Badī‘ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī's Maqāma of Bishr b. ‘Awāna (al-Bishriyya)

Abstract

This article deals with what is generally known as ‘Hamadhānī's Maqāma of Bishr b. ‘Awāna’, against the background of several previous studies. The first part of the article examines the existence or absence of this text in the several extant medieval manuscripts and modern editions of Hamadhānī's Maqāmas, and raises the question—against the background of the absence in it of substantive aspects and functions possessed by classical maqāmas—of whether it is a real maqāma or not; we tend to consider it as Hamadhānian fictional anecdote (khabar or, as it was labelled by the Constantinopolitan editor, mulḥa). The second part of the article examines the text's literary roots, analyses it against the classical Arabic literary traditions, and shows the misinterpretations in previous studies, due to the lack of a critical edition of Hamadhānī's Maqāmas, and the fact that Muḥammad ‘Abduh out of piety changed some words in the text.