[EARLY ARABIC EDITION IN CONSTANTINOPLE] Kitâb maqâmât al-Harîrî fî l-luga al-'Arabiyya wa-l-funûn al-adabiyya bi-t-tamâm wa-l-kamâl wa-l-hamdu li-llâh

ABÛ MUHAMMAD AL-QÂSIM IBN ALÎ IBN MUHAMMAD IBN UTHMÂN AL-HARÎRÎ OF BASRAH, (1054-1122), Matbaa-i Âmire, Kostantiniyye [Constantinople - Istanbul], [AH 1280] = 1864.

Contemporary quarter leather bdg. with dark blue boards. Small 4to. (27 x 19 cm). In Arabic. 418 p. Framed text. Chippings on the spine, and a large stain on the rear board, but the interior is clean. A very good copy.

Uncommon early Arabic edition of Maqamat [i.e. Assemblies of Hariri] printed in the Ottoman capital Constantinople, consisting of a collection of 50 stories written in the Maqama style, each one identified by the name of a city in the Muslim world of the time, a mix of verse and literary prose, as Al-Hariri's masterpiece and best-known work, which has been regarded as one of the greatest treasure in Arabic literature after the Koran and the pre-Islamic poetic canon.

The stories tell of actual adventures and especially the verbal pronouncements in verse or in prose of a roguish and peripatetic hero, Abu Zayd from Saruj, a town in northern Syria, as told by al-Harith, a sober and slightly gullible merchant traveling from place to place. Double and triple puns, unusual meanings of words, and elaborate grammatical constructions are used to exhibit the astounding and sophisticated wealth of the Arabic language. The genre of the maqamat became an almost instant success because of the extraordinary quality of its writing.

Al-Harirî was an Arab poet, a scholar of the Arabic language, and a high government official of the Seljuks.

As soon as it first appeared, Al-Hariri's Maqamat attained enormous popularity across the Arab-speaking world, with people traveling from as far afield as Andalusia (Spain) to hear the verse read from the author's lips. The work's alternative title, ‘'The Assemblies'’ comes from the fact that maqamat were recited before an assembled audience. Even during the author's lifetime, the work was worthy of memorization, public recitation, and literary commentaries. Al-Hariri himself recited his Maqamat before learning audiences and scholars. Audience members would take dictation or make corrections to their own personal manuscripts. At the time, this type of public recitation was the main method for disseminating copies of literary works in the Arab-speaking world, with people traveling from as far afield as Andalusia (Spain) to hear the verse read from the author's lips. The work's alternative title, ‘'The Assemblies'’ comes from the fact that maqamat were recited before an assembled audience. Even during the author's lifetime, the work was worthy of memorization, public recitation, and literary commentaries. Al-Hariri himself recited his Maqamat before learning audiences and scholars. Audience members would take dictation or make corrections to their own personal manuscripts. At the time, this type of public recitation was the main method for disseminating copies of literary works in the Arab-speaking world.

As a genre, the maqamat was originally developed by Badi' al-Zaman al-Hamadani (969-1008), but Al-Hariri elevated it into a major literary form. Like most books of the period, maqamat were intended to be read aloud before a large gathering. Oral retellings of maqamat were often improvised, however, al-Hariri who composed his stories in private, intended them as finished works that he expected to be recited without embellishment.

Not in OCLC.

-- Arabic literature The Middle East Arabica Poetry Poems