbār works, such as Kitāb al-aghānī, which often use the ḥadīth form.⁸ Monroe discusses how the isnād or chain of authorities in the Maqāmāt parodies the ḥadīth form, and labels the maqāmāt a ‘counter-genre’.⁹ The problem which arises, however, is that it is difficult to speak of ḥadīth as a single genre, for prophetic traditions appear in a large variety of texts with very different forms and purposes. Monroe, like Kilito, seems to have in mind primarily the major ṣiḥāḥ works: the tales Ibn Hishām tells are, he avers, ‘the very antipodes of Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ or collection of “sound” ḥadīths’.¹⁰ While Monroe may be correct in stating that the maqāmāt represent a counter-genre, the genre to which it responds ought to be defined more specifically than ‘prophetic tradition’. The maqāmāt contain a number of indications that a major and perhaps central concern of al-Hamadhānī was to parody specific genres of Islamic religious discourse, particularly the ḥadīth-lecture or majlis. Ḥadīth-majālis were lectures held at regular intervals involving a framed narrative. Like the maqāmāt, they appeared in collections of texts each beginning with the phrase ḥaddathanā, mentioning the narrator(s) and often including a reference to the specific time and place the lecture was held. It seems likely that al-Hamadhānī invented the maqāma form in part as a parody of the ḥadīth-majlis. This suggests an explanation of the genre’s confusing title. Literally meaning ‘a standing’, the term maqāma may initially have been an ironic inversion of the term majlis, literally ‘sitting, session, seated assembly’, giving the sense of ‘anti-lecture’.

The verbs of transmission used in later collections of maqāmas, however, are indicative of an important change in the genre after the time of al-Hamadhānī. Ibn Nāqiyā uses ḥaddathanī (‘he reported to me’) regularly, where the singular pronoun gives it a slightly less authoritative ring. Moreover, he does not have one consistent narrator, but a different narrator for each maqāma, described in ambiguous terms such as ‘a certain Syrian’, ‘a certain friend’, ‘a certain theologian’, etc. Al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt differ considerably from al-Hamadhānī’s in this respect; he uses five different verbs of transmission, including ḥaddatha (‘reported’), akhbara (‘informed’), rawā (‘related’), ḥakā (‘told’) and qāla (‘said’), alternating nearly randomly among the episodes, though the term ḥakā tends to dominate. This is one indication of al-Ḥarīrī’s emphasis on belles-lettres per se as compared with al-Hamadhānī’s intention to parody religious texts. Ibn Ṣayqal follows al-Ḥarīrī, but in a more regular fashion; his maqāmāt maintain a regular cycle of (1) ḥakā, (2) ḥaddatha, (3) akhbara and (4) rawā throughout the fifty episodes. Al-Saraqusṭī’s collection uses ḥaddatha a number of times, but reverts simply to qāla for the majority of episodes. Al-Ḥanafī’s Maqāmāt simply use ḥakā throughout. Again, the proliferation of terms other than ḥaddathanā in the genre reflects a move away from the parody of religious texts that al-Hamadhānī had established.

When al-Ḥarīrī completed his Maqāmāt just after the turn of the eleventh century, the work was immediately recognized as a masterpiece of eloquence and rhetorical skill and became an astounding success. He read the work to an audience comprised of many leading scholars and dignitaries in Baghdad in a series of sessions in 504/1111, and according to one account he signed – and thus authorized – seven hundred copies of the work. Careful study of the work became a prerequisite for aspiring court secretaries, stylists and literati, and as a result it was commented on profusely. Brockelmann lists about two dozen commentaries extant in manuscript, including those of Ibn al-Khashshāb (d. 567/1171), al-Muṭarrizī (d. 610/1213), al-‘Ukbarī (d. 616/1219) and the Andalusian al-Sharīshī (d. 619/1222). Many others have been lost. Contemporary scholars, such as the Andalusian Abū Ṭāhir al-Tamīmī al-Sarāqusṭī (d. 538/1143) in al-Maqāmāt al-luzūmiyya, wrote texts emulating al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt very soon after their publication, and the process continued, nearly uninterrupted, until Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī wrote Majma‘ al-baḥrayn in 1855.

Many later scholars followed al-Ḥarīrī’s example quite painstakingly. They used highly embellished rhyming and rhythmical prose with few passages or clauses in free prose. They wrote collections including fifty episodes, the basic plot and structure of which matched that of al-Ḥarīrī’s episodes. They made the episodes revolve around two main characters: a gullible narrator and a clever, eloquent rogue. Nevertheless, it is wrong to dismiss these later works summarily as lacking in quality or originality. Abū ‘Abd Allāh ibn Abī ᾽l-Khiṣāl (d. 540/1146) is the only author known to have written a Ḥarīrian maqāma in the literal sense, that is, with the characters al-Ḥārith ibn Hammām and Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī. Others wrote maqāmāt in al-Ḥarīrī’s style but made adjustments that reflect original, albeit not always radical, interpretations of the genre.

Among the most erudite imitations of al-Ḥarīrī’s work are al-Maqāmāt al-luzūmiyya by Abū Ṭāhir al-Ashtarkūnī al-Saraqusṭī (d. 538/1143) and al-Maqāmāt al-zayniyya by Ibn al-Ṣayqal al-Jazarī (d. 701/1301). Al-Saraqusṭī wrote his work in Andalusia soon after al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt arrived there. His collection includes fifty episodes, like that of al-Ḥarīrī. The protagonist is named Abū Ḥabīb al-Sadūsī. Though it matches al-Ḥarīrī’s al-Sarūjī in form, al-Sadūsī is not a geographic nisba but an Arab tribal designation; the Banū Sadūs were a subsection of the Banū Dhuhl tribe from al-Yamāma in central Arabia. This name, besides reflecting a heightened concern with Arab descent and lore, seems to suggest, through association with the number six – sādis (sixth), suds (a sixth), musaddas (six-fold, six-faceted) – the duplicitous and mercurial nature of the character. Abū Ḥabīb ‘Father of the Beloved Companion’ seems to be an ironic inversion implying that he is in fact the enemy, and this despite the fact that it actually refers to one of two sons who appear in the collection, Ḥabīb and Gharīb. The name of the narrator, al-Sā’ib ibn Tammām, rhymes with that of al-Ḥarīrī’s narrator, al-Ḥārith ibn Hammām, but in addition refers to the narrator’s lack of purpose, for al-sā’ib means ‘stray, lost, wandering’. This impression is corroborated by the additional appellation addressed to the narrator on several occasions, Abū’l-Ghamr, which could mean ‘overflowing’, that is, with generosity, but more likely indicates that he is ghamr/ghumr ‘gullible, green, ingenuous’. An original feature of al-Saraqusṭī’s collection is his occasional inclusion of a third character, al-Mundhir ibn Ḥumām/Ḥimām, who transmits the account from al-Sā’ib ibn Tammām, placing al-Sā’ib’s account at yet one more remove from the audience. This name carries ominous or didactic overtones, meaning ‘The Warner, son of Fever, or Death’, while at the same time rhyming with al-Sā’ib ibn Tammām. The intended message seems to be that if al-Sā’ib can be fooled by or embroiled in the nefarious deeds of Abū Ḥabīb al-Sadūsī, the narrator – and presumably the audience – should not. Like al-Ḥarīrī, al-Saraqusṭī has the protagonist repent of his evil ways in the last episode. Different, though, is the nostalgic scene that occurs when al-Sā’ib hears of his death and returns to write a poem at his grave. He sees the departed Abū Ḥabīb in a vision, and the apparition addresses a poem to him on ineluctable death and the ephemeral nature of the world.

Al-Maqāmāt al-luzūmiyya feature complex rhetorical displays reminiscent of the style of al-Ḥarīrī. Al-Saraqusṭī, however, focuses on the rhyme, writing five maqāmas that rhyme entirely in the consonants hamza, bā’, jīm, dāl and nūn, respectively (32–6). He writes four maqāmas in which the rhymes go through all the letters of the alphabet (37–40). Another maqāma follows the rhyme scheme aaa bbb ccc (16), while two others follow the rhyme scheme aa bb cc . . ., while maintaining exact syllabic parallelism between adjacent cola (17, 18). Overall, however, al-Saraqusṭī shows tremendous control, and the studied rhymes rarely detract from the elegant, flowing style. In this, he stands in contrast to the later writer, Ibn al-Ṣayqal. The content of the work is also quite original. While al-Hamadhānī’s Maqāmāt are set primarily in Iran and Iraq and al-Ḥarīrī’s range somewhat further afield into Egypt and North Africa, al-Saraqusṭī’s episodes take the reader as far as China, where a story reminiscent of Sindbad and A Thousand and One Nights is told, complete with a gigantic mythical bird. In one episode, the narrator voices a diatribe against the Berbers of Tangier, who are described as uncouth animals, and others include descriptions of pigeons, horses and a performer with a dancing bear.

When the Ilkhanid ruler Abaqa (663–80/1265–82) came to spend the holidays in Baghdad, every aspiring scholar in town approached him and his two ministers, the brothers ‘Alā’ al-Dīn and Shams al-Dīn al-Juwaynī, with carefully crafted works, seeking their largesse. On one such occasion, the most favoured scholar turned out to be Ibn al-Ṣayqal al-Jazarī (d. 701/1301), who received a purse of 1,000 dinars for a collection of maqāmāt which impressed them so much that they considered them superior to those of al-Ḥarīrī.¹¹ Completed in Baghdad in 672/1273–4, the collection is entitled al-Maqāmāt al-zayniyya after Ibn al-Ṣayqal’s son Zayn al-Dīn, for whom they were intended as a textbook of recondite points about grammar, lexicography, rhetoric and eloquent style. Like al-Ḥarīrī’s work, it immediately became famous, and Ibn al-Ṣayqal taught his magnum opus regularly in his position as professor of grammar at the Mustanṣiriyya Madrasa in Baghdad. In 676/1277, he read the work in a series of sessions to 160 contemporary scholars. In this collection of fifty episodes, the narrator is named al-Qāsim ibn Jiryāl al-Dimashqī and the protagonist Abū’l-Naṣr al-Miṣrī. As in al-Saraqusṭī’s collection, the protagonist repents and dies in the final episode, but here the focus is certainly not on the story. Like al-Ḥarīrī, Ibn Ṣayqal includes in his maqāmas an epistle with alternating dotted and undotted words (al-Iskandariyya (29)), one with alternating dotted and undotted letters (al-Ḥaskafiyya (46)), and an epistle which may be read backwards and forwards (al-Sinjāriyya (17)). Imitating al-Ḥarīrī’s Risāla sīniyya and Risāla shīniyya, he includes a sermon where every word contains the letter ṣād (al-?ẓifāriyya (16)) and a speech where every word contains the letter jīm (al-Shīrāziyya (26)). In al-Maqāmāt al-zayniyya, more than in al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt or al-Maqāmāt al-luzūmiyya, the genre reaches the pinnacle of complex and baroque style. The relentless alliteration, paranomasia and use of extremely arcane vocabulary, together with quite long and often parenthetical cola, render this work much more of a chore to read than the works of al-Ḥarīrī or al-Saraqusṭī.

Yāqūt singles out one imitation of al-Ḥarīrī’s work, known as al-Maqāmāt al-masīḥiyya (the Christian Maqāmāt) for high praise. He observes that in this collection the Christian doctor Abū’l-‘Abbās Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd ibn Mārī al-Baṣrī (d. 589/1193) wrote after the fashion of al-Ḥarīrī and excelled. Al-Ṣafadī takes umbrage at this assessment, remarking, ‘He neither excelled nor came close to excelling. Al-Maqāmāt al-jazariyya [i.e. Ibn al-Ṣayqal’s work] and al-Maqāmāt al-tamīmiyya [al-Saraqusṭī’s work] are better than [his Maqāmāt], yet even they did not come close to al-Ḥarīrī.’

The thirteenth-century scholar Badr al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Muẓaffar ibn al-Mukhtār al-Rāzī penned a collection of twelve maqāmas in an explicit effort to outdo al-Ḥarīrī. An interlocutor had voiced what was to al-Rāzī’s mind an inflated opinion of the famous Maqāmāt, suggesting in effect a theory of i‘jāz, ‘inimitability’ – that men, try as they might, could not produce the like of al-Ḥarīrī’s work. Al-Rāzī, piqued to defend the unique status of the Koran, wrote his own Maqāmāt to disprove this notion. Unlike al-Ḥarīrī, however, he uses a different narrator for each episode, and their names are blatantly comic or nonsensical: al-Qa‘qā‘ ibn Zanbā‘, al-Lajlāj ibn Lāj, al-Ṣalṣāl ibn Dalahmas, al-‘Ar‘ār ibn ‘Ar‘ara, and so on. Most of the episodes do not feature a protagonist. The first maqāma, for example, recounts a debate which took place in the library of Baghdad between a short man and a tall man discussing the relative merits of their statures. The short man wins by reciting 105 words meaning ‘tall’ and 145 meaning ‘short’. In the eleventh maqāma, al-‘Ar‘ār ibn ‘Ar‘ara searches in vain in the markets for his erstwhile companion, Faraḥ (i.e. Happiness), whom he has not seen for ages. As in many of the collections discussed above, the last maqāma, narrated by Ṣa‘ṣāh ibn Nawwās, tells the story of the repentance of a protagonist, here Farṭūs ibn Ma‘rūr, upon hearing an eloquent preacher. Al-Rāzī’s maqāmas certainly have some charm, but his claim to have bested al-Ḥarīrī is difficult to accept.

Another imitation of al-Ḥarīrī with a twist is the work al-Maqāmāt al-falsafiyya wa’l-tarjamāt al-ṣūfiyya by Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Anṣārī al-Ṣūfī al-Dimashqī (d. 727/1327). This collection, completed in 702/1302–3, includes fifty episodes featuring the narrator Abū’l-Qāsim al-Nawwāb and the protagonist Abū ‘Abd Allāh al-Awwāb. The content, however, is apparently quite different, covering such topics as physics, mathematics and metaphysics.

The published maqāmāt of Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (911/1505), better known for his works in the religious sciences, include four episodes (al-Asyūṭiyya, al-Jīziyya, al-Miṣriyya, al-Makkiyya) which fit the definition of the classical maqāma and follow the model of al-Ḥarīrī very closely. They include a transmitter, Hāshim ibn al-Qāsim, who is named at the beginning in connection with a verb of transmission (anba’anā, ḥakā, akhbaranā, ḥaddathanā) and a protagonist, Abū Bishr al-‘Ulābī. Each refers to travel and bears a place name in its title. Al-Suyūṭī, apparently referring to these maqāmas in particular in an introduction, claims that he wrote them in his youth after travelling to Mecca to perform the pilgrimage, and planned to complete them – meaning, perhaps, to write a complete collection of fifty maqāmas – at some later date.

The fact that the classical maqāma devoted great energy and ingenuity to frivolous topics while apparently showing that the bad guy always wins created a moral tension which neither escaped, nor sat very easily with, many medieval authors. Though they were certainly aware that the genre was inherently ironic, it was difficult, if not impossible, for later readers to draw a neat line between its ironic and earnest elements. Ibn Nāqiyā (d. 485/1092), al-Ḥarīrī and Ibn al-Ṣayqal all apologize for the frivolity their texts contained, and Ibn Nāqiyā justifies the use of humour by citing ḥadīth. Al-Ḥarīrī has the protagonist repent of his evil ways at the end of the Maqāmāt, and this feature is imitated by later authors in the genre, as seen above. One moralistic collection of maqāmāt was that of ‘the King of the Grammarians’, Ḥasan ibn Ṣāfī (d. 568/1172–3), who boasted, ‘My Maqāmāt are seriousness and truth, while al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt are frivolity and lies!’ Ibn Khallikān remarks, however, that the King of the Grammarians could not hold a candle to the master.

Perhaps most disturbing for many pious readers, the classical maqāma suggests that language in general, and the Arabic language in particular, the language of the Scripture, can be put to excellent use as a means of deception, subterfuge and fraud. Literary responses to this problem took a number of forms which share the main idea that eloquence can and should serve proper moral ends. Among these the Maqāmāt of al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144) deserve special attention. From one point of view this work does not belong in the maqāma genre at all. The texts in the collection have neither transmitter nor protagonist and formally do not fit the scheme of the classical maqāma. Indeed, they are actually a series of harangues or sermons, particularly interesting in this case in that they are auto-sermons, directed at the author himself, supposedly by a figure he saw in a dream. One major structural difference is that the classical maqāma begins with a phrase indicating transmission from another source, whereas the maqām begins with a vocative, marking the beginning of an address. In this case the apparition opens the sermon by addressing al-Zamakhsharī himself: ‘Oh Abū’l-Qāsim! . . .’. For the most part, it is the coincidence that the plural of the harangue (maqām) and that of the maqāma are the same that has allowed literary historians to conflate the two genres. Nevertheless, one may argue that al-Zamakhsharī was consciously responding to the work of al-Ḥarīrī in writing his own Maqāmāt. He completed the work in 512/1118, about eight years after al-Ḥarīrī completed the Maqāmāt. It is written throughout in carefully crafted saj‘. In addition, it comprises fifty short texts, almost certainly intended to match the number of pieces in al-Ḥarīrī’s collection. All in all, while one cannot deny that al-Zamakhsharī’s work is a collection of maqām-harangues, they nevertheless adopted some of the features of the maqāma genre, and one supposes that al-Zamakhsharī intended that one should be able to conflate the two works, even though their contents were markedly different. Depending on one’s point of view, either al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt exerted significant influence over the maqām genre, or the maqāma genre itself was greatly widened by al-Zamakhsharī to include maqām-like texts. By writing such a text al-Zamakhsharī intended to use eloquence for the betterment of morals, curtailing the folly and depravity or moral ambiguity which characterized the maqāma genre and infusing it instead with gravity by harkening back to the earlier maqām tradition.

The Maqāmāt of Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1200), completed in 577/1181, deal with many of the issues evident in al-Zamakhsharī’s text. He refers to the issue of figurative language quite pointedly in the introduction, making it clear that the use of figurative language occurs in the Koran and ḥadīth and does not necessarily involve any moral shortcomings. For example, he notes that some pious Muslims object to the critical statement laysa bi-shay’, meaning literally ‘It is not anything,’ because, if interpreted literally, it is clearly not true. Whatever the status of the thing condemned, it clearly is something and not nothing. Ibn al-Jawzī points out that the Prophet used this phrase, obviously not to be interpreted literally, to refer to pre-Islamic soothsayers.

Ibn al-Jawzī’s work, like that of al-Zamakhsharī, is also a collection of fifty texts in carefully crafted saj‘, in obvious imitation of al-Ḥarīrī. The episodes are predominantly hortatory. Moreover, their basic plot matches that of the classical maqāma quite closely, involving initial displacement, a gathering for learned discussion, the appearance of the protagonist, his performance and departure. Ibn al-Jawzī’s Maqāmāt do not include a character serving as the narrator; the episodes are narrated directly in the first person, presumably by the author. The verb of transmission characteristic of the classical maqāma is likewise omitted completely, presumably to avoid attributing fictional accounts to respected figures of the past or granting them an aura of religious authority by using terms such as ḥaddathanā.

Unlike al-Zamakhsharī’s texts, though, and like the classical maqāma, Ibn al-Jawzī’s episodes feature a protagonist. In this case he bears the moralistic, didactic name Abū’l-Taqwīm, ‘Father of Correction’ or ‘Right Guidance’. It is clear from the introduction to the work and from frequent references in the body of the text that Abū’l-Taqwīm is not a historical, legendary or fictional character in the ordinary sense. Rather, he is actually the personification of the intellect (‘aql), the faculty of reason which can guide man to moral rectitude, a sort of moral sensibility. Thus, in the first maqāma, Abū’l-Taqwīm explains:

He who continues to seek for the Truth with his senses is lost, because he is prevented from seeing the Lord and far away from Him. Let him know that the senses only perceive those created things which are before him and have no means of grasping the unseen. Rather, the tool by which God may be known is I. If you keep my company, you will attain from me your wishes. I am your neighbour, yet you do not know me. I am right before you, yet you are not familiar with me. If you take from me, you will be free of hardship. Clever men have realized that my advice awakens.

Abū Taqwīm then goes on to prove the existence and uniqueness of God to the narrator, a fitting beginning for the collection. In the following episodes, Abū’l-Taqwīm acts as a qāṣṣ, a teller of religious accounts, first relating the Koranic accounts of earlier peoples who were punished for rejecting their prophets (2, 3), then summarizing Koranic accounts of figures blessed by God, such as Abraham, Joseph and Lot (4), then describing the Prophet Muḥammad (5, 6). Other fundamental religious topics include the pilgrimage (18), alms (20), the end of Ramadan (33), and holy war (12), and the prayer for rain (47). A number of episodes consist of sermons (17, 39, 44) and other moral topics such as the obligation to avert one’s gaze from the opposite sex (13), generosity (21, 32), asceticism (46), and so on. Some episodes treat standard linguistic and literary topics, such as proverbs (48), spring (23) and turning grey (14). The theme of the narrator engaging with his personified intellect is brought to the fore in a number of episodes, where the lower soul or seat of the passions (nafs) is contrasted with the intellect (10, 16, 28, 43). Abū Taqwīm recounts his accomplishments in the twenty-eighth episode, indulging in a string of paronomastic references to figures in the intellectual history of Islam:

I am Abū’l-Taqwīm, and from me comes instruction. I am the faculty by which God may be known. Birds are caught through my instruction, and beasts are led through my guidance. The horse’s bit was made through my wisdom, and stealthy evil matters are held back through my advice. I am the one who brought the philosophers and scholars up to the plane of virtues, and worshippers and ascetics to the gardens of spiritual exercise. Through me, Mālik gained control, and the stature of al-Shāfi‘ī, the curer of disease, became great. I praise Aḥmad. Bishr caused my joy, and al-Sirrī discovered my secret. Al-Fuḍayl brandished my bounty, and Ibn Adham mounted my black stallion. Ma‘rūf is known for me, and al-Junayd belongs to my troops. Al-Thawrī is one of my blossoms, and al-Shiblī is one of my cubs.

In the last episode (50), the narrator pledges his dedication and lasting devotion to Abū’l-Taqwīm, from whom he has learned so much and with whom no other teacher can compare. Even more than that of al-Zamakhsharī, Ibn al-Jawzī’s work represents a blending of the two genres maqām and maqāma.

Aḥmad ibn Abī Bakr al-Rāzī al-Ḥanafī (fl. sixth/twelfth century?) sticks more closely to the classical form in his attempt to restore what he sees as proper moral order to the maqāma genre. His collection of thirty maqāmas features a narrator, al-Fāris ibn Bassām, and a rogue, Abū ‘Amr al-Tanūkhī, whose names are chosen to match those of al-Ḥarīrī’s characters nearly exactly in rhyme and morphological pattern. Nevertheless, his introduction informs the reader that, unlike al-Hamadhānī and al-Ḥarīrī, he will not let the representative of immorality gain the upper hand: ‘I have not preferred what Abū ‘Amr says to what Ibn Bassām says, as they did, nor have I placed the Mosque of Opposition before the Sacred Mosque, as they recorded.’¹² The collection then proceeds to present the maqāmāt in pairs. In the first episode of each pair, Abū ‘Amr gains the upper hand, and in the second, Ibn Bassām rebuts him. The debate on the whole is not even-handed, and Ibn Bassām consistently has the last word. There is no room for moral ambiguity here; Abū ‘Amr is a conniving, cheating lout, and Ibn Bassām is never really fooled by him.

In Arabic literature as in Hebrew literature, the maqāma genre widened a great deal in the later Middle Ages to include many texts characterized by length, the use of rhymed prose and the studied pursuit of an ornate, difficult and eloquent style. An examination of al-Suyūṭī’s published maqāmāt shows how the definition of the genre itself had widened. The pieces which make up the collection fall into three main formal categories. The first includes four pieces, discussed above, which fit the definition of the classical maqāma and follow the model of al-Ḥarīrī very closely. A second group of maqāmāt preserve the framework of transmission, but in a more fanciful manner; these texts are descriptions of classes of things such as jewels, vegetables, birds or imaginary debates between them. The third group of texts are treatises or epistles which involve none of the essential elements of the classical maqāma except the use of rhymed and rhythmic prose and ornate style. Most of these treatises have independent titles, such as al-Fāriq bayn al-muṣannif wa’l-sāriq (That Which Distinguishes Between an Author and a Plagiarist) and al-Kāwī fī ta’rīkh al-Sakhāwī (The Branding Iron, on al-Sakhāwī’s History) and are in fact diatribes against colleagues and contemporaries whom al-Suyūṭī accuses of incompetence, ignorance and moral depravity. Nevertheless, he refers to these pieces, in the texts themselves, as maqāmāt, leaving no doubt as to his own conception of the genre.

Similar examples may be cited from Andalusia. A maqāma ascribed to Ibn al-Murābi‘, ‘Abd Allāh ibn Ibrāhīm al-Azdī (fl. eighth/fourteenth century) presents a narrative describing the author’s altercations with his wife concerning his failure to buy a sheep to sacrifice on ‘īd al-aḍḥā and his subsequent tribulations when he purchases an uncontrollable ram that runs amok in the marketplace. While the maqāma lacks the fictional narrator and protagonist of the classical maqāma, it is reminiscent of several maqāmas in the collections of al-Hamadhānī and al-Ḥarīrī, where the characters act out an invented dispute in an attempt to get a third party, usually a judge, to reconcile the two parties by loosening his purse-strings. The Maqāma fī amr al-wabā’ of ‘Umar al-Mālaqī, completed in 844/1440, has little in common with the classical maqāma. This epistle is addressed to the Nasrid ruler of Granada, which was undergoing an epidemic at the time, urging him to move the court to Malaga, the author’s town. It contains no framed narrative, no narrator or protagonist, and again seems as if it could be designated simply an epistle couched in rhymed prose. Certainly from the fourteenth century on, the term maqāma comes to denote simply an epistle, written in rhymed prose, which indulges heavily in formal rhetorical flourishes and aspires to elegance. The later genre of the maqāma came to include a wide variety of texts, particularly including descriptions, such as al-Maqāma al-wuḥūshiyya of Ibn Ḥabīb al-Ḥalabī (death date unknown) describing animals, or Ibn al-Wardī’s (d. 749/1349) description of the Black Death in maqāma form or al-Maqāma al-mashhadiyya, describing the town of al-Nu‘mān in Syria; debates between the pen and the sword, wine and flowers, travel and staying put, apricots and mulberries; relations of journeys or events, such as the maqāma of Ḥasan al-‘Aṭṭār (1254/1838) on his visit to Napoleon’s scholars in Cairo; panegyrics such as al-Maqāma al-ghawriyya wa’l-tuḥfa al-makkiyya, written by ‘Alī ibn Nāṣir al-Ḥijāzī in praise of the Mamluk Sultan Qānṣūh al-Ghawrī (906–22/1500–16) or al-Maqāma al-jawhariyya fī’l-maḥāmid al-anṣāriyya by Abū’l-Faḍl Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazāfī, in praise of the famous judge and legal scholar Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Anṣārī (d. 957/1550).

¹ Palencia, Historia, p. 120.

² Some recent examples include Najīb Ḥankash, al-Maqāmāt al-ḥankashiyya (Beirut, 1964) and ‘Abbās al-Aswānī (d. 1979), al-Maqāmāt al-aswāniyya and ‘Ā’id min al-ākhira, in al-A‘māl al-kāmila (Cairo, 1997), vol. Ⅰ.

³ Chauvin, Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes, vol. Ⅸ, pp. 97–130; Blachère and Masnou, Choix de maqāmāt, pp. 123–9.

⁴ A similar work is Sadīd al-Dīn al-Ghaznavī’s Maqāmāt-i Zhandah-Pīl, completed c. 1200, which recounts the amazing feats of the Sufi master Shaykh Aḥmad-i Zhandah-Pīl (d. 535/1141).

⁵ This is based in part on Kilito’s eight-step analysis of the plot of the maqāma, which Monroe revised to nine. Kilito, ‘Le Genre séance’, 48; Monroe, Art of Badī‘ az-Zamān, pp. 21–3.

⁶ The numbers in brackets refer to the standard order in the collections of al-Hamadhānī and al-Ḥarīrī.

⁷ Kilito, ‘Le Genre séance’, 38, 43.

⁸ Ibid., 38–40.

⁹ Monroe, Art of Badī‘ az-Zamān, pp. 19–38, esp. 21.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 114.

¹¹ Quṭb al-Dīn Mūsā ibn Muḥammad al-Yūnīnī, Dhayl mir’āt al-zamān, 4 vols. (Hyderabad, 1960), vol. Ⅳ, p. 226.

¹² Ibn Nāqiyā, Maqāmāt, p. 5.