The Maqámát of Badí' al-Zamán al-Hamadhání
Author: W.J. Prendergast
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-10-14
Total Pages: 207
ISBN-13: 1317378563
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe 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.