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Impostures
Fifty rogue’s tales translated fifty ways
An itinerant con man. A gullible eyewitness narrator. Voices spanning continents and centuries. These elements come together in Impostures, a groundbreaking new translation of a celebrated work of Arabic literature.
Impostures follows the roguish Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī in his adventures around the medieval Middle East—we encounter him impersonating a preacher, pretending to be blind, and lying to a judge. In every escapade he shows himself to be a brilliant and persuasive wordsmith, composing poetry, palindromes, and riddles on the spot. Award-winning translator Michael Cooperson transforms Arabic wordplay into English wordplay of his own, using fifty different registers of English, from the distinctive literary styles of authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf, to global varieties of English including Cockney rhyming slang, Nigerian English, and Singaporean English.
Featuring picaresque adventures and linguistic acrobatics, Impostures brings the spirit of this masterpiece of Arabic literature into English in a dazzling display of translation.
534 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1122
189 people are currently reading
2355 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 87 reviews
January 25, 2018
بعد كل مقامة يزداد حبي ويزيد غبني .. يزداد حبي للغة العربية ويزيد غبني لأنني أشعر بالبعد عنها وبتواضع مستواي فيها.
هذا الكتاب تحفة ومن ألذ ما قرأت إلى حد الآن.
هذا الكتاب تحفة ومن ألذ ما قرأت إلى حد الآن.
August 31, 2020
First, we must agree that the Impostures cannot be translated. It just can't. At first, I would read an imposture and then listen to a reading of the Maqamat Al- Hariri in Arabic on YouTube. I soon gave that up. If you picked up the Impostures to get a sense of the Maqamat, there is a good chance that you will be sorely disappointed. However, do not give up on this text. Read it for what it is, and what it is is an erudite translation of the untranslatable! Cooperson takes each of the fifty impostures, and translates it in its own style, in a manner that he finds fitting with the context of that particular imposture. It is very cleverly done. Some chapters are laugh out loud funny.
Check out #Impostures #AlHariri2020 on Twitter for the illustrations and city information that go with each imposture.
Check out #Impostures #AlHariri2020 on Twitter for the illustrations and city information that go with each imposture.
April 6, 2024
https://www.instagram.com/p/C5TSwKsrI...
An incredible attempt to translate the untranslatable. Funny, diverse, and wielding an awe inspiring grasp of language, the English counterpart of the 50 Impostures is a must read for linguists, poets, or anyone with an appreciate for words. Stylish and carefully crafted, these classic Arabic literature adventures highlight cunning, deception, and the pursuit of a better life with unforgettable characters and passages that delight as much as they engage the reader. It is worth the work of diving into the research and personal interpretation behind each chapter, and a stellar performance of blending original texts with a translator’s unique touch.
An incredible attempt to translate the untranslatable. Funny, diverse, and wielding an awe inspiring grasp of language, the English counterpart of the 50 Impostures is a must read for linguists, poets, or anyone with an appreciate for words. Stylish and carefully crafted, these classic Arabic literature adventures highlight cunning, deception, and the pursuit of a better life with unforgettable characters and passages that delight as much as they engage the reader. It is worth the work of diving into the research and personal interpretation behind each chapter, and a stellar performance of blending original texts with a translator’s unique touch.
January 26, 2022
في كل مرة عند بدء أي مقامة، أترقب ظهور أبا زيد السروجي؛ لأبتسم، أوتي حُسن بيان يتملص به من سوء فعاله، وفي كل مقامة قصةٌ، ورحلة، ونصيحة، وفوق كل هذا إمتاعٌ بفصاحة الألفاظ، وحلاوة الرصف، وعذوبة النظم.
لمُحب اللغة العربية مرَّ عليه ولن تندم.
لمُحب اللغة العربية مرَّ عليه ولن تندم.
July 2, 2022
أقسم بالله وآياته ... ومشعر الحج وميقاته
إن الحريري حري بأن ... نكتب بالتبر مقاماته
الزمخشري
إن الحريري حري بأن ... نكتب بالتبر مقاماته
الزمخشري
October 16, 2020
Also known as the Maqamat of Al-Hiriri.
This is on Philip Ward's list of 500 lifetime books A Lifetime's Reading: Five Hundred Great Books to be Enjoyed over 50 Years. It consists of fifty episodes in which the narrator Harith Hamman comes across the trickster Abu Zayd in various cities in the Middle East. They are friends, but in Al-Hariri's day (1054-1122, Western calendar) you couldn't text to meet up somewhere. You might just happen on an old acquaintance in a mosque or town square, or out in the desert. And since Abu Zayd is usually disguised in rags to justify his wheedling for alms or conning someone out of a camel, Harith doesn't always recognize him right away. The name 'Zayd' means 'any man whatever' and the name Harith Hamman means 'one who acquires gain by trade or other means' and 'one who is subject to cares and anxieties.'
However, the Assemblies is much more than the tales of a scamp in the vein of Hodja Nasreddin. It is a tour-de-force (by repute; I don't know Arabic) of Arabic philology in the form of lectures, sermons full of admonitions to live according to religious and traditional precepts, riddles, and other beautifully worded addresses. Scholars used to memorize it. Many of the rewards (again by repute) lay in catching the nuances of Arabic words with multiple meanings. Other rewards are said to lie in the perfection of the rhetorical devices and poetry. At first I found the typical elaborate language distancing, but by the end I had finally gotten into the beauty of it. I think that this is the first time has happened for me with something translated from traditional Arabic.
The humor lies in the contrast between the pious show-off rhetoric of Abu Zaid and his every-present scheming to earn the sympathy and respect of his audience so he can scam them. Even his friend Harith is not exempt from being fleeced. I was attracted by book summaries that cited the humor of the writing, but I would say that you will smile, not laugh at Abu-Zaid's tricks.
At any rate, it isn't simple reading. I recommend setting aside a few weeks for this, and only reading one or two of the fifty episodes at one time. It would get too repetitive otherwise. I read the translation by Amina Shah. She was British, of eminent Afghani origin, the sister of Sufi writers Idras Shah and Omar Ali-Shah. Her nieces and nephews are writers and filmmakers. She anthologized folktales, which she gathered by traveling all over the world, as well as translating this work. I enjoyed it, but there are few notes to help understand it. The exception is the assemblies that cite multiple riddles, where the philology of the double meanings is explained.
There is an older translation as well, by Thomas Chenery and Francis Joseph Steingass. I think that it might not have been a complete translation.
Comparison:
from the 27th Assembly:
Shah:
Chenery:
Other resources: online access to a very old Arabic manuscript of the work, with wonderful color illustrations, in a French library: https://www.wdl.org/en/item/18416/
By the by, I read this simultaneously with Lizardi's The Itching Parrot, published in his native Mexico in 1830. Both describe the escapades of devious tricksters and cheats who reform in the end. Both revel in an elaborate style. Both do combine moral advice with plenty of vice. But Al-Hariri uses the most complex and respected rhetoric, while Lizardi reportedly used a wide variety of registers and semi-dialects to reflect the different stations of his characters. And Lizardi, following Cervantes and other picaresque authors, gets his protagonist involved in much worse behavior than Abu Zayd.
This is on Philip Ward's list of 500 lifetime books A Lifetime's Reading: Five Hundred Great Books to be Enjoyed over 50 Years. It consists of fifty episodes in which the narrator Harith Hamman comes across the trickster Abu Zayd in various cities in the Middle East. They are friends, but in Al-Hariri's day (1054-1122, Western calendar) you couldn't text to meet up somewhere. You might just happen on an old acquaintance in a mosque or town square, or out in the desert. And since Abu Zayd is usually disguised in rags to justify his wheedling for alms or conning someone out of a camel, Harith doesn't always recognize him right away. The name 'Zayd' means 'any man whatever' and the name Harith Hamman means 'one who acquires gain by trade or other means' and 'one who is subject to cares and anxieties.'
However, the Assemblies is much more than the tales of a scamp in the vein of Hodja Nasreddin. It is a tour-de-force (by repute; I don't know Arabic) of Arabic philology in the form of lectures, sermons full of admonitions to live according to religious and traditional precepts, riddles, and other beautifully worded addresses. Scholars used to memorize it. Many of the rewards (again by repute) lay in catching the nuances of Arabic words with multiple meanings. Other rewards are said to lie in the perfection of the rhetorical devices and poetry. At first I found the typical elaborate language distancing, but by the end I had finally gotten into the beauty of it. I think that this is the first time has happened for me with something translated from traditional Arabic.
The humor lies in the contrast between the pious show-off rhetoric of Abu Zaid and his every-present scheming to earn the sympathy and respect of his audience so he can scam them. Even his friend Harith is not exempt from being fleeced. I was attracted by book summaries that cited the humor of the writing, but I would say that you will smile, not laugh at Abu-Zaid's tricks.
At any rate, it isn't simple reading. I recommend setting aside a few weeks for this, and only reading one or two of the fifty episodes at one time. It would get too repetitive otherwise. I read the translation by Amina Shah. She was British, of eminent Afghani origin, the sister of Sufi writers Idras Shah and Omar Ali-Shah. Her nieces and nephews are writers and filmmakers. She anthologized folktales, which she gathered by traveling all over the world, as well as translating this work. I enjoyed it, but there are few notes to help understand it. The exception is the assemblies that cite multiple riddles, where the philology of the double meanings is explained.
There is an older translation as well, by Thomas Chenery and Francis Joseph Steingass. I think that it might not have been a complete translation.
Comparison:
from the 27th Assembly:
Shah:
In my early days, I had always wanted to join the people of the hair-tents, the Bedouin, and learn their ways, their language and their peace, so that I might take after their high-mettled spirits.
So I bestirred myself with the alertness of one not lacking in industry, and began to roam through lowlands and highlands, until I got together a string of camels and a flock of goats. Then I took myself to some Arabs far away from the towns, fit to be the lieutenants of kings. No care lighted upon me when I was with them, no arrow struck, until one night there strayed away one of my she acmes, profuse of milk flow. So I sprang upon a swift-paced steed, and fared forth. All night, in the full moon's light, I scoured the desert, every copse and treeless place, until the morning call to prayer came to my heart's here. Then I got from my saddle, and said my prayers, after which I rode again, trying my poor mount to his utmost.
Chenery:
In the prime of my life that has fleeted, I had a leaning towards intercourse with the people of the hair-tents, so that I might take after their high-mettled spirits and their Arab tongues.So I bestirred myself with the alertness of one not lacking in industry, and began to roam through low-lands and high-lands, until I had got together a string of those that groan [{.&, camels],
along with a flock of those that bleat [ie. 9 sheep]. Then I betook myself to some Arabs, [fit to be] lieutenants of kings, sons of speech [saws]. They gave me a home with them in safest vicinity, and turned [blunted] from me the edge of any [hostile] tooth. No care alighted upon me while I was with them, no arrow struck [the smoothness] of my rock, until one night, bright with full-moon-sheen, there strayed from me a she-camel profuse of milk-flow* Then my heart suffered me not to forbear the quest of her, and to throw her halter upon her hump [allowing her to wander at will]. So I sprang upon a swift- paced steed, planting a ti'embling lance between thigh and stirrup, and fared forth oil the night, scouring the desert, and exploring every copse and treeless place, until the morning dawn unfurled its ensigns, when the crier calls to prayer and to salvation. Then I alighted from my beast for the acquittance of the written ordinance, after which I bestrode him again, trying his mettle to the utmost
Other resources: online access to a very old Arabic manuscript of the work, with wonderful color illustrations, in a French library: https://www.wdl.org/en/item/18416/
By the by, I read this simultaneously with Lizardi's The Itching Parrot, published in his native Mexico in 1830. Both describe the escapades of devious tricksters and cheats who reform in the end. Both revel in an elaborate style. Both do combine moral advice with plenty of vice. But Al-Hariri uses the most complex and respected rhetoric, while Lizardi reportedly used a wide variety of registers and semi-dialects to reflect the different stations of his characters. And Lizardi, following Cervantes and other picaresque authors, gets his protagonist involved in much worse behavior than Abu Zayd.
November 28, 2022
المقامات وبالتحديد مقامات الحريري مادة خصبة تُثري مفردات اللغة عند الإنسان، ما إن تنتهي من قراءتها وتفهم معاني ألفاظها جيدًا سينعش ذلك مخزونك اللغوي ويُطور مهارة التحدث عندك .
يستحق أن يكون مسك الختام، والكتاب الأخير لهذا العام (واضح التأثر بالكتاب😂)
يستحق أن يكون مسك الختام، والكتاب الأخير لهذا العام (واضح التأثر بالكتاب😂)
June 28, 2022
تعتبر مقامات الحريري (1122-1054) من أهم النصوص الأدبية الموروثة من العصر العباسي. النوع الأدبي المسمى مقامة رأى النور مع بديع الزمان الهمذاني (1007-967)، ليصل أوجه و يستكمل جماليته مع الحريري. المقامة نص سردي قصير، على طريقة ما يسميه العرب بالخبر. يبين فيه الكاتب عن ذكائه الحاد و بلاغته. من حيث الموضوع، المقامة غالبا ما تكون ذات طابع فكاهي خفيف، لكن الكاتب يستغل الكثير من الوضعيات ليقدم مواعظ و حكم، يخلق بها تباينا جميلا و متكاملا بين اللهو و الجد، و الفاني و الباقي، ليس فقط لإمتاع القارئ بل لإثارة إعجابه في القدرة على التحكم ببلاغة في عالمين متضادين متناقضين.
في مقامات الحريري، تسرد شخصية الحارث بن همام أخبار أبي زيد السروجي و إبنه و إرتحالهما عبر ربوع الأراضي الإسلامية، فننتقل معهم من الشام إلى العراق، مصر و حتى المغرب و إيران. تتخلل المقامات الدعوة إلى الارتحال إن لم تكن الحاجة الماسة إليه، على طريقة العرب البدو، للبحث عن الأخبار و تعلم أسرار البلاغة و اللغة من روادها.
أبو زيد السروجي يظهر هنا و يختفي هناك. ببلاغته يحتال على كبير الشأن و صغيره. لسانه سلاحه. من منظور محافظ، قد تبدو هذه الشخصية صادمة للقارئ المعاصر، فهو لا يخشى العباد ولا الاله. طماع محتال كذاب ليس لقلة حياءه حدود. تجده في بعض المقامات يأم المصلين نهارا و يدعوهم إلى الزهد، و ليلا يستقيل إلى الخمر و الطرب. عندما يواجهه الحارث بسوء أفعاله و إفتراءه على الناس لا يظهر ذرة خجل، بل يدافع بكل بلاغة عن صنعة المحتالين و الكذابين.
هذا اللبس في المثل الأخلاقي التي يود إيصاله الكاتب لا يقتصر على مقامات الحريري فقط، بل نجده في الكثير من الموروث الأدبي من العصر العباسي. لربما هو مذكر عن المسافة الشاسعة التي تفصلنا عنه. ليس فقط لغويا بل حتى قيميا. لقد كان العصر العباسي قبل كل شيء مرحلة تكوينية في الحضارة الاسلامية. تميز بتنوع و دينامية ثقافية كبيرة. مايمكن أن يكون صادما لنا اليوم لم يكن كذلك في مجتمع يعيش فترة ازدهار و ثقة في قدراته دفعته نحو شجاعة قاربت الجرأة، جرأة صرنا نحن بعيدين جدا ع��ها.
بعيدا عن هذه التكهنات، تبقى مقامات الحريري لوحة فنية لغوية. هذا إساس وجودها و سبب إنشائها. نجد فيها مسائل و أحاجي يتحدى فيها الكاتب علماء اللغة. كالرسالة التي تقرأ من الاتجاه المعاكس و تحافظ على معناها. سجع و شعر أرقط، بحرف ذي نقط و الذي يليه غير منقط. يبرهن الحريري أيضا على معرفته بالإستعمالات النادرة للكلمات، التي تكتسب معاني أخرى في سياق آخر مما يرمي القارئ الغير متمرس في الحيرة و العجب. كل هذا، مع الحفاظ على الجمالية و الوزن و الشكل. تكاد مسائله تكون، رغم صعوبتها، كموسيقى في أذن القارئ. المقامات هي معجزات لغوية نحن محظوظون جدا لأنها وصلت إلينا عبر كل هذه القرون.
في مقامات الحريري، تسرد شخصية الحارث بن همام أخبار أبي زيد السروجي و إبنه و إرتحالهما عبر ربوع الأراضي الإسلامية، فننتقل معهم من الشام إلى العراق، مصر و حتى المغرب و إيران. تتخلل المقامات الدعوة إلى الارتحال إن لم تكن الحاجة الماسة إليه، على طريقة العرب البدو، للبحث عن الأخبار و تعلم أسرار البلاغة و اللغة من روادها.
أبو زيد السروجي يظهر هنا و يختفي هناك. ببلاغته يحتال على كبير الشأن و صغيره. لسانه سلاحه. من منظور محافظ، قد تبدو هذه الشخصية صادمة للقارئ المعاصر، فهو لا يخشى العباد ولا الاله. طماع محتال كذاب ليس لقلة حياءه حدود. تجده في بعض المقامات يأم المصلين نهارا و يدعوهم إلى الزهد، و ليلا يستقيل إلى الخمر و الطرب. عندما يواجهه الحارث بسوء أفعاله و إفتراءه على الناس لا يظهر ذرة خجل، بل يدافع بكل بلاغة عن صنعة المحتالين و الكذابين.
هذا اللبس في المثل الأخلاقي التي يود إيصاله الكاتب لا يقتصر على مقامات الحريري فقط، بل نجده في الكثير من الموروث الأدبي من العصر العباسي. لربما هو مذكر عن المسافة الشاسعة التي تفصلنا عنه. ليس فقط لغويا بل حتى قيميا. لقد كان العصر العباسي قبل كل شيء مرحلة تكوينية في الحضارة الاسلامية. تميز بتنوع و دينامية ثقافية كبيرة. مايمكن أن يكون صادما لنا اليوم لم يكن كذلك في مجتمع يعيش فترة ازدهار و ثقة في قدراته دفعته نحو شجاعة قاربت الجرأة، جرأة صرنا نحن بعيدين جدا ع��ها.
بعيدا عن هذه التكهنات، تبقى مقامات الحريري لوحة فنية لغوية. هذا إساس وجودها و سبب إنشائها. نجد فيها مسائل و أحاجي يتحدى فيها الكاتب علماء اللغة. كالرسالة التي تقرأ من الاتجاه المعاكس و تحافظ على معناها. سجع و شعر أرقط، بحرف ذي نقط و الذي يليه غير منقط. يبرهن الحريري أيضا على معرفته بالإستعمالات النادرة للكلمات، التي تكتسب معاني أخرى في سياق آخر مما يرمي القارئ الغير متمرس في الحيرة و العجب. كل هذا، مع الحفاظ على الجمالية و الوزن و الشكل. تكاد مسائله تكون، رغم صعوبتها، كموسيقى في أذن القارئ. المقامات هي معجزات لغوية نحن محظوظون جدا لأنها وصلت إلينا عبر كل هذه القرون.
May 8, 2014
Despite the fact that this is a translation from Arabic, it is an outstanding, luscious, eloquent, example of demonstration via dialogue. A sadly neglected work.
August 13, 2018
أحد عشر شهرا منذ انطلاق مبادرة إحياء البيان فقضيناها بصحبة هذا السفر العظيم المذهل
من ذا الذي سيوفيه حقه بمراجعة عظيمة تليق به؟
----
قناة المبادرة في اليوتيوب وفيها المقامات مضبوطة بالنسخة المحققة بإلقاء الرائع علي العامري
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFrh...
من ذا الذي سيوفيه حقه بمراجعة عظيمة تليق به؟
----
قناة المبادرة في اليوتيوب وفيها المقامات مضبوطة بالنسخة المحققة بإلقاء الرائع علي العامري
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFrh...
May 14, 2022
يقال: إن الحريري كتب خطه على سبعمائة نسخة من مقاماته قرئت عليه، وأكبر الظن أن اهتمامه بها على هذا النحو، هو الذي حال بينها وبين البتر والحذف، والتغيير، ولذلك كانت مقاماته من هذه الوجهة، أتم وأطرف من مقامات البديع التي تبدو مبتورة في كثيرة من الأحيان.
June 21, 2016
في ميزان مؤلفات البشر ، هذا ليس كتاباً ، إنما أخذةٌ مقتدِرةٌ عبر السحر البياني والإدهاش البلاغي والإعجاز النظمي ، لا يطاول سموقَه نظمٌ ولا يداني بُسُوقَه بيان...ه
April 22, 2016
يزخر تراثنا العربي بالكثير من الكنوز المتفردة، ومقامات الحريري أحد أنفس هذه الكنوز.
معانٍ عظيمة منثورة ومنظومة في هذا المجلد العظيم.
قراءته مهمة والاستزادة منه مطلب.
معانٍ عظيمة منثورة ومنظومة في هذا المجلد العظيم.
قراءته مهمة والاستزادة منه مطلب.
May 18, 2017
قرأت بعض المقامات، واليوم أنا لها عائد وآت، مذ سلبتني في سنين المراهقات، كأنها سحر، ليس لها شاطئ من بحر، ولا كفاية من قدر، رتبت على نحو من الرياضيات والجَبر، فيها من القصص عبرة وذكر، ومن النظم لذيذ من الشِعر.
January 7, 2014
كل وصف يقصر دونه ..
أتحفنا بــ" أيا من يدعي الفهم " ... " خلّ ادكار الأربع "
...
لله درّه من إمام همام , لم تسمح بمثله الأيّام
أتحفنا بــ" أيا من يدعي الفهم " ... " خلّ ادكار الأربع "
...
لله درّه من إمام همام , لم تسمح بمثله الأيّام
December 15, 2021
Whatever this is, a translation, a transcreation, or an "Englishing" (the translator's word), it is an impressive feat and gloriously entertaining, possibly even more entertaining in English than in the original Arabic. Instead of rhymed prose with an proto-oulipian constrained writing exercise (a letter which can be read backwards and forwards, a poem which only uses one vowel etc.), we get virtually all the constrained writing or their equivalents in English, and the stories are written in 50 (51 actually) different writing styles, from pastiches of well-known authors to various slangs from all over the world. This playfulness, although it forces the translator to occasionally veer away from the letter, is true (or at least seems so to a non-Arabic speaker) to the original. Of course, some pastiches are more convincing than others, and some of the slangs are a bit of a slog to read and require constant flicking back-and-forth between the text and the glossary, BUT, all in all, this was amazing.
The stories themselves follow a similar structure: Al-Harith (always in a different town) comes across some bloke, often in rags, who impresses everyone with his oratory skills, or delivers a great sermon, or asks for their pity, or is bringing his son or wife before a judge for some reason or other. At the end, people give him money, Al-Harith follows him, and it is revealed that the bloke is (surprise surprise) his old friend Abu Zayd, and the whole thing was a scam. The stories would probably be fairly repetitive if not for translator Michael Cooperson's delightfully crazy idea of writing each story in a different style. And like all great authors, Al-Hariri leaves the reader with more questions than answers: is Abu Zayd's embrace of a religious life at the end to be taken seriously, and if so, what of his deathbed advice to his son on becoming a rogue like him? Why does Al-Harith never recognize Al-Hariri? Why are their destinities so mysteriously entwined, to the point where they meet "by chance" in so many different places?
The stories themselves follow a similar structure: Al-Harith (always in a different town) comes across some bloke, often in rags, who impresses everyone with his oratory skills, or delivers a great sermon, or asks for their pity, or is bringing his son or wife before a judge for some reason or other. At the end, people give him money, Al-Harith follows him, and it is revealed that the bloke is (surprise surprise) his old friend Abu Zayd, and the whole thing was a scam. The stories would probably be fairly repetitive if not for translator Michael Cooperson's delightfully crazy idea of writing each story in a different style. And like all great authors, Al-Hariri leaves the reader with more questions than answers: is Abu Zayd's embrace of a religious life at the end to be taken seriously, and if so, what of his deathbed advice to his son on becoming a rogue like him? Why does Al-Harith never recognize Al-Hariri? Why are their destinities so mysteriously entwined, to the point where they meet "by chance" in so many different places?
March 9, 2021
من الناحية الأدبية فهي تحفة فنية، من الناحية الأخلاقية ففي الأمر قول، فأغلب المقامات تدور حول دهاء أبو زيد السروجي وقدرته على خداع الناس وأخذ أموالهم منهم بالحيلة، كنت متفهماً أن هذا النوع من الأدب يركز على القيمة اللغوية ويتساهل مع المعنى اذ أن ما يهمه هو المبنى لا المعنى، ولكن أثار حفيظتي في النهاية تفضيل نصائحه على نصائح لقمان الواردة في القرآن في نهاية مقامته الساسانية، وكدت أن أعطي الكتاب ثلاث نجوم بسبب ذلك ولكن منعني من ذلك أخلاق الكاتب اذ انه اعتذر في البداية وفي النهاية عم ورد منه من اللغو والكلام عديم الفائدة، وكأنه شعر بأنه "تخنها" في آخر مقامة هههه، أما من الناحية اللغوية والقوافي الرئعة فالكتاب يستحق عشرة نجوم
استغرق كتابة المقامات كلها سبع سنين وهي خمسين مقامة، وهذا يدل على صعوبة هذا النوع من الكتابة، فكل الاحترام للجهد المبذول في سبيل امتاع القراء
استغرق كتابة المقامات كلها سبع سنين وهي خمسين مقامة، وهذا يدل على صعوبة هذا النوع من الكتابة، فكل الاحترام للجهد المبذول في سبيل امتاع القراء
May 30, 2022
نفس المحتال في خمسين محاولة احتيال مختلفة هو أبو زيد السروجي، يحتال بها على الناس بسحر بيانه وهنا يظهر فن المقامات الذي يعد ثروة لغوية كبيرة لدارس اللغة، و لغير المختص تحلى بالصبر و اشرح الكلمات في المقامة و كأنك في معجم لغوي و حبذا لو كتبت المعاني فوق الكلمات و بعدها أعد قراءة المقامة و استلذ ببحر من اللغة و اللطافة
ولكن بعيدًا عن الحصيلة اللغوية والبراعة في الصياغة و السبك الأدبي واللغوي كل المقامات قصص متشابهة ذات الأسلوب و ذات المحتال و الطريقة في الاحتيال فلا يوجد قصة مهمة غير بعض العِبر والمواعظ بين السطور بكثير من التكلف..
ولكن بعيدًا عن الحصيلة اللغوية والبراعة في الصياغة و السبك الأدبي واللغوي كل المقامات قصص متشابهة ذات الأسلوب و ذات المحتال و الطريقة في الاحتيال فلا يوجد قصة مهمة غير بعض العِبر والمواعظ بين السطور بكثير من التكلف..
May 14, 2022
ياقوت قال: لقد وافق كتاب المقامات "للحريري" من السعد ما لم يوافق مثله كتاب؛ فإنه جمع بين حقيقة الجودة والبلاغة، واتسعت له الألفاظ وانقادت له البراعة ... حتى لو ادعى بها الإعجاز لما وجد من يدفع في صدره، ولا من يرد قوله ولا يأتي بما يقاربها فضلا عن أن يأتي بمثلها، وقد رزقت -مع ذلك- من الشهرة وبعد الصيت، والاتفاق على استحسانها من الموافق والمخالف ما استحقت وأكثر "
April 27, 2016
مقامات بديعة ومغامرات شيقة وهي قصص قصيرة كتبت بأسلوب متقن ومسجوع تصور في مجموعها واقع حياة الناس في عصر المؤلف. يغلب على هذه المقامات عنصري الطرافة والتشويق. وفيها حكمة وأدب وشعر ووعظ وغيرها على ما يجري في كثير من كتب الأدب ذلك الوقت.
did-not-finish
February 10, 2025For my Madrassa exam, I’ve to read 3 impostures from "Impostures" by Imam Hariri out of a total of 50, and I actually loved the introductory part! But as I got deeper into the reading, I found it pretty tough to continue. The book is densely packed with literary complexity. It explores how skilled wordsmiths manipulate others, as seen in the interaction between Abu Zaid Suruji and Harith Ibne Hashaam throughout the book.
The book has great intentions—it aims to make us aware of those who wield words cleverly but may not always be truthful. However, I'll be honest, I'm struggling to keep up with the intricate writing style. Hariri's rich and engaging prose demands significant mental effort.
If you're into classic literature and enjoy a challenging read, this book could be a good fit for you.
The book has great intentions—it aims to make us aware of those who wield words cleverly but may not always be truthful. However, I'll be honest, I'm struggling to keep up with the intricate writing style. Hariri's rich and engaging prose demands significant mental effort.
If you're into classic literature and enjoy a challenging read, this book could be a good fit for you.
August 15, 2025
تم ✅
استماع لـ 50 مقامة مع التركيز خلال 25 يوم
"طوبى لمن صغت قلوبهم إليه "
لذة الإستماع لجمال اللغة العربية ، الكتاب هو نخبوي لأدباء اللغة العربية حيث صعوبة المفردات
لكن القصة مفهومة و يرتكز على المواعظ الدينية و أخبار العراق
محور الحديث كله عن شخصية إسمها أبا زيد السروجي وهو شيخ معروف في الكذب والخداع باستعمال موهبته في الخطابة والحديث والنصح ، يمكر ويأخذ ما يريده من الناس والحكام والقضاة بالتمسكن و جمال لغته.
استماع لـ 50 مقامة مع التركيز خلال 25 يوم
"طوبى لمن صغت قلوبهم إليه "
لذة الإستماع لجمال اللغة العربية ، الكتاب هو نخبوي لأدباء اللغة العربية حيث صعوبة المفردات
لكن القصة مفهومة و يرتكز على المواعظ الدينية و أخبار العراق
محور الحديث كله عن شخصية إسمها أبا زيد السروجي وهو شيخ معروف في الكذب والخداع باستعمال موهبته في الخطابة والحديث والنصح ، يمكر ويأخذ ما يريده من الناس والحكام والقضاة بالتمسكن و جمال لغته.
November 2, 2022
I went to a fair bit of effort to get our library to buy a copy. Well, big disappointment! I found the thing almost unreadable. I kept trying & skimming but ultimately gave up. Not for me. Too bad. Your mileage may vary!
Got a rave review from the WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fiction-...
Author of the original: al-Harīrī of Basra (1054-1122)
Excerpt:
"The narrator [of the stories] is a man named al-Hārith, who describes his encounters with an itinerant con man known as Abū Zayd. This trickster poet appears in various disguises to gull people out of their money, sometimes in a court of law but usually by delivering sermons or performing off-the-cuff recitals. The scenarios may be comic or instructional, but fundamentally they exist to display al-Harīrī’s rhetorical mastery. They feature complex rhymes, puns and alliteration. Abū Zayd invents palindromes and riddles. He composes stories that can be understood in two different ways because they are filled entirely with homophones or words with double meanings.
“Strictly speaking, none of these features can be translated; they can only be imitated,” Michael Cooperson writes in “Impostures” (New York University, 484 pages, $29.95), his astounding new adaptation of the Maqāmāt of al-Harīrī. “And the only way to imitate them is to throw out the rule book.” His first marker of intent is the bespoke title, which has no direct correlation to the Arabic but playfully references Abū Zayd’s deceptions while still, with “posture,” keeping a sidelong allusion to the act of standing. Mr. Cooperson, a professor of Arabic at UCLA, takes on the work’s prodigious wordplay with the same license to invent, often only reflecting the source in glancing or ironic ways. In one Imposture, for instance, Abū Zayd is challenged to compose a speech in which the words alternate between those that consist of letters with dots (half the Arabic alphabet) and those that don’t. Since this is impossible to replicate in English, Mr. Cooperson devises a comparable constraint, switching back and forth between words of Germanic and Romance origins (“Liberality will gratify others; pinching pennies disappoints”). ...
The verbal profusion is ludicrous, joyfully so. Speaking to an interviewer, Mr. Cooperson remarked that the Maqāmāt is “a book that shows off everything that Arabic can do.” “Impostures” shows off English in the same flattering light, demonstrating its dynamism, its endurance, its mutability and its glorious, weedy wildness. In this way, a translation that is so brazen in its liberties is faithful to the spirit of the original."
(Paywalled. As always, I'm happy to email a copy to non-subscribers)
Got a rave review from the WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fiction-...
Author of the original: al-Harīrī of Basra (1054-1122)
Excerpt:
"The narrator [of the stories] is a man named al-Hārith, who describes his encounters with an itinerant con man known as Abū Zayd. This trickster poet appears in various disguises to gull people out of their money, sometimes in a court of law but usually by delivering sermons or performing off-the-cuff recitals. The scenarios may be comic or instructional, but fundamentally they exist to display al-Harīrī’s rhetorical mastery. They feature complex rhymes, puns and alliteration. Abū Zayd invents palindromes and riddles. He composes stories that can be understood in two different ways because they are filled entirely with homophones or words with double meanings.
“Strictly speaking, none of these features can be translated; they can only be imitated,” Michael Cooperson writes in “Impostures” (New York University, 484 pages, $29.95), his astounding new adaptation of the Maqāmāt of al-Harīrī. “And the only way to imitate them is to throw out the rule book.” His first marker of intent is the bespoke title, which has no direct correlation to the Arabic but playfully references Abū Zayd’s deceptions while still, with “posture,” keeping a sidelong allusion to the act of standing. Mr. Cooperson, a professor of Arabic at UCLA, takes on the work’s prodigious wordplay with the same license to invent, often only reflecting the source in glancing or ironic ways. In one Imposture, for instance, Abū Zayd is challenged to compose a speech in which the words alternate between those that consist of letters with dots (half the Arabic alphabet) and those that don’t. Since this is impossible to replicate in English, Mr. Cooperson devises a comparable constraint, switching back and forth between words of Germanic and Romance origins (“Liberality will gratify others; pinching pennies disappoints”). ...
The verbal profusion is ludicrous, joyfully so. Speaking to an interviewer, Mr. Cooperson remarked that the Maqāmāt is “a book that shows off everything that Arabic can do.” “Impostures” shows off English in the same flattering light, demonstrating its dynamism, its endurance, its mutability and its glorious, weedy wildness. In this way, a translation that is so brazen in its liberties is faithful to the spirit of the original."
(Paywalled. As always, I'm happy to email a copy to non-subscribers)
January 15, 2014
مقامات دسمه لغويا وتعبيريا لذا تُرجمت لعدة لغات، وأُلفت لها عدة شروح ،وسأحتاج للإطلاع على تلك الشروح..
الحريري من أدباء البصره و من أكبر أدباء العرب ويقال أنه لم يبلغ كتاب من كتب الادب شهره وصيت مثلما نالتها مقاماته
الجدير بالذكر إن المقامه من فنون الأدب أول من ابتكره بديع الزمان الهمذاني وهي عباره عن قصص قصيره يدور فيها الحوار بين "البطل" و "الرواي" معتمدا في سرد القصه على متعة القص و الحكي و المحسنات البديعيه و البيانيه وهو ماتميزت به مقامات الحريري...
كان البطل في مقامات الحريري" ابو زيد السروجي" والراوي "الحارث بن همام "وتبدأ المقامات بلقاء بينهما في صنعاءولذا سميت بالصنعائيه
(وصف الحريري لمقاماته في بداية الكتاب )
"وأنشأت على ما أعانيه من قريحه جامده وفطنه خامده ،ورويه ناضبه وفطنه ناصبه ..خمسين مقامة تحتوي على جد القول وهزله ورقيق اللفظ وجزله، وغرر البين ودرره
ومُلح الأدب ونوادره ،إلى ما وشحتها بها من الآيات ومحاسن الكنايات ،ورصعته فيها من الأمثال العربيه واللطائف الأدبيه و الأحاجي النحويه والفتاوي اللغويه ،والرسائل المبتكره و الخطب المحبره ، و المواعظ المبكيه والأضاحيك الملهيه ،مما أمليت جميعه على لسان أبي زيد السروجي واسندت روايته إلى الحارث بن همام البصري ،وما قصدت بالإحماض فيه إلا تنشيط قارئيه ،وتكثير سواد طالبيه ولم أودعه من الأشعار الأجنبيه إلا بيتين .
(تواضعه)
.. هذا مع اعترافي بأن البديع رحمة الله سبّاق غايات،وصاحب آيات وأن المتصدي بعده لإنشاء مقامه،ولو أتى بلاغة قُدامه لا يغترف إلا من فضالته ، ولا يسري ذلك المسرى إلا بدلالته .....
الحريري من أدباء البصره و من أكبر أدباء العرب ويقال أنه لم يبلغ كتاب من كتب الادب شهره وصيت مثلما نالتها مقاماته
الجدير بالذكر إن المقامه من فنون الأدب أول من ابتكره بديع الزمان الهمذاني وهي عباره عن قصص قصيره يدور فيها الحوار بين "البطل" و "الرواي" معتمدا في سرد القصه على متعة القص و الحكي و المحسنات البديعيه و البيانيه وهو ماتميزت به مقامات الحريري...
كان البطل في مقامات الحريري" ابو زيد السروجي" والراوي "الحارث بن همام "وتبدأ المقامات بلقاء بينهما في صنعاءولذا سميت بالصنعائيه
(وصف الحريري لمقاماته في بداية الكتاب )
"وأنشأت على ما أعانيه من قريحه جامده وفطنه خامده ،ورويه ناضبه وفطنه ناصبه ..خمسين مقامة تحتوي على جد القول وهزله ورقيق اللفظ وجزله، وغرر البين ودرره
ومُلح الأدب ونوادره ،إلى ما وشحتها بها من الآيات ومحاسن الكنايات ،ورصعته فيها من الأمثال العربيه واللطائف الأدبيه و الأحاجي النحويه والفتاوي اللغويه ،والرسائل المبتكره و الخطب المحبره ، و المواعظ المبكيه والأضاحيك الملهيه ،مما أمليت جميعه على لسان أبي زيد السروجي واسندت روايته إلى الحارث بن همام البصري ،وما قصدت بالإحماض فيه إلا تنشيط قارئيه ،وتكثير سواد طالبيه ولم أودعه من الأشعار الأجنبيه إلا بيتين .
(تواضعه)
.. هذا مع اعترافي بأن البديع رحمة الله سبّاق غايات،وصاحب آيات وأن المتصدي بعده لإنشاء مقامه،ولو أتى بلاغة قُدامه لا يغترف إلا من فضالته ، ولا يسري ذلك المسرى إلا بدلالته .....
August 15, 2022
Both the original and the translation are just towering achievements. While the repetitive nature of each imposture made a straight-through reading a bit of a chore, the variety of form and playfulness throughout was incredibly modern (particularly for such an old text) and fun. The translation also does such a great job connecting the dots between Al-Hariri and the Oulipo movement, Chaucer, Swift, and so many others. I'm so glad to have been exposed to this, and how it challenged my notions of how modern fiction came to be.
March 29, 2024
مثل كل شهر رمضان من كل سنة أعود إلى التراث العربي، أتلذذ قراءته، وأشرب من معينه.
للحريري سحر خاص، فهو يجمع النثر إلى الشعر، والهزل إلى الجد، في عبارة موجزة رشيقة، لا تحتاج غير دربة القارئ وألفته لغة العرب الوسيطة.
في المقامات نقد للمجتمع العربي في بدايات عصر الانحطاط، فهوشهادة على الانحدار.. وآخر صيحات استجداء الحكام من أجل رد الاعتبار لأهل العلم.
كل مقامة كتبت بعد الحريري لا معنى لها. إذ لا تعدو أن تكون تقليدا نسخيا لا سياق اجتماعيا له.
للحريري سحر خاص، فهو يجمع النثر إلى الشعر، والهزل إلى الجد، في عبارة موجزة رشيقة، لا تحتاج غير دربة القارئ وألفته لغة العرب الوسيطة.
في المقامات نقد للمجتمع العربي في بدايات عصر الانحطاط، فهوشهادة على الانحدار.. وآخر صيحات استجداء الحكام من أجل رد الاعتبار لأهل العلم.
كل مقامة كتبت بعد الحريري لا معنى لها. إذ لا تعدو أن تكون تقليدا نسخيا لا سياق اجتماعيا له.
June 1, 2015
أجد المقامات فن جميل وفريد رغم ما اعتماده على السجع إلا أن محتوى الكتاب مفيد ويضيف المزيد من المعرفة والعبر
September 17, 2018
أظنه أحد أعظم ما كتب من أدب فى لغة العرب
بدأت فيه متابعة لمبادرة إحياء البيان
https://twitter.com/ehyaa7?lang=ar
كان تجربة رائعة ،،عرفتنى بهذا الكنز العظيم
بدأت فيه متابعة لمبادرة إحياء البيان
https://twitter.com/ehyaa7?lang=ar
كان تجربة رائعة ،،عرفتنى بهذا الكنز العظيم
June 8, 2019
من أحب الكتب إلى قلبي.
June 11, 2020
A heads up, the review is too long for GR. You can find the full version here.
-----------
I received a review copy from the publisher via Netgalley. Thank you for this unique opportunity!
As some might already know, my expertise is East Asian art history/history, museums and postcolonialism. I always strive to read beyond my expertise to gain new knowledge, learn about cultures and study unfamiliar topics because learning is important, a privilege and fun.
So, when I saw this book, I immediately had to download it.
The Impostures is an old collection of poems written by al-Ḥarīrī, an Arab poet who lived during the late 11th and early 12th century. The poems are called maqamatt and are a performance of poetic virtuosity where a speaker stands (or sits) in front of an audience and create an impromptu poem that plays with Arabic. The book begins by explaining what maqamatts are, tracing the ambiguous and contradicting meanings.
Maqamatt can be described as:
The meaning of the word Makamat is derived from "a place where one stands upright" and hence the place where one is at any time. Next it is used metonymically to denote "the persons assembled at any place" and finally, by another translation, "the discourses delivered or conversations held in any such assembly". This metaphorical use of the word Makamat has however been restricted to discourse and conversations like those narrated by Hariri and his predecessor Al Hamadani, which are composed in a highly finished style, and solely for the purpose of exhibiting specimens of various kinds of eloquence, and exemplifying rules of grammar, rhetoric and poetry. (The Assemblies of Al-Hariri: Fifty Encounters with the Shaykh Abu Zayd of Seruj, trans. by Amina Shah (London: Octagon, 1980), p. viii.)
After explaining the meaning of maqamatt and it’s cultural and socio-political context, the book goes on explaining al-Ḥarīrī’s biography, including his “predecessor” Badi' al-Zaman al-Hamadani (969–1008), who supposedly invented the genre.
Al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqamatt is special because he writes the poems as a continuous story, telling the life and adventures of a linguistically skilled trickster, Abu Zayd from Saruj, from the perspective of a sort of friend. Abu Zayd dons various costumes and identities and is a beggar poet, something that is considered a lifestyle and genre in and of itself. And, as said before, even though Abu Zayd is the protagonist of the story, the poems are told from another perspective: al-Harith is telling the story and passing of the oratory and literary skills of Abu Zayd and, until the end, the narrator is tricked by Abu Zayd’s costumes.
What makes this so intriguing is not only the fact that Abu Zayd is shown to be a masterful literati able to create godlike (and I do mean in the religious and spiritual way as Arabic was seen as Allah’s language) poems but also in the fact that al-Ḥarīrī’s skills were so great and versatile that people found proof that he might have cheated himself. It is entirely possible that al-Ḥarīrī stole some (or all) poems from an African traveller that visited the Middle East. Because the styles of the poems vary so greatly, it is entirely possible that al-Ḥarīrī didn’t work alone on this project but there’s no real way of proving this over a millennia later. An he wouldn’t have confessed his theft or collaboration anyway so ultimately, it’s up to a multitude of interpretations.
Abu Zayd’s story ends interestingly: after having swindled, stolen, lied and tricked, he tries to perform one big show in a mosque, asking a gathering of faithfuls to pray for him while he confesses his misdeeds. And to the surprise of the narrator – and probably Abu Zayd himself – the prayers worked. His wandering life ends and he becomes an ascetic who only recites sermons and therefore uses Arabic as it is intended: to disperse God’s words. Leaving behind his life as a vagabond and trickster also means that he must stop using language for artistic purposes.
All of this is just in the foreword. After the acknowledgements comes the introduction, which talks about the al-Hamadhani’s and al-Ḥarīrī’s lives, the production of the Maqamatt (which can also be translated as “Impostures”, hence the title) and detailing the content and style of the poems, including Arabic and Western interpretation of the Maqamatt. I won’t repeat everything because it is A LOT of material and history but suffice to say that quite a lot of Westerners did see the linguistic virtuosity as decadent and unnecessary, that no true poet would need such silly tricks. This Orientalist and Eurocentric mindset is, of course, absolute horseshit (and I’d reckon to a large degree envy of not having the skills to use language in such a monumental way).
Instead of trying to explain what kind of linguistic tricks the Maqamat offers, I’ll let the introduction takes this from my hands:
Most famously, al-Ḥarīrī made a point of including examples of the kinds of trick writing that his predecessor had claimed to be able to produce. In Imposture 28, the roguish Abū Zayd delivers a sermon in which every word consists entirely of undotted letters (excluding, that is, half the letters in the Arabic alphabet). In Imposture 6, he dictates a letter in which every second word contains only dotted letters and the remaining words only undotted ones. In Impostures 8, 35, 43, and 44, he composes a story or poem that seems to be about one thing but contains so many words with double meanings that it can be read as telling an equally coherent story about something else. In Imposture 16, he extemporizes several palindromes (sentences that read the same backward as forward). In Imposture 17, he delivers a sermon that can be read word by word from the end to produce an equally plausible speech. In 32, he produces ninety legal riddles, each based on a pun. And in Imposture 46, he trains schoolchildren to perform feats such as taking all the words that contain the rare letter ẓāʾ and putting them into a poem. To some critics, manipulations like these have seemed an embarrassing waste of time, and evidence of the decadence of “Oriental taste.” 2 To my mind, however, they lie at the heart of al-Ḥarīrī’s enterprise.
You don’t have to know a lot about Arabic to see what artistry the maqamat represents. I read this passage and was already awed. Of course, the artistry is also “faked”, in a sense, since the actual maqamat would be a live performance but al-Ḥarīrī doesn’t perform this live – in fact, the book tells one story where he failed a prompt from the audience so miserably that he escaped and months later produced these incredible written maqamat, which is one reason why people believe he might have stolen the poems – he writes them down and makes them perform “live” within his story by Abu Zayd. There is a certain artificiality to this supposed live performance but I think that it doesn’t take away from the skills. Some things are just do difficult to come up on the spot and, as probably everybody knows, to be good and improvised speaking (poetry, speech or otherwise) requires immense training, dedication, practice and skill.
After the introductions comes a Note on the Translation which takes up several pages and…is really interesting to read. I also studied comparative literature so the process of translating, its theory and problems, is nothing new to me. In this section, the translator explains the history of Maqamat translations, explaining the age old question: do you translate faithfully word by word or do you translate faithfully by meaning and style? Poetry is particularly hard to translate because it rhymes, it has a rhythm, puns, word plays, palindromes and many other linguistic tricks and styles that can’t be translated 1:1. As a translator you are naturally restricted by the rules from the language you are translating to. You can’t just copy an idiom and call it a day.
The translator, Cooperson, recollects the history of European translations of the Maqamat, showing how some opted to translate the poems verbatim because they didn’t want to “pollute” the poems and some because they only saw merit in the poems for its use to teach Arabic and not for its literary quality. In fact, some argued that the poems had no value, as mentioned above, because it was to ornamental, pompous, flowery, gaudy or whatever other negatively connoted adjective. Some actually only saw the usefulness of the text to study Arabic grammar and vocabulary.
Cooperson also talks about other translations and argues that those that took the most liberty and actually tried to copy the playfulness of the poems by departing in style and content were essentially the most faithful, successful and interesting. He particularly mentions the Russian translations by Anna Arkadievna Iskoz-Dolinina, Valentin Michaelovich Borisov and Valeria Kirpichenko, all published at different times but using Russian the best way possible to translate the style of the maqamat. He also says that German and Hebrew translations seem to have been the most successful because they were the most creative and those that stayed very close to the text – translating almost word by word and thus creative prose instead of poetry – were the least successful because they didn’t elicit the same reaction in readers.
Cooperson notes:
Minimally, this means translating the verse as verse , and finding equivalents for the puns, riddles, and palindromes. Admittedly, such equivalents rarely have the same lexical meaning as their originals. But the lexical meaning, in these cases, is not the point. In Imposture 16, for example , al-Ḥārith is amazed that Abū Zayd can produce spontaneous palindromes; what they mean is barely relevant. That is why a translation like “Won ton? Not now!” (§16.5) works perfectly well even though the original says something else (which happens to be almost
equally nonsensical). Similarly, the alternation of dotted and undotted letters in §6.6 can be imitated by alternating words of French and words of Germanic origin. Fortunately, there are enough of both in English that the translation can say reasonably close to the lexical meaning of the original.
How indeed does one translate the Maqamat into English?
-------------
The rest of the review can be found on my blog. Link is above.
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I received a review copy from the publisher via Netgalley. Thank you for this unique opportunity!
As some might already know, my expertise is East Asian art history/history, museums and postcolonialism. I always strive to read beyond my expertise to gain new knowledge, learn about cultures and study unfamiliar topics because learning is important, a privilege and fun.
So, when I saw this book, I immediately had to download it.
The Impostures is an old collection of poems written by al-Ḥarīrī, an Arab poet who lived during the late 11th and early 12th century. The poems are called maqamatt and are a performance of poetic virtuosity where a speaker stands (or sits) in front of an audience and create an impromptu poem that plays with Arabic. The book begins by explaining what maqamatts are, tracing the ambiguous and contradicting meanings.
Maqamatt can be described as:
The meaning of the word Makamat is derived from "a place where one stands upright" and hence the place where one is at any time. Next it is used metonymically to denote "the persons assembled at any place" and finally, by another translation, "the discourses delivered or conversations held in any such assembly". This metaphorical use of the word Makamat has however been restricted to discourse and conversations like those narrated by Hariri and his predecessor Al Hamadani, which are composed in a highly finished style, and solely for the purpose of exhibiting specimens of various kinds of eloquence, and exemplifying rules of grammar, rhetoric and poetry. (The Assemblies of Al-Hariri: Fifty Encounters with the Shaykh Abu Zayd of Seruj, trans. by Amina Shah (London: Octagon, 1980), p. viii.)
After explaining the meaning of maqamatt and it’s cultural and socio-political context, the book goes on explaining al-Ḥarīrī’s biography, including his “predecessor” Badi' al-Zaman al-Hamadani (969–1008), who supposedly invented the genre.
Al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqamatt is special because he writes the poems as a continuous story, telling the life and adventures of a linguistically skilled trickster, Abu Zayd from Saruj, from the perspective of a sort of friend. Abu Zayd dons various costumes and identities and is a beggar poet, something that is considered a lifestyle and genre in and of itself. And, as said before, even though Abu Zayd is the protagonist of the story, the poems are told from another perspective: al-Harith is telling the story and passing of the oratory and literary skills of Abu Zayd and, until the end, the narrator is tricked by Abu Zayd’s costumes.
What makes this so intriguing is not only the fact that Abu Zayd is shown to be a masterful literati able to create godlike (and I do mean in the religious and spiritual way as Arabic was seen as Allah’s language) poems but also in the fact that al-Ḥarīrī’s skills were so great and versatile that people found proof that he might have cheated himself. It is entirely possible that al-Ḥarīrī stole some (or all) poems from an African traveller that visited the Middle East. Because the styles of the poems vary so greatly, it is entirely possible that al-Ḥarīrī didn’t work alone on this project but there’s no real way of proving this over a millennia later. An he wouldn’t have confessed his theft or collaboration anyway so ultimately, it’s up to a multitude of interpretations.
Abu Zayd’s story ends interestingly: after having swindled, stolen, lied and tricked, he tries to perform one big show in a mosque, asking a gathering of faithfuls to pray for him while he confesses his misdeeds. And to the surprise of the narrator – and probably Abu Zayd himself – the prayers worked. His wandering life ends and he becomes an ascetic who only recites sermons and therefore uses Arabic as it is intended: to disperse God’s words. Leaving behind his life as a vagabond and trickster also means that he must stop using language for artistic purposes.
All of this is just in the foreword. After the acknowledgements comes the introduction, which talks about the al-Hamadhani’s and al-Ḥarīrī’s lives, the production of the Maqamatt (which can also be translated as “Impostures”, hence the title) and detailing the content and style of the poems, including Arabic and Western interpretation of the Maqamatt. I won’t repeat everything because it is A LOT of material and history but suffice to say that quite a lot of Westerners did see the linguistic virtuosity as decadent and unnecessary, that no true poet would need such silly tricks. This Orientalist and Eurocentric mindset is, of course, absolute horseshit (and I’d reckon to a large degree envy of not having the skills to use language in such a monumental way).
Instead of trying to explain what kind of linguistic tricks the Maqamat offers, I’ll let the introduction takes this from my hands:
Most famously, al-Ḥarīrī made a point of including examples of the kinds of trick writing that his predecessor had claimed to be able to produce. In Imposture 28, the roguish Abū Zayd delivers a sermon in which every word consists entirely of undotted letters (excluding, that is, half the letters in the Arabic alphabet). In Imposture 6, he dictates a letter in which every second word contains only dotted letters and the remaining words only undotted ones. In Impostures 8, 35, 43, and 44, he composes a story or poem that seems to be about one thing but contains so many words with double meanings that it can be read as telling an equally coherent story about something else. In Imposture 16, he extemporizes several palindromes (sentences that read the same backward as forward). In Imposture 17, he delivers a sermon that can be read word by word from the end to produce an equally plausible speech. In 32, he produces ninety legal riddles, each based on a pun. And in Imposture 46, he trains schoolchildren to perform feats such as taking all the words that contain the rare letter ẓāʾ and putting them into a poem. To some critics, manipulations like these have seemed an embarrassing waste of time, and evidence of the decadence of “Oriental taste.” 2 To my mind, however, they lie at the heart of al-Ḥarīrī’s enterprise.
You don’t have to know a lot about Arabic to see what artistry the maqamat represents. I read this passage and was already awed. Of course, the artistry is also “faked”, in a sense, since the actual maqamat would be a live performance but al-Ḥarīrī doesn’t perform this live – in fact, the book tells one story where he failed a prompt from the audience so miserably that he escaped and months later produced these incredible written maqamat, which is one reason why people believe he might have stolen the poems – he writes them down and makes them perform “live” within his story by Abu Zayd. There is a certain artificiality to this supposed live performance but I think that it doesn’t take away from the skills. Some things are just do difficult to come up on the spot and, as probably everybody knows, to be good and improvised speaking (poetry, speech or otherwise) requires immense training, dedication, practice and skill.
After the introductions comes a Note on the Translation which takes up several pages and…is really interesting to read. I also studied comparative literature so the process of translating, its theory and problems, is nothing new to me. In this section, the translator explains the history of Maqamat translations, explaining the age old question: do you translate faithfully word by word or do you translate faithfully by meaning and style? Poetry is particularly hard to translate because it rhymes, it has a rhythm, puns, word plays, palindromes and many other linguistic tricks and styles that can’t be translated 1:1. As a translator you are naturally restricted by the rules from the language you are translating to. You can’t just copy an idiom and call it a day.
The translator, Cooperson, recollects the history of European translations of the Maqamat, showing how some opted to translate the poems verbatim because they didn’t want to “pollute” the poems and some because they only saw merit in the poems for its use to teach Arabic and not for its literary quality. In fact, some argued that the poems had no value, as mentioned above, because it was to ornamental, pompous, flowery, gaudy or whatever other negatively connoted adjective. Some actually only saw the usefulness of the text to study Arabic grammar and vocabulary.
Cooperson also talks about other translations and argues that those that took the most liberty and actually tried to copy the playfulness of the poems by departing in style and content were essentially the most faithful, successful and interesting. He particularly mentions the Russian translations by Anna Arkadievna Iskoz-Dolinina, Valentin Michaelovich Borisov and Valeria Kirpichenko, all published at different times but using Russian the best way possible to translate the style of the maqamat. He also says that German and Hebrew translations seem to have been the most successful because they were the most creative and those that stayed very close to the text – translating almost word by word and thus creative prose instead of poetry – were the least successful because they didn’t elicit the same reaction in readers.
Cooperson notes:
Minimally, this means translating the verse as verse , and finding equivalents for the puns, riddles, and palindromes. Admittedly, such equivalents rarely have the same lexical meaning as their originals. But the lexical meaning, in these cases, is not the point. In Imposture 16, for example , al-Ḥārith is amazed that Abū Zayd can produce spontaneous palindromes; what they mean is barely relevant. That is why a translation like “Won ton? Not now!” (§16.5) works perfectly well even though the original says something else (which happens to be almost
equally nonsensical). Similarly, the alternation of dotted and undotted letters in §6.6 can be imitated by alternating words of French and words of Germanic origin. Fortunately, there are enough of both in English that the translation can say reasonably close to the lexical meaning of the original.
How indeed does one translate the Maqamat into English?
-------------
The rest of the review can be found on my blog. Link is above.
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