Religion and Politics in the Career of Badîʿ al-Zamân al-Hamadhânî

Rowson, Everett K.

doi:10.2307/603306

Cited by 27 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…24 Of the two approaches, Kilito' s work has proved the more generative, encouraging a diverse range of scholars such as Philip Kennedy, 25 Mohamed-Salah Omri, 26 Katia Zakharia, 27 and Fedwa Malti-Douglas to look further at the manner in which al-Hamadhānī constructed particular maqāmas. 28 Further biographical work and attention to al-Hamadhānī' s letters and intellectual milieux is exemplified in the work of Everett Rowson, 29 Wadād al-Qāḍī, 30 Vahid Behmardi, 31 and Devin Stewart. 32 Noteworthy work has also been done on the prose stylistics and metrics of al-Hamadhānī' s maqāmāt by Mahmoud Messadi 33 and Geert Jan van Gelder.…”

Section: The Maqāmāt Of Al-hamadhānī Between Tradition and Modernitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Maqāmāt of Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī

Orfali¹,

Pomerantz²

2022

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Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī and His MaqāmātMaqāmāt (Cl. Ar. sing. maqāma) are a form of fictive short tales composed in rhymed prose (sajʿ) that have had a long history in the literary languages of the Middle East, especially Arabic and Hebrew. Over the course of a millennium, the maqāma form and its near relatives traveled across most major areas in the Islamicate World from Central Asia and beyond, becoming one of the most recognizable of pre-modern Arabic narrative types. 1 The littérateur (adīb) Abū l-Faḍl Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Hamadhānī (358-398/959-1008) invented the maqāma while residing in the city of Nishapur in Central Asia in 380/990. Known during his lifetime as "The Wonder of the Age" (Badīʿ al-Zamān) in recognition of his remarkable linguistic ingenuity in the new style of Arabic poetics, al-Hamadhānī lived the life of a courtier who served and entertained the local amīrs of the Muslim states across the cities of western Iran and Central Asia.Composed for the consumption of the intellectual cadres of the court and their acolytes, al-Hamadhānī' s maqāmas reflect the nexus of aesthetic and pragmatic interests of a vibrant and competitive intellectual scene. Weaving together ornate prose letters (rasāʾil) with occasional poetry, the maqāmāt of al-Hamadhānī tell the tale of how verbal mastery and cunning can sustain and protect a man on life' s treacherous paths. 2 Travel, performance, and trade inform each maqāma tale, as the characters circulate through a world in which words are the currency of exchange. The tales begin as the narrator goes to a new location (mosque, market, hospital) where he encounters a mysterious stranger who has a large audience gathered. This stranger often wears a disguise, uses mysterious language, or performs an ornate linguistic ruse to obtain money from his unwitting victims. Sometimes, the narrator recognizes the notorious trickster rogue; on other occasions he

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