7 - The maqāma

Summary

introduction

The maqāma is a prolific genre of Arabic literature which, as far as we can tell, was invented in the late tenth century by Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Hamadhanī (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 Muhammad al-Qasim ibn ‘Alī al-Harīrī (446–516/1054–1122). Though al-Harīrī 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. 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.