The Maqámát of Badí al-Zamán al-Hamadhání [with active TOC & footnotes]

The Maqámát of Badí' al-Zamán al-Hamadhánítranslated by W.J. Prendergastwith active Table of Contents and footnotes optimized for Kindle.A masterpiece of medieval Islamic literature. A Maqama (plural, Maqamat) is an Arabic rhymed prose literary form, with short poetic passages. Maqama is from a root which means 'he stood,' and in this case it means to stand in a literary discussion in order to orate. The two classical exponents of the Maqama were Hamadhani (967-1007), the composer of this work, and the later and better-known Hariri (1054-1122). Hamadhani was born in Hamadhan, the ancient Ecbatana, in what is now Iran (to the southwest of Tehran) and spent his life as a wandering scholar. The Maqamat of Hamadhani and Hariri have a similar structure. They both consist of a series of unrelated episodes involving a wandering narrator, and a trickster protagonist. In the Maqamat of Hamadhani, the narrator is an alter ego of Hamadhani, a wandering scholar named Isa ibn Hisham. In each ..