Al-Maqalat al Jawhariyya `ala al-Maqamat al-Haririyya

Abstract

The Thesis presents a critical edition of the first volume of Khayr al-Din ibn Taj al-Din Ilyas al-Madani’s al-Maqalat al-Jawhariyya `ala al-Maqamat al-Haririyya, accompanied by an introduction dealing briefly with the Maqamat as a literary genre, the commentaries on the Maqamat, the description of various manuscripts of al-Maqalat and the authorship of the work.

The text itself consists of, a preface, the commentary on Hariri's preface, followed by the commentary on the first twenty-five Maqamat of unequal length. Volume two of al-Maqalat consists of the commentary on the remaining twenty-five Maqamat. This has been found too long to include in this work. It is hoped, however, that it will be possible to edit this volume separately in the future.

This work, al-Maqalat, was brought to my notice by the book Makamat by Theodore Preston,* Professor of Arabic at Cambridge University, who in his preface mentions al-Maqalat and describes it as "an excellent running commentary on the Makamat." The two volumes of the work are contained in the Burchardt collection of the Cambridge University Library, and "it is a very lucid and valuable work and well deserves to be edited. "

My first task in the attempt to edit al-Maqalat, then, was a search, extending from Cambridge to Cairo, Alexandria and Patna, for the manuscripts of that and other books of commentary on the Maqamat, most of which are still in manuscript form. * Published in London, 1850.