Dear  Readers, 

In Islamic tradition, the acquisition of knowledge is regarded as essential: "Seek knowledge, even as far as China," the saying of the Prophet (`Sws) goes. Over the centuries Muslim civilization contributed with many innovations in medicine, philosophy astronomy, mathematics which were eventually passed on to the West. 

It is impossible to imagine the European Renaissance without access to the discoveries of Islamic civilization, and without Arabic achievements, the pace of civilization in Western Europe would surely have been set back centuries, with much vital knowledge likely lost forever. 

At its height in the 10th century, the Islamic khilafah stretched nearly 10,000 kilometers (6200 miles) from Andalusia in southern Spain to the Indus River Valley. By the 12th century, when the largest libraries in Europe (in the monasteries of Durham in England and Cluny in France) could claim no more than 500 volumes, there were collections in mosques in Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, Cordoba, Bukharah and elsewhere that comprised 10,000 books or more. In many of the collections, readers were provided writing paper and pens without charge to enable them to copy the works for their own libraries. 

Little is known today of the extent of the profound indebtedness of European poetry and literary style prose to popular, itinerant Arab bards. 

This article is one of many, which represents an opportunity to open the eyes of people in the West to the inextinguishable richness of Arab art & literature and their profound influence on the west.

Arabic literature in the narrow sense of adab (belles-lettres) began with al-Jahiz (d. 868-9), the shaykh of the Basrah littérateurs, and reached its culmination in the fourth and fifth Islamic centuries in the works of Badiy` al-Zaman al-Hamadaniy (969-1008), al-Tha`labiy al- Niysabuwriy (961-1038) and al-Hariyriy (1054-1122). 

One characteristic feature of prose writing in this period was the tendency, in response to Persian influence, to be affected and ornate. The terse, incisive and simple expression of early days had gone forever. It was supplanted by a polished and elegant style, rich in elaborate similes and replete with rhymes. The whole period was marked by a predominance of humanistic over scientific studies. Intellectually it was a period of decline. It supported a literary proletariat, many of whose members, with no independent means of livelihood, roamed from place to place ready to give battle over linguistic issues and grammatical technicalities or to measure poetical swords over trivial matters with a view to winning favors from wealthy patrons. This period also saw the rise of a new form of literary expression, the maqamah. 

Pure entertainment for the masses as well as for a more sophisticated audience formed an important part of the adab (non-religious, entertainment) literature. The two outstanding examples of works addressed to the latter were the so called maqamat, a literary term usually translated as "assemblies" or "séances."  Full of wit and learned allusions, they presupposed a knowledgeable audience that could appreciate them. 

The Maqamat in Arabic culture were composed in a style characteristic of the ancient Arabian form of al-saj` or "rhymed prose" (the form, as will be remembered, in which the Qur’an was revealed). 

These Maqamat (singular is Maqamah) included more than fifty Maqamat dealing with literary, social, linguistic and rhetorical issues. Added are also satire, jokes, criticism, proverbial sayings and verses from the Holy Qur'an 

The trend towards linguistic virtuosity led, ultimately, to a triumph of form over content. Abuw Muhammad al-Qasim al-Hariyriy (446-516 A.H./1054-1122 A.D,) took the maqamah to new heights (or extremes) in order to demonstrate his prowess with word play and his seemingly inexhaustible vocabulary. In one work, he used only those letters of the alphabet that have no dots or do not join to the following letter in a word. Even so, for more than seven centuries, al-Hariyriy's maqamat were regarded as the greatest literary treasure of Arabic, after the Qur'an. According to some readers, wholesome moral values and subtle criticisms of the existing social order underlie al-Hariyriy's decorative language. 

Though al-Hariyriy al-Basriy is one of the great names in Arabic literature, and his Maqamat were widely circulated and often recited from memory, only about a dozen copies of the text are known that include illustrations. The 50 short tales recount the mischievous adventures, disguises and roadside encounters of a silver-tongued rogue, one Abuw Zayd al-Saruwjiy. This copy attached in this article was probably once included in a group of 120 miniatures, of which 96, rich in pattern and detail, are preserved. 

The Maqamat are filled with an astoundingly vivid description of life in 13th-century Iraq. The artist illustrator who painted these maqamat was Yahya al-Wasiytiy; the leader of the school of decoration, calligraphy and embellishment in the 13th century. He was famed for his pictorial representation and sketches of at least 97 miniatures. 

Al-Wasiytiy put his art and soul into the illustrations. You can almost hear and smell their world, with the people gossiping, the animals braying. It's the observation of humanity almost in the raw that makes the manuscript so buoyant.

Ishinan 

To be continued