When the MaqÄmÄt of al-ḤarÄ«rÄ« (d. 516/1122) appeared on the scene over nine centuries ago, the text became an instant classic. This collection of stories (maqÄmas) about the eloquent rogue AbÅ« Zayd al-SarÅ«jÄ« was first read aloud to a group of prominent scholars in Baghdad in the early 6th/12th century. It then spread rapidly to al-Andalus, Central Asia, and beyond. For centuries, al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs MaqÄmÄt was a central feature of Islamic education, attracting dozens of commentaries and scores of adaptations. Its remarkable success across centuries has been obscured by the rapid decline in its reputation over the course of the 13th/19th century, when al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs MaqÄmÄt became, for many, a symbol of literary decadence and cultural decline. As put by Charles Pellat, a 20th-century French Orientalist, the reasons for the MaqÄmÄtâs extraordinary success âare somewhat difficult to understand and must be accounted for by the decline of literary taste.â1 Both Arab reformers and Orientalists heavily criticized al-ḤarÄ«rÄ« for what they considered its overly ornate rhyming prose and its emphasis on form over content. In the past century, scholars of Arabic literature have found al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs predecessor al-HamadhÄnÄ« (d. 398/1008) more appealing to read, study, and translate. This preference is partly because the earlier collection is perceived as more focused on narrative content and less concerned with linguistic fireworks like palindromes and double entendres.
However, al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs MaqÄmÄt did not fall out of favor in all corners of the Islamic world. In this book, Dr. Sulaiman Adewale Alagunfon shows that the text continues to thrive in Nigeria today. For many Muslim scholars in Yorubaland, the MaqÄmÄt of al-ḤarÄ«rÄ« is a central text in an Arabic and Islamic education. As Dr. Alagunfonâs study of Yorubaland scholarly culture demonstrates, al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs MaqÄmÄt continues to be celebrated and taught intensively in the more traditional venues of Arabic education. Because the maqÄma genre holds such prestige, members of Yorubalandâs Muslim scholarly elite have begun composing new maqÄma collections in recent decades, an important development in the long history of the maqÄma genre that Dr. Alagunfonâs monograph brings to our attention. For these authors, the maqÄma is not considered an old fashioned or obsolete genre. Rather, al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs MaqÄmÄt and the maqÄma genre more broadly speak to the concerns of the present, including the paramount importance of Arabic as a language of Islamic scholarship. As one of Dr. Alagunfonâs interlocutors states, those who have not mastered the maqÄma cannot truly claim to be scholars of Arabic. In Yorubaland, dedicating a lifetime to the study of al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs MaqÄmÄt as a student, scholar, and teacher is a marker of scholarly prestige. As was the case for centuries across the Islamic world, authoring maqÄmas has now become a way for Yorubaland scholars to participate in the maqÄma tradition.
Having read Dr. Alagunfonâs study and some of the Nigerian maqÄmas that he has analyzed, I felt it might be pertinent in this foreword to address some of the methodological questions that his important study brings to mind, particularly for those who are interested in Arabic literature and Islamic studies. For some contemporary scholars of Arabic literature, it is counterintuitive that al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs MaqÄmÄt flourished in Islamic contexts, given how subversive the text appears. After all, al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs rogue deploys his erudition and eloquence to dupe his audiences. In the very first of al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs maqÄmas, AbÅ« Zayd holds a pious sermon urging his audience to asceticism; however, the narrator later discovers that the preacher is a hypocrite who feasts and drinks away from watchful eyes. In another maqÄma, AbÅ« Zayd issues a series of seemingly incorrect fatwÄs, which only make sense when you recognize the use of double entendre. Confronted with these parodic deployments of piety, modern scholars have often assumed that al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs work was subversive to Muslim sensibilities, representing a kind of âcarnivalesqueâ mockery of Islamic scholarship that serious Muslim scholars must have found abhorrent. What these interpretations fail to consider is the vibrant Islamic reception of the text over the course of centuries, a reception that continues into the present in some circles.
What are we to make of this apparent tension between the playfully parodic content of al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs MaqÄmÄt and its celebrated status as a quintessentially Islamic text? The simple answer is that this apparent tension is based on the mistaken assumption that Muslim sensibilities are inherently opposed to irony, parody, and play. One of the major themes of al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs MaqÄmÄt is that language has the potential to both conceal and reveal, depending on the capacities of the reader. Excellent readers can look beyond the obvious meaning of the text and derive pleasure in uncovering its hidden layers. This level of complexity is one of the features that led the 6th/12th-century commentator al-Muá¹arrizÄ« (d. 610/1213) to claim that al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs MaqÄmÄt was marked by inimitability (iÊ¿jÄz), a term that is often thought to be reserved for the QurʾÄnâs miraculous inimitability. As Dr. Alagunfon points out in his study, Yorubaland scholars continue to describe the MaqÄmÄt as inimitable, and some go so far as to identify al-ḤarÄ«rÄ« as âthe Prophet of language (nabÄ« al-lugha).â
I believe this deep connection between the MaqÄmÄt and the sacred through language is not as surprising or counterintuitive as it may initially seem. The QurʾÄn itself is a complex, deeply allusive, and sometimes difficult text that challenges the reader to undertake the potentially arduous task of exegesis. For many interpreters, the QurʾÄn is âa sea without a shore,â and the reader must remain constantly aware that the language may have multiple meanings. Similarly, in al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs MaqÄmÄt, only the elite interpreters are able to see beyond the surface level of AbÅ« Zaydâs performances. In the maqÄma mentioned above that contains a litany of fatwÄs with double meanings, the fictional audience is left with the incorrect, surface-level interpretations. However, the narrator distinguishes himself as a skilled interpreter by uncovering their hidden meanings. These hermeneutical narratives dramatize the process of interpretation that might be undertaken by careful readers of sacred texts. Al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs MaqÄmÄt also warns that the discipline of reading carefully can be undermined by desire and delight. In some maqÄmas, an onlooker is distracted by a speakerâs physical beauty, and in others, it is the licit magic of AbÅ« Zaydâs eloquent speech that mesmerizes the audience. Reading and interpreting texts, whether scriptural or not, requires both a deep knowledge of Arabic and a temperament that is not distracted by dazzling figures and performances.
As Dr. Alagunfon shows, AbÅ« Zaydâs reputation and influence is not limited to the scholarly sphere. For instance, the word saruji in Yoruba refers to a crafty and witty person. This term is used because the person is likened to AbÅ« Zayd al-SarÅ«jÄ«. Dr. Alagunfon also demonstrates that one of the tricksterâs performances in al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs MaqÄmÄt has been incorporated into Yorubaland prayer books in Arabic. In other words, a fictional rogueâs prayer of the 6th/12th century has become part of the quotidian language and Islamic culture of Yorubaland. To tell the whole story, we must turn to maqÄma #12 of al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs MaqÄmÄt, in which the rogue AbÅ« Zayd encounters the narrator and his companions as they search for some armed protection for their caravan journey. AbÅ« Zayd is dressed in the guise of a monk (labÅ«suhu labÅ«s al-ruhbÄn) and offers to sell the narrator and his companions a prayer as protection. Mere language is not an armed escort, but AbÅ« Zayd assuages their doubts by promising to travel with them. The monkish man fully trusts the power of his prayer and, as a result, the narrator and his company also place their trust in it. When they arrive safely, he disappears, only to be found later by the narrator in a tavern, which sparks the narratorâs righteous indignation. The narrator swears never to enter a tavern or a wine shop again and departs, saying âwe left those two sheikhs, AbÅ« Zayd and IblÄ«s, to themselves.â2 It is AbÅ« Zaydâs prayer in this maqÄma, discussed in Dr. Alagunfonâs study and detailed in his appendices, that has come to be considered both efficacious and worthy of imitation.
The ḤarÄ«rian maqÄma from which the prayer derives seems to be a loose adaptation of a maqÄma by al-HamadhÄnÄ«, in which the narrator finds himself on a ship being tossed about by a storm, causing him and the other passengers to weep and wail. One man, whom we find out later is the rogue AbÅ« al-Fatḥ al-IskandarÄ«, appears to be unmoved by the terrors of the storm. He explains that he is fearless because he possesses an amulet that protects a person from drowning. He then offers to provide each passenger a similar amulet in exchange for one dinar now and another upon their safe arrival. Before the narrator gives the man the second payment, he demands an explanation, to which the rogue replies in verse, âWere I drowned today/I would not be bothered for an explanation.â3 Al-HamadhÄnÄ«âs trickster implies that this amulet offers no real protection to the traveler. If the amulet fails its possessor, the purveyor of amulets is long gone and, in this case, already dead. Al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs prayer of protection, by contrast, is articulated by a man who pretends to be an ascetic but is ultimately revealed to be drunk and a fraud. Unlike the amulet in al-HamadhÄnÄ«, however, the efficacy of AbÅ« Zaydâs prayer is not directly called into question. Is it the fact that al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«âs narrative does not undermine the prayerâs efficacy that allows the prayer itself to be extracted and put to use as a prayer for protection? Or is it altogether the wrong question to ask how pieces of discourse, such as AbÅ« Zaydâs prayer, move through the world? When in Shakespeareâs Hamlet, we witness the pompous and duplicitous Polonius giving his son Laertes advice on how to live, he utters one of the most frequently quoted words of wisdom from the bard: âTo thine own self be true.â It is not bad advice, per se, when it is taken out of a narrative context that makes it seem hollow and ridiculous. A particular poem, turn of phrase, or piece of wisdom might serve one purpose within the narrative of a text and a completely different purpose when it stands alone.
The use of AbÅ« Zaydâs prayer for protection in pious contexts, that is, as prayers, suggests that the line between the âliteraryâ and the âpiousâ is blurrier than is often admitted in the modern study of Arabic literature. When classifying works of narrative as âliteraryâ works, it seems that the unstated and even sublimated assumption is that the literary is necessarily secular. The modern study of Arabic literature and its institutional formations are haunted by these kinds of secularizing assumptions. It is sometimes taken for granted, for example, that certain maqÄma collections lie outside the bounds of the HamadhÄnian-ḤarÄ«rian genre because they are fundamentally âseriousâ and âpiousâ rather than playful, fictitious, and therefore literary.4
The blurring of this ostensible boundary can also be seen in the authorial introduction to one of the Yorubaland maqÄma collections discussed in Dr. Alagunfonâs book, in which the author á¹¢Ähib al-QurʾÄn al-IlÅ«rÄ« (b. 1973) provides a list of previous maqÄma collections that have served as models for him. Al-IlÅ«rÄ«âs genealogy of the MaqÄmÄt differs in significant ways from the standard genealogy of the maqÄma in the Euro-American study of the genre, such as it is. The landmark texts for this Yorubaland author are, to say the least, unexpected. Although al-IlÅ«rÄ« begins, as we might expect, with al-ḤarÄ«rÄ« and al-HamadhÄnÄ«, he also includes the MaqÄmÄt of the MuÊ¿tazilÄ« exegete al-ZamakhsharÄ« (d. 538/1144), a collection that consists of exhortations to al-ZamakhsharÄ«âs own soul.5 As the Finnish scholar of the maqÄma Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila puts it, al-ZamakhsharÄ«âs maqÄmas âare only marginally part of the genre originated by al-HamadhÄnÄ«,â but he adds that al-ZamakhsharÄ«âs exhortations are quite similar to the sermons of AbÅ« Zayd, shorn of the narrative surrounding it.6
á¹¢Äḥib al-QurʾÄn al-IlÅ«rÄ« also includes in his list of model maqÄmas the collection of the 13th/19th-century Christian scholar NÄṣīf al-YÄzijÄ« (d. 1287/1871) and the Mamluk-era maqÄmas of al-SuyÅ«á¹Ä« (d. 911/1505), as well as the much lesser-known Ibn al-WardÄ« (d. 749/1349). Finally, al-IlÅ«rÄ« mentions the more recent collection of his Saudi contemporary Ê¿ÄʾiḠal-QarnÄ« (b. 1379/1959), the first edition of whose sixty-seven maqÄmas was published in 1420/2000. This eclectic genealogy of the maqÄma genre does not accord well with Euro-American attempts to make sense of the genre. It mixes together the narrative and non-narrative, the neo-Classical maqÄmas of al-YÄzijÄ« with the mélange of sermons, rhyming essays, and imagined conversations in the maqÄmas of al-QarnÄ«. For al-IlÅ«rÄ«, the maqÄma seems to be more redolent of possibility and heterogeneity than the Euro-American versions of literary history might imply. Dr. Alagunfonâs book is, in part, an invitation to scholars of literature and of Islam to provincialize their genealogies and their maps of where Arabic literature is produced, by whom, and for what purposes.
All of the maqÄma authors whom al-IlÅ«rÄ« mentions in his genealogy of the maqÄma have had one or more of their maqÄmas appear in print; however, we should keep in mind that much of the maqÄma tradition remains accessible solely through manuscript witnesses. It therefore seems likely that the contours of the maqÄma tradition will continue to grow and shift in the coming years. Jaakko Hämeen-Anttilaâs initial catalogue of maqÄma authors in his survey of the genre has provided a foundation for further study, as have the studies, editions, and translations by Maurice Pomerantz and others. Dr. Alagunfonâs study pushes us to remember that the maqÄma genre remains a living tradition and to take note of the fact that, even in the past century, Arabic literature is a transregional discourse that extends well beyond the Arab world. Nigerian Arabic literature is largely overlooked in the study of Arabic literature, even though, as Dr. Alagunfon points out, there are Nigerian novels, plays, and short stories written in Arabic. Indeed, he indicates that one of the maqÄma authors, Imam á»yá» (d. 1444/2023), also wrote a theatrical play. In other words, Imam á»yá» is participating in both the long history of the Arabic maqÄma genre and the more recent history of Arabic theatrical writing.
This last point brings me to a few other fascinating comments by á¹¢Äḥib al-QurʾÄn al-IlÅ«rÄ« in the published edition of his MaqÄmÄt that suggest he is well aware of the complicated relationship between the maqÄma genre and what we might call literary modernity. In his authorial introduction, just after listing the maqÄmas from which he draws inspiration, al-IlÅ«rÄ« claims that his fifty maqÄmas âare devoid of foreign ideas and Western tastes (afkÄr ajnabiyya wa-adhwÄq gharbiyya).â7 I take this to mean that al-IlÅ«rÄ« is setting his maqÄmas apart from genres and styles associated with the novel and other global genres with Western genealogies. What exactly al-IlÅ«rÄ« means by âforeign ideas,â however, is less clear, given that none of the maqÄma authors whom he lists as models are from his native Yorubaland, and one of them is not even a fellow Muslim. In a footnote describing these foreign ideas, al-IlÅ«rÄ« defines them as âthe ideas of the other (afkÄr al-ghayr),â so perhaps he simply does not consider these maqÄmas to belong to such a category because they are all part of the broader Arabic cosmopolis and its transhistorical, transregional tradition of writing and reading. The maqÄma allows for a more capacious understanding of literary belonging than might be suggested by the boundaries of the nation state.
Is the maqÄma style of al-HamadhÄnÄ« and al-ḤarÄ«rÄ« suitable for modernity? The Yorubaland scholar al-IlÅ«rÄ« asks precisely this question in an afterword to his collection of maqÄmas, and he naturally answers in the affirmative. Al-IlÅ«rÄ« has, after all, written maqÄmas in this style, and he explains briefly how the use of language, narrative, QurʾÄnic allusion, and poetic citation are all well suited to this era. He admits, however, that there is one feature that makes this style less fitting for our times, which is that modern authors and readers cannot compare to the great litterateurs of previous eras. In this short passage, al-IlÅ«rÄ« seems to signal that we live in a time that has difficulty appreciating the maqÄma to the point that its presence in modernity must be justified. At the same time, he seems to admit that his maqÄma collection will be a pale reflection of the great maqÄma collections of ages past. We need not accept this value judgment that what came first is better. Even al-ḤarÄ«rÄ« himself makes a similar comment in his own introduction, modestly presenting himself as a flawed successor to al-HamadhÄnÄ«. Rather, the maqÄmas of Yorubaland should invite us to appreciate how rich with possibilities the maqÄma genre continues to be for those who have immersed themselves in the tradition of al-ḤarÄ«rÄ« and al-HamadhÄnÄ«.
Scholars of Arabic literature would do well to take notice of the maqÄmas studied here by Dr. Alagunfon. We also are fortunate that Dr. Alagunfon gives careful attention to the cultural, social, and pedagogical contexts in which these authors thrive. Too often, our assumptions about literature, secularity, and religion obscure our understandings about the complexities of readers and reading practices. The Yorubaland scholars in Dr. Alagunfonâs study are part of a longstanding tradition of Arabic education centered on the QurʾÄn and the MaqÄmÄt of al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«. Yorubaland scholars have chosen to compose new maqÄmas, reveling in rhyming prose and arcane vocabulary, just as scores of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars in previous generations who had been embedded in similar pedagogical contexts had done. It is to be hoped that Dr. Alagunfonâs book will bring these maqÄmas to the attention of scholars working in the fields of Arabic literature, Islamic studies, and African studies to further our understanding of how these fields intersect and inform one another.
Matthew L. Keegan
Moinian Assistant Professor
Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures
Barnard College, Columbia University
Margoliouth, D.S. and Pellat, Ch., âal-ḤarÄ«rÄ«â, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, online version. Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs. Accessed on March 2, 2024
al-ḤarÄ«rÄ«, MaqÄmÄt AbÄ« Zayd al-SarÅ«jÄ«, ed. Michael Cooperson (New York: New York University Press, 2020), 55.
al-HamadhÄnÄ«, MaqÄmÄt AbÄ« al-Faá¸l BadÄ«Ê¿ al-ZamÄn al-HamadhÄnÄ«, ed. YÅ«suf al-NabhÄnÄ« (Istanbul: Maá¹baÊ¿at al-JawÄʾib, 1881), 6.
Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, Maqama: A History of a Genre (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2002), 179â183.
á¹¢Äḥib al-QurʾÄn al-IlÅ«rÄ«, MaqÄmÄt al-IlÅ«rÄ« (Beirut: DÄr al-Quds, 2017), 9.
Hämeen-Anttila, Maqama, 182.
al-IlÅ«rÄ«, MaqÄmÄt, 9.