The Assemblies of al-Ḥarīrī

…Maqāmāt, published in English as The Assemblies of al-Harîrî (1867, 1898).

…al-Ḥarīrī of Basra (Iraq), whose Maqāmāt, closely imitating al-Hamadhānī’s, is regarded as a masterpiece of literary style and learning.

His 50 maqāmahs, which tell the adventures of Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī, with a wealth of language and learning, come closer to the Western concept of short story than anything else in Classical Arabic literature. They abound in verbal conceits, ambivalence, assonance, alliteration, palindromes; they change abruptly…

…Maqāmāt (published in English as The Assemblies of al-Harīrī) attracted the European scholars, who took great pleasure in disentangling the grammatically difficult forms. Pre-Islamic poetry at first interested only the grammarian-antiquarian until its importance as a source of knowledge of early Bedouin life was recognized. The art of versification and…

…to illustrate manuscripts of the Maqāmāt of al-Ḥarīrī, between 1225 and the fall of the city to the Mongols in 1258, were among the finest works in all Arab painting; the finest, most complete, and best-preserved of these manuscripts is that in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris,…

About 1237 he illustrated the Maqāmāt (“Assemblies”) of al-Ḥarīrī, a series of anecdotes concerning the picaresque adventures of an eloquent 12th-century Arab rogue, a work that was highly popular at this period. The 96 illustrations are of outstanding quality with fine composition, expressive figures, and vivid but controlled colours. They…