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1.See Abdelfattah Kilito, L’Absent ou l’épreuve du soleil, translated from the Arabic by Francis Gouin (Casablanca: Toubkal, 2019), 98–101.

2.Or so he later claimed. Rowson (“Religion and Politics”) seems to believe him, while Hämeen-Anttila is more skeptical (Maqama, 24–27). For an illuminating study of the “vizier culture” that promoted literary rivalries of this kind, see England, Medieval Empires.

3.Hämeen-Anttila has pointed out that al-Hamadhānī “was not seen primarily as a maqama writer by his contemporaries” and suggests that his reputation as the master of the genre may have arisen because of al-Ḥarīrī’s later efforts to outdo him (Hämeen-Anttila, Maqama, 117–25).

4.Etymologically, maqāmah indicates any occasion when one stands, and by extension a speech made before an audience. As used by al-Ḥarīrī and al-Hamadhānī, its obvious sense is that of a verbal performance delivered to strangers while standing in a mosque, market, or street, as opposed to one delivered while seated in comfort among friends, as would be the case in a majlis. Even so, the term’s wide application as a designation for literary works has generated much discussion. My position is that of Katia Zakharia, who argues that no single definition is adequate to the variety of documented uses (Zakharia, Abū Zayd, 93–101). I would add that even if the connection between “standing” and a particular kind of speech was at some point clear, it was evidently lost over time—just as, for example, no one today is quite sure what the word “tragedy” originally meant. In practice, a maqāmah is simply the genre, or any single example of it, known by that name. Throughout this book, I will use the capitalized word (Imposture, Impostures) to refer to the genre or to individual maqāmāt. I will use Impostures in italics only when referring to al-Ḥarīrī’s text.

5.Al-Hamadhānī’s Impostures were collected, copied, and published at different times, but apparently never by the author himself, making it impossible to know whether we have them all or whether all the ones attributed to him are genuine. See Pomerantz and Orfali, “Three Maqāmāt.” Whether he was the first to write Impostures is a question much debated in the secondary literature. For an incisive summary see Malti-Douglas, “Maqāmāt,” 247–51, and Hämeen-Anttila, Maqama, 64–73.

6.For a more detailed overview see Hämeen-Anttila, Maqama, 38–61.

7.Prendergast, Maqamat, 21.

8.On the date see MacKay, “Certificates,” 8–9.

9.More fully Abū Muḥammad al-Qāsim ibn ʿAlī al-Ḥarīrī al-Baṣrī al-Ḥarāmī, “al-Qāsim, the father of Muḥammad, the son of ʿAlī the silk trader, from the quarter of the Ḥarām tribe in Basra.” One biographer calls him Ibn al-Ḥarīrī (Yāqūt, Muʿjam, 5:2202), implying that the silk trader in question was an ancestor.

10.Most critics no longer believe that he was inspired by meeting with a real mountebank named Abū Zayd: see Zakharia, “Norme.” But one version of the story seems plausible enough: see the note to Imposture 48. Al-Ḥarīri’s preface speaks vaguely of a patron; see further the notes to §0.3.

11.The major pre-modern biographies are Yāqūt, Muʿjam, 5:2202–16, and Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, 4:63–68. The essential modern studies are de Sacy, Séances, 2:1–50, and Zakharia, Abū Zayd, 23–51.

12.On the complex political history see de Sacy, Séances, 2 (introduction, by M. Reynaud and M. Derenbourg): 5–14, 21–27, 28–31, 42, 50.

13.Yāqūt, Muʿjam, 5:2206.

14.This is a real condition known as trichotillomania. One of my college roommates dealt with stress by yanking on his hair, a habit that eventually produced a distinct bald spot on the top of his head.

15.Yāqūt, Muʿjam, 5:2204.

16.Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, 4:65.

17.This account is based on MacKay, “Certificates.”

18.Yāqūt, Muʿjam, 2205. As Asma Sayeed and Bilal Abdelhady have pointed out to me, al-Ḥarīrī might well have authorized dozens of copies at a time by reading aloud to large groups of people. Thus the number seven hundred, though doubtless an approximation, need not be dismissed as a mere figure of speech.

19.Yāqūt, Muʿjam, 2205. It should be noted that not all readers have agreed (as Yāqūt implies) that al-Ḥarīrī outdid his predecessor. For example, Margoliouth and Pellat flatly describe his Impostures as “no more than a pale reflection of those of al-Hamadhānī” (“al-Ḥarīrī”).

20.Stewart, “Maqāmah,” 145.

21.Reinaud and Derenbourg attribute al-Ḥarīrī’s “decadence” to Persian and Hellenistic influences (quoted in de Sacy, Séances, 2:54). Rückert felt the need to apologize for what he calls “der falscher Orientalischer Geschmack,” but suggests that it is redeemed by humor (Rückert, Verwandlungen, VI and XII). Ernest Renan was more severe, commenting that the Impostures, “appréciée d’après nos idées européennes, dépasse tout ce qu’il est permis d’imaginer en fait de mauvais goût.” For him, al-Ḥarīrī is primarily of interest as an exemplar of “Arab decadence.” See Renan, “Les Séances de Hariri,” 288 and 300; I thank Maurice Pomerantz for this reference. For a deconstruction of Renan’s views see Kilito, Séances, 202–8. Also noteworthy here is Devin Stewart’s observation that in pronouncing these harsh judgments, European scholars were not necessarily expressing “Orientalist disdain for Arabic literary sensibilities” but rather “parroting views prominent in Arabic literary studies in the Islamic world” (Stewart, “Classical Arabic Maqāmāt”).

22.Keegan, “Commentarial Acts,” 81–117.

23.On the language of the Qurʾan as “the Discourse of the Eternal” see, e.g., Lumbard, “The Quran in Translation.”

24.Paradise Lost, 1:589–94.

25.Zakharia, Abū Zayd, 45.

26.[Shakespeare], Norton Shakespeare, 68.

27.“In his early days, Abba Euprepius went to see an old man and said to him, Abba, give me a word so that I may be saved”: [Proclus], Procli Archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani Opera omnia, Euprepius 7, col. 172, translated in Ward, Sayings, 62. For more examples see Theodore 20, col. 192 (Sayings, 76); Hierax 1, col. 232 (Sayings, 104).

28.Angelika Neuwirth has argued that the adab that al-Ḥārith is looking for is a kind of antinomian practice manifested in ʿajāʾib or marvels of rhetoric (Neuwirth, “Adab Standing Trial,” 211). To me, those marvels are cognate with the wonder (thauma) inspired by the piety and eloquence of the church fathers. For examples of wonder see, e.g., [Proclus], Procli Archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani Opera omnia, Achilles 6, col. 124–25 (Ward, Sayings, 30); Benjamin 2, col. 144 (Ward, Sayings, 43); John the Dwarf 7, col. 205 (Ward, Sayings, 87).

29.Kilito, Séances, 226.

30.Pollock, Language of the Gods.

31.Beaumont, “Trickster,” 13.

32.Beaumont, “Mighty,” 148–49.

33.Kennedy, Recognition, 306.

34.Zakharia describes al-Ḥarīrī’s project as “an attempt to reconcile his certainties about language with the reality of the world he inhabits,” an effort she describes as “tragic” (Abū Zayd, 48).

35.Homer, Odyssey, tr. Wilson, 83.

36.Specifically, a partial one by Sirāj Kātib, completed 587/1191, in a copy dated to 662/1264; another whose original author and date are unknown, copied in 686/1287, and published by ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Iftikhār Javādī in 1985 and Ravāqī himself in 1987; and two more of unknown authorship but apparently of more recent date, copied in 1218/1803–4 and 1223/1808–9, respectively. There is also an undated interlinear translation into Gilaki, an Indo-Iranian language today spoken on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea (Ravāqī, Maghāmāt, xx–xxi). On the latter see further Mokhtarian, Maqāmen.

37.[Ḥamīdī], Gozīdeh, 23. I have chosen a florid translation style to match the rococo phrasings of the original. Balkh is a city located in what is now north-central Afghanistan, Karkh is a district of Baghdad, and Rey is a town south of Tehran. For more on the Persian maqāmah see Behmardi, “Maḍīrah.”

38.Alcharizi, Machberoth Ithiel, ed. Chenery; al-Ḥarizi, Machberoth Ithiel, ed. Perets. On his life see Sadan, “Intellectuel.”

39.Alḥarizi, Taḥkemoni, 17–18.

40.Lavi, A Comparative Study, 13–15.

41.Alcharizi, Machberoth, ed. Chenery, 50.

42.Alcharizi, Machberoth, 16. Fully spelled out, Hebrew does have dots, but they are (almost always) used to indicate contextual variations in pronunciation rather than to distinguish otherwise unrelated letters as in Arabic.

43.Key, “Translation of Poetry.”

44.Loop, “Language of Paradise,” 445 and 453.

45.This was not the first publication of an Imposture in Europe. That honor goes to Golius’s student Johannes Fabricius, who published an Arabic edition of one Imposture in 1638 (Loop, “Language,” 453).

46.Chappelow, Six Assemblies, vi. “Franequer,” today Franeker, is a city in the Netherlands. The abbreviation “4to” stands for “quarto,” a print size.

47.Chappelow, Six Assemblies, iv, vi, ii. Here, for example, is his rendering of the seven words ṭawwaḥat bī ṭawāʾiḥu z-zaman / ilā Ṣanʿāʾi l-Yaman (roughly, “the flingings of fate flung me to Sanaa in Yemen”): “The viciſſitudes of fortune, like the boiſterous waves of the ſea, when they distreſs the shipwrecked mariner, with the ſame ſwiftneſs as an arrow discharged from a bow, preſſed upon me with such an impetuous force; clouded me with ſo much error and confusion, that they haſtened my passage as far as Sanaa in Arabia Felix” (Six Assemblies, 18).

48.[Ḥarīrī], Séances, tr. Venture de Paradis, cxv.

49.De Sacy, Séances, 1:ix. As it happens, he was aware of al-Ḥarīzī’s Hebrew translation; in fact, he includes a sample of it in his edition of the Impostures. He should therefore have known that one translator, at least, had managed it.

50.De Sacy, Séances, 1:v.

51.“Les personnes qui ne conoissent le style de Hariri que par des traductions, ne sauroient s’en faire une juste idée, sur-tout lorsque les traducteurs se sont efforcés de conserver dans leurs versions certaines associations d’idées que les termes employés dans le texte rappellent à quiconque connoît à fond la langue de l’original, mais qu’on doit se contenter de faire apercevoir dans une sorte de lointain et comme à travers un brouillard, si l’on ne veut pas sacrifier le principal à ce qui n’est qu’accessoire. Ce genre de fidélité est presque un travestissement” (de Sacy, Séances, 1:v).

52.Rückert, Verwandlungen, III to XII, quotes at V, VI, and XII. For an appreciative but critical reading of Rückert see Preston, Makamat, 16–19; cf. Renan, “Séances,” 300.

53.For an example see my notes on Imposture 16.

54.See my notes at §6.4.

55.[Ḥarīrī], Makamat, tr. Preston, 2.

56.Matthew, “Chenery.”

57.For the advice see de Sacy, Séances, ix.

58.[Ḥarīrī,] Assemblies, tr. Chenery, vii.

59.[Ḥarīrī,] Assemblies, tr. Steingass, ix.

60.[Ḥarīri,] Makamy. Dolinina was professor of Arabic philology at St. Petersburg State University, and published extensively on modern Arabic literature. Borisov, also primarily a modernist, was professor of Arabic at the Moscow State University. Kirpichenko was a researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies specializing in modern Egyptian literature. My knowledge of their work comes entirely through the generous assistance of several colleagues (see Acknowledgments).

61.[Ḥarīri,] Makamy, 3–14.

62.See Tolmacheva, “Professor Dr. Anna Arkadievna Iskoz-Dolinina.”

63.Ḥarīrī, Maqamas, tr. Arvide, which I have not seen, contains translations of eleven Impostures into Spanish.

64.Harîrî, Livre des Malins, 164.

65.Here is an example, from the beginning of the famous Imposture of Baghdad: “Abû Zaid! Que Dieu te prête vie! D’ou viens-tu donc ainsi? Qui t’abrite? Quand es-tu arrivé? Viens chez moi prendre gîte” (Hamadhânî, La Parole est d’or, 55).

66.[Ḥarīrī], Mài kǎ mǔ cíhuà, 88. My knowledge of the Chinese translation is based entirely on generous personal communications from Prof. Ailin Qian, who is preparing her own rhymed translation of al-Hariri’s Impostures.

67.This may be the time to say a word about the title. To translate the word maqāmah, translators into English have used “assemblies,” which made sense in the nineteenth century but today suggests something that one does to furniture. Translators into French use séance, “session,” which grates on the ear since it involves sitting, not standing. With characteristic brilliance, al-Ḥarīzī uses maḥberet, “bringing together,” a term that invokes both a compilation of written material and a coming together of scholars. Rückert gave his recasting the title Verwandlungen, “Transformations,” which is quite apropos as a title though not as a rendering of the word maqāmah. The pre-modern Persian interlinears simply adopt the Arabic word, as do the modern translations into Russian and Chinese. “Impostures,” suggested to me by Shawkat M. Toorawa, conveys both the substance of Abū Zayd’s activities (the term appears in this sense in Zakharia, Abū Zayd, and Kennedy, Recognition) and the embodied character of the Arabic (standing being a kind of posture).

68.On the translation of nonsense see Steiner, After Babel, 196–206.

69.This approach is of course nothing new. When Gilbert Adair translated Georges Perec’s 1969 novel La disparition into English, he had to address the fact that the original is written entirely without the letter e. In French, avoiding e means not using many extremely common words, including une, le, les, de, et, and est (“a,” “the,” “of,” “and,” and “is”). The resulting contortions mean that the prose is constantly calling attention to itself. And this, it turns out, is the point: The missing e (pronounced in French identically with eux, “they”) is a metaphor for the Jews exterminated in the Holocaust, among them Perec’s mother, who died in Auschwitz. The book, in other words, is about a world without them (“sans e,” “sans eux,” pronounced the same way). This is why the constraint has to be replicated. And indeed, Adair’s English translation, entitled A Void, brilliantly eschews the letter in question. As I argue in the Introduction, al-Ḥarīrī’s use of constraint is equally thematic, and must therefore also be duplicated.

70.[Ḥarīrī], Makamat, tr. Preston, 2. For evidence, see the compulsively rhymed translation of Alḥarizi’s Taḥkemoni, by David Simha Segal, a work I otherwise admire, and which anticipates my approach here in several respects. The problem is visual, too. Unless one can consistently match Gertrude Stein’s or James Thurber’s uncanny mastery of prose rhythm, the rhyming clauses need to be set off by some kind of punctuation or special typography (as Rückert’s are, with dashes). If they are not, the reader does not know that a particular word is the first rhyme word and so may not notice the second. But special signaling generates its own problem: if the first rhyme word is marked, the reader will feel an irresistible urge to skip ahead to the second, and so lose track of the sense. Another way to make the rhyme scheme clear is to indent after each rhyme. But that would produce a text graphically identical with poetry, which sajʿ is not. One solution is that of Humphrey Davies, whose translations for the Library of Arabic Literature put the rhyme word in italics. His renditions work well because they use off rhymes as well as full rhymes, and because they do not insist on rhyming everywhere the originals do. It also helps that the rhyming passages are embedded in ordinary prose texts: in other words, the rhymed-prose effect does not need to be sustained across an entire work, as it would have to be with the Impostures.

71.Of course Arabic can be written in such a way as to bring out the historical, social, or geographical positionality of its speakers. But formal Arabic of the kind al-Ḥarīrī uses was constituted by the presumption that it was unvarying across time and space, and identical to the language of the Qurʾan. So, while the Impostures contains several passages in jargon (specifically the jargon of the Banū Sāsān, the underworld of beggars and thieves), it remains morphologically and syntactically standard at all times. In this respect my translation differs radically from the original. See Micallef, “Essential Achille Mizzi,” for the thought-provoking argument that literary translation should be understood as a carrying forward of purposes intended, if not fully realized, by the original work.

72.I owe this idea of showing off a language to Jeannie Miller. I am also grateful to Amy Richlin, whose translations of Plautus into a variety of modern idioms (e.g., Spanglish) showed me that this sort of thing could actually be done. See Rome and the Mysterious Orient: Three Plays by Plautus. In an important review, Vincent Hunink makes the point that in bringing “an ancient text very close to present day readers” Richlin “excludes very many such readers who do not share exactly the same cultural background,” in this case membership in “an educated, American, Anglo-Saxon, English-speaking audience of 2005 that is also thoroughly familiar with Hollywood movies and cartoons, TV and show business, and mass culture in general.” He adds: “Perhaps the status of English as the lingua franca all over the world is part of the problem here. Many readers will initially feel that an English translation is accessible to them, whereas in fact it may be meant for local and temporary use.” In the present translation I have used English idioms from a variety of times and places, in the hope that readers who find some episodes hard to follow will find others enjoyably familiar.

73.Raymond Queneau, Exercices de style. Paris: Gallimard, 1947. On constrained writing in general, see Mathews and Brotchie, Oulipo Compendium; and Hofstadter, Le ton beau de Marot.

74.I’m not sure that I agree with Kilito that “chaque séance . . . tourne autour d’un genre” (Séances, 244), though if the claim is true it would help make the case for my approach.

75.Translating into a particular historical or literary idiom is of course nothing new either. For examples and discussion see Steiner, After Babel, 352–71. Note, however, that the cases he discusses involve putting the entirety of the foreign work into a past register of the target language, not using many different registers in the course of a single translation. By using some of the “many voices, standard and nonstandard, that constitute English speech and writing,” I am hoping, among other things, “to interrogate the unified appearance that English is given” in naturalizing translations (Venuti, Translator’s Invisibility, 190; see also 235 and 273).

76.Kroll, “Translation, or Sinology,” 561.

77.I suspect that Kroll might describe my work as an example of what Dryden calls “imitation” (see “Translation, or Sinology,” 561). But an imitator “assumes the liberty not only to vary from the words and sense, but to forsake them both as he sees occasion” (cited in Steiner, After Babel, 267–68), while my English Impostures, though cast in a variety of idioms, strives always to maintain the sense. (Forsaking the words, it seems to me, is inevitable.) Being put into non-Standard English does not, in itself, make a translation inaccurate.

78.Benabdelali, “Fī mā lā yaqbalu t-tarjamah / De l’intraduisible,” in Ḍiyāfat, 11–17, at 13.