Introduction To Al-Ḥarīrī´s Maqāmāt

Maqāma is a typical genre of classical Arabic literature in the Middle Ages cultivated throughout the Islamic world, including al-Andalus, which has been considered the antecedent of the Spanish picaresque novel. One of the main authors who wrote about this literary genre is Al-Ḥarīrī of Baṣra (1054-1122). This article is an introduction to the Maqāmāt by Al-Ḥarīrī and includes the translation into English of some fragments of his important work