Maqama
Arabic literary genre / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The maqāma (Arabic: مقامة [maˈqaːma], literally "assembly"; plural maqāmāt, مقامات [maqaːˈmaːt]) is an (originally) Arabic prosimetric[1] literary genre which alternates the Arabic rhymed prose known as Saj‘ with intervals of poetry in which rhetorical extravagance is conspicuous.
Altogether about a dozen of authors produced Maqama stories. More than a hundred Maqamat manuscripts are known, but there are only eleven illustrated versions of the Maqāmāt that survive to this day, most of them from the 13 and the 14th centuries, and all of them derived from the Maqamat of al-Hariri.[2] Four of these currently reside in the British Library in London, while three are in Paris at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.[3]). One copy is at the following libraries: the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the Suleymaniye Library in Istanbul, the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, and the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg.[2]
Those Maqāmāt manuscripts were likely created and illustrated for the specialized book markets in cities such as Baghdad, Cairo, and Damascus, rather than for any particular patron.[2] The audience for the manuscripts were of elite and educated classes, such as nobles or scholars, as the Maqāmāt was largely appreciated and valued for its nuanced poetry and language choice, rather than its manuscript illustrations.[2] A particular Maqamat of al-Hariri, also called the Schefer Maqāmāt (BNF Arabe 5847), was illustrated by al-Wasiti and contains the highest amount of illustrations as well as being the most studied by scholars.[4]