The maqama as a literary genre

Abstract

There are various views concerning the birth of the narrative tale in Arabic and the identity of its first authors. According to some scholars, evidence from numerous manuscripts and inscriptions discovered in modern times indicates that Arabic narrative fiction has its roots in the ancient civilizations of the Middle East, such as the Babylonian, the Sumerian, the Chaldean, the Assyrian, or even in the Egypt of the Pharaohs. I believe that this view of the beginnings and history of the Arabic narrative tale is misguided, since Arabic tales that are recognized as such have been told, transmitted and disseminated exclusively in the Arabic language and no other. It was in the pre-Islamic period (al-jahiliyya) that the Arabs first wrote down their poetry. Therefore I shall that period as a starting point for the history of Arabic literature, both poetry and prose. The Qur'an is the earliest extant work in which complete tales are recorded in Arabic. However, since the Arabs at the time were not familiar with written prose stories, they at first thought that the Qur'an was a poetic text. However, the short story as in independent literary genre in the modern sense, distinct from the maqama, the proverb, the novel and the poem, is a very recent concept, going back no more than a century. Its situation is similar to that of drama, which has only in the last fifty years been recognized as an independent genre, distinct from the short story and the novel. The question which we pose in the present study is: What is the genre with which scholars have associated the maqama, and what are the elements that have made it so important for the emergence and evolution of the modern short story?