Impostures. al-Ḥarīrī

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,