The Maqamat of Badi al-Zaman al-Hamadhani

The Maqamat of Badi al-Zaman al-Hamadhani
translated by W.J. Prendergast

A masterpiece of medieval Islamic literature.

A Maqama (plural, Maqamat) is an Arabic rhymed prose literary form, with short poetic passages. Maqama is from a root which means he stood, and in this case it means to stand in a literary discussion in order to orate.

The two classical exponents of the Maqama were Hamadhani (967-1007), the composer of this work, and the later and better-known Hariri (1054-1122). Hamadhani was born in Hamadhan, the ancient Ecbatana, in what is now Iran (to the southwest of Tehran) and spent his life as a wandering scholar. The Maqamat of Hamadhani and Hariri have a similar structure. They both consist of a series of unrelated episodes involving a wandering narrator, and a trickster protagonist. In the Maqamat of Hamadhani, the narrator is an alter ego of Hamadhani, a wandering scholar named Isa ibn Hisham. In each tale, he encounters a mysterious rogue named Abul-Fath al-Iskanderi.

The Maqamat presents a vivid street-level view of the medieval Islamic countries at the height of their power and culture. We meet merchants, clerics, peasants, sultans, scholars, and, literally, an entire catalog of swindlers. We get to visit fabled cities of Iraq, Iran, Arabia, Yemen, and other middle eastern locations. Some of these will be familiar from the headlines: Mosul, Basra, Samara, and Baghdad, (which Hamadhani calls The City of Peace).