Бади` аз-Заман ал-Хамадани. Макамы

Makama (lit.: parking place) is an ancient Arabic word found already in ancient (pre-Islamic) poetry in the meaning of “meeting place of the tribe.” Then it acquires a broader meaning - it begins to designate the meeting itself, and subsequently the conversations that take place in this meeting. For the first time, the term maqama to designate a specific genre of written literature was used by Abu-l-Fadl Ahmed ibn al-Hussein al-Hamadani (967-1008), nicknamed 'Badi al-Zaman' ('The Miracle of Time'). Having received a good philological education in his hometown, he left Hamadan as a young man and served in the courts of many Muslim rulers in the eastern part of the Caliphate. Badi al-Zaman is known as a poet, the author of a collection of messages written in an elegant style and a collection of short works that he called maqams.

The origins of the maqam of Badi al-Zaman should be sought in the learned and edifying conversations of scholars and educated people. But this is not just a written recording of conversations, which we sometimes find in historical chronicles; these are a kind of small novels with fictional characters. One of them - a traveling merchant, lover of poetry and oratory - is present in each of the fifty makams; The story is told on his behalf. Traveling from city to city (each story takes place in a new place), he meets everywhere the roguish Alexandrian (a character named Abu-l-Fath al-Iskanderi). The Alexandrian is a lumpen, a tramp, a clever rogue, appearing every time in a new guise; he lures money from gullible listeners both by demonstrating his knowledge and eloquence, and by begging, theft, and deception.

Al-Hamadani tried to combine the seemingly incompatible: a refined scholarly conversation with an entertaining adventurous plot, putting stylistically sophisticated and completely well-behaved speeches into the mouth of a frivolous and immoral deceiver. As a result, he created a new genre of al-maqamat in Arabic literature - a cycle of picaresque short stories of high style, similar in composition and united by two common characters with permanent functions.