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]
^al-Kumillai, Muhammad Hifzur Rahman (2018). كتاب البدور المضية في تراجم الحنفية (in Arabic). Cairo, Egypt: Dar al-Salih.
Further reading
Hämeen-Anttila, J., ‘’Maqama: A History of a Genre’’, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2002 (especially see pp 15-65 for a discussion of al-Hamadhani’s ‘’Maqamat’’.)
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