Kamal al-Din Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Abd al-Mumin ibn Musa al-Qaisi al Sharishi (d.1223), Sharh al-Maqamat al-Hariri, Vol.II, Iraq, 13th century

Please note that Fedex and US courier services will no longer carry Iraqi-origin goods to any location. Any shipment services would need to be provided by a Fine Art shipping company.

The present manuscript is a commentary on the Maqamat (The Assemblies) of Al-Hariri (d.1122), an Arab poet and scholar from Basra. Comprising nine chapters, this second volume begins with an explanation of the seventeenth maqama (the chapter heading and possibly some introductory text is missing). It concludes with an explanation of the twenty-fifth maqama. The final folio is related to the thirty-third maqama which would have belonged to the third volume. 

The author of the text, Abu Muhammad al-Qasim ibn Ali Muhammad ibn Uthman al-Hariri was born in Basra, today in Iraq, in 1054-55 AD. The name Hariri was likely connected with the profession of his father, who used to trade in silk (harir). Coming from a wealthy family, with extensive possessions around Meshan, he was a pupil of al-Fadl al-Kasbani and later became a government official assuming the title of Sahib al-Khabar. Along with his masterpiece Maqamat, he is also the author of two treatises on grammar which both show his magnificent talent and knowledge of the Arabic language.

The word maqama means ‘setting’ or ‘session’ and the Maqamat presents itself as a collection of stories, all linked by a common narrator. The text is composed of fifty short stories, each identified by a name of a city of the Muslim world in which the main characters, al-Harith and Abu Zayd, meet. The narrator is al-Harith, who tells the adventures of the peripatetic Abu Zayd. Abu Zayd is an incredible orator and survives thanks to his rhetoric, a quality which enables him to persuade and evade punishment when in need. Only in the last maqama does Abu Zayd repent and admit his sins. 

The corpus is notable for the language used, the different rhetorical styles and al-Hariri’s genius and ability to work with the Arabic language. As noted by Allen, “Al-Hariri provides examples of linguistic virtuosity that is unparalleled in Arabic literature” (Allen 2000, p.164). Each maqama is an example of his ability with language. In the sixth for example, these is a section in which the author alternates lines with words with dots with words without dots. The sixteenth maqama has examples of palindromes, the seventeenth has riddles and so on. “There are sections composed exclusively of words with double meanings, series of sentences ending in rhyming syllables or with regular combinations of consonants throughout, and poems utilizing only certain letters of the alphabet” (Kritzeck 1964, p.180).

A thirteenth-century copy of the Maqamat sold in these rooms, 1 May 2019, lot 12.