Maqamat Badi' az-Zaman al-Hamadhani

Maqamat Badi' al-Zaman al-Hamadhani (Arabic: مقامات بديع الزمان الهمذاني), are an Arabic collection of stories from the 9th century, written by Badi' al-Zaman al-Hamadani. Of the 400 episodic stories, roughly 52 have survived.

Description

The work consists of a series of anecdotes of social satire written and the narrative concerns the travels of a middle-aged man as he uses his charm and eloquence to swindle his way across the Arabic world.^[1]

The work is characterized by the alternation of rhymed prose (sajʿ) and poetry.^[2] They are narrated from the point of view of a fictitious character, 'very likely a traveling merchant who has money and time', ʿĪsā ibn Hishām, about the adventures of an eloquent beggar named Abū al-Fatḥ al-Iskandarī'.^[3] The Maqamat are also known for their intertextuality and narrative construction.^[4]

According to Ailin Qian,

The core of the Hamadhānian maqāmah is dialogue, and al-Hamadhānī, by using techniques such as isnād and framing, simulated some kind of public presentation. Al-Hamadhānī’s efforts to preserve the characteristics of oral performance in his maqāmāt played a great role in creating their prosimetric style.^[5]

A century later, these maqamat inspired the maqamat of Al-Hariri of Basra, which in turn inspired the Hebrew Tahkemoni. The Abbasid artist and poet, Yahya Al-Wasiti, who lived in Baghdad in the late Abbasid era (12th to 13th-centuries) and was one of the pre-eminent exponents of the Baghdad School, is known to have transcribed and illustrated the work in 1236-37, Maqamat (also known as the Assemblies or the Sessions).^[6]

Sample

One of the numerous riddles in the work, in the rajaz metre, runs as follows:

Pointed is his spearhead, sharp are his teeth,
His progeny are his helpers, dissolving union is his business.
He assails his master, clinging to his moustache;
Inserting his fangs into old and young.
Agreeable, of goodly shape, slim, abstemious.
A shooter, with shafts abundant, around the beard and the moustache.^[7]

The answer is 'a comb'.

Editions and translations

• The Maqámát of Badí‘ al-Zamán al-Hamadhání (the original version in Arabic Wikisource)
• Al-Hamadhānī, Badīʿ al-zamān. Dīwān. Edited by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb Raḍwān and Muḥammad Shukrī Afandī al-Makkī. Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-mawsūʿāt, 1903.
• Al-Hamadhānī, Badīʿ al-zamān. Maqāmāt. Edited by Fārūq Saʿd. Beirut: Dār al-āfāq al-jadīdah, 1982.
• Al-Hamadhānī, Badīʿ al-zamān. Maqāmāt Abī al-Faḍl Badīʿ al-zamān al-Hamadhānī. Edited by Muḥammad ʿAbduh. Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq, 1973.
• W. J. Prendergast (trans.), The Maqāmāt of Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (London: Luzac, 1915)^[8]
• Ahmad, Momtazuddin. Sahl al-Maʿālī fī Sharḥ Maqāmāt Badīʿ az-Zāmān al-Hamadhānī. (Commentary)^[9]

See also

• Arabic literature
• Baghdad School
• Maqama