The Maqāma Genre and the History of an Islamicate Literary Form

Abstract

This issue of the Intellectual History of the Islamicate World is the first to be devoted to a particular literary genre, the maqāma. The maqāma is a form of narrative prose fiction invented in the fourth/tenth century by Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamaḏānī (d. 398/1008). These short tales recount the exploits of characters as they travel throughout the cities of Syria, Iran, and Iraq, often engaging in physical disguise and linguistic trickery. The refined form of language and the spirit of wordplay reflect the shared eruditeArabic literary culture of Islamicate adab. The topic of this special issue may seem surprising to some readers. Should this subject not belong more properly to one of the many journals that deal withMiddle Eastern Literatures past and present?How is the travel of a literary form such as themaqāmaworthy of interest within the larger frame of intellectual history? What is “intellectual” about a phenomenon that appears to be so intimately tied up with what might first be dismissed as the narrow concerns of belles-lettres and aesthetics? What might intellectual historians gain from studying the formal features of texts? The editors of this volume maintain that the travel of literary form is an integral part of the intellectual history of the Islamicate World. The history of the maqāma considered in this volume begins in the fourth/tenth century in Central Asia and quickly ranges across many regions of the Muslim world including West Africa, North Africa, Egypt, the Levant, Iraq, Iran, Yemen and