Zaynaddīn Ibn al-ʿAǧamī’s (591–674/1195–1276) Kitāb iʿǧāz al-munāǧī fī l-alġāz wa-l-aḥāǧī: A Thirteenth-Century Arabic Riddle Book

Abstract

Abstract This article presents a hitherto unnoted and unpublished thirteenth-century Arabic work on riddles. Zaynaddīn Ibn al-ʿAǧamī’s (591–674/1195–1276) Kitāb iʿǧāz al-munāǧī fī l-alġāz wa-l-aḥāǧī (The Confidant’s Bemusement: On Riddles and Charades) is the first surviving Arabic collection of literary riddles by a single author. The Aleppine littérateur and religious scholar Ibn al-ʿAǧamī composed this book for al-Malik an-Nāṣir Yūsuf, the last Ayyubid ruler of Aleppo and Damascus (r. 634–658/1236–1260). The work is an extensive collection of riddles in verse and prose. All the riddles were composed and subsequently solved and explained by Ibn al-ʿAǧamī himself. The book, which testifies to the popularity of this genre in Ayyubid Syria, survives in a unique manuscript that has been falsely catalogued as a copy of an earlier work on riddles. Despite its importance for the history of the Arabic literary riddle, its existence has therefore remained unknown.