Impostures. al-Ḥarīrī

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,