Maqamat Badi' az-Zaman al-Hamadhani

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.

The work is characterized by the alternation of rhymed prose (sajʿ) and poetry. 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'. The Maqamat are also known for their intertextuality and narrative construction.

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.

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).