Reprint of a classic text, this volume gives an insight into the rebirth of national literature in the national language and traces the course of its development and full maturity from the beginning of the ninth to the end of the fifteenth century.
The present volumes, dealing with the ancient and modem tribes and peoples of the countries around the Persian Gulf, were compiled by the late Colonel Samuel Barrett Miles, of the Indian Army and Political Service, Consul-General of Muscat and Baghdad, etc. He took his notes, many of which were jotted down on odd bits of paper as he rode through the desert on his camel. His blindness, aggravated by serious internal troubles, and in spite of the heroic attempts which he made, made it impossible to set down in writing even a hundredth part of the vast store of Oriental learning which he had accumulated during his prolonged residence in India, Persia, Arabia, and Mesopotamia.The reader will note that the system of transcription of proper names used in these volumes is that which was generally employed by Orientalists and British Indian officials some forty or fifty years ago. Had Colonel Miles lived he would undoubtedly have abandoned this system and adopted that now commonly in use in India, England, and on the Continent; and it is very probable that he would have modified certain portions of his narrative and supplied full references to his authorities, both ancient and modern. After much thought his widow decided to publish the manuscript of his work as she found it. With it she has included the rough notes which he made on his travels in Mesopotamia, and added a good, full Index.
The triple aim of Hamadhání in this work, first translated into English in 1915, appears to have been to amuse, to interest and to instruct; and this explains why, in spite of the inherent difficulty of a work of this kind composed primarily with a view to the rhetorical effect upon the learned and the great, there is scarcely a dull chapter in the fifty-one maqámát or discourses. The author essayed, throughout these dramatic discourses, to illustrate the life and language both of the denizens of the desert and the dwellers in towns, and to give examples of the jargon and slang of thieves and robbers as well as the lucubrations of the learned and the conversations of the cultured.