Impostures. al-Ḥarīrī

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СКАЧАТЬ who raised and preserved the edifice of his faith. Make us worthy of their guiding hand, and deserving of their tender care.

      0.3In a certain assembly, convened to promote a learning now sunk in oblivion, mention was made of the Impostures devised, with much ingenuity, by the Wonder of the Age, Badee al-Zamán, the prodigy of Ecbatana; and ascribed by him to Abu Al-Fath of Scanderoon, and Jesu ben Hesham. The former is said to be the author, the latter the chronicler, of those harangues. Both, however, are buried in obscurity, and must defy every attempt to determine their identities. At the mention of Badee’s Impostures, a certain personage, whose command is no less profitably than deservedly obeyed, enjoined me to compose an imitation of them, even though it be a faint and feeble copy. I reminded him, with copious proofs, of the harsh treatment sustained by authors, whether of prose or verse. I begged him to release me from a trial as bewildering to the understanding, as merciless in its demands upon the powers of invention; one as likely to expose a man’s ignorance, as to display his worth. Any one so engaged (I said), gathers wood by night, or levies foot and horse: I mean, undertakes a work, where mere industry cannot prevent, and indeed must promote, the accumulation of useless matter.

      0.4It was in vain that I begged to be released from the duty of obedience. I resolved, therefore, to acquit myself of the charge with all the diligence I could muster. Though wanting in ingenuity, impoverished in invention, and distracted by painful cares, I composed, after a long struggle, these fifty Impostures. In them are mixed the grave and the ridiculous, the rugged and the delicate. Studded with the gems of oratory, salted with the table-talk of cultivated men, and emblazoned with verses of the Koran, they are replete with figures and allegories, proverbs and maxims, literary subtleties and grammatical enigmas, and judgments on disputed points of speech. Nor will they be found deficient in pleasantry and laughter, in epistles ingenuously contrived, in orations gaudily bedecked, or in sermons bedewed with the tears of penitence. All these are placed in the mouth of Abu Zeid of Batnae, as if related to me by Hareth Ebn Hamam of Bassora. Thus urged from one pasture to another, my readers will, I trust, peruse with eager curiosity the lessons they encounter. With regard to poetry, almost all the verses are my own. The exceptions are the two upon which the second Imposture, “A Basran Boswell,” is based; and the distich comprised in the twenty-fifth, “De froid trempé.” The rest are my virgin-brides: the luscious fruit, or bitter weeds, of my invention.

      0.5Yet so far has Badee, the prodigy of Ecbatana, outstripped every courser in the race, that all who vie with him in the making of Impostures, be they granted the eloquence of Kodama, tread a path well-trod, and quaff a cup already drained. A poet says:

      Had I wept first, instead of bitter grief

      I might ere now have tasted sweet relief;

      But wept I not, till I beheld her sighs;

      So precedence is hers, and hers the prize.

      0.6It is my hope, that having presumed to lay this work of turgid rhetoric before the public, I may yet escape the blame naturally incurred by any who hands his executioner the knife; or amputates, with more severity than sense, his own offending nose. “Shall we declare unto you,” says the Koran, “those whose works are vain, whose endeavor in the present life hath been wrongly directed, and who think they do the work which is right?” Though partiality be disposed to overlook, and friendship to excuse, the manifest deficiencies of this book, it is unlikely to escape the cavils of the ignorant, or the calumny of the wilful. This fiction, its captious judge will say, violates the laws of God. Yet the eye of reason, that sees by the light of first principles, will find it a work of instruction, similar to those fables told of talking animals, or mute objects brought to life. Is there one who refuses to listen to such tales, or condemns their recital, in an idle hour? If our deeds are judged, as our acts of worship are affirmed, by our intentions, how can justice reprove any one who composes pleasantries, not to deceive, but to teach; and whose fables pretend to utility, not veracity, in the correction of error? I know not how such an author differs from any teacher of virtue or religion.

      Do not resist the Muse’s mighty gale:

      Against her force no mortal can prevail.

      When she slackens, thou mayest slip away:

      Do but survive, and thou hast won the day.

      In this as in all my designs, I grasp the strong arm of God, that he might conduct me in the right path, and steer me past the stumbling-block. He is my succor and my sanctuary, my refuge and my guide. Upon him I rely, and to him I turn in penitence.

      Notes

      Readers of al-Ḥarīrī’s Introduction may wonder what terrible thing he is worried about having done. His hero, Abū Zayd, practices fraud, drinks alcohol, and occasionally steals, all without being punished. At the same time, he delivers powerful sermons that move his listeners to tears. Are his sermons somehow invalidated by his hypocrisy? And are the Impostures, which are supposed to teach Arabic, tainted by the sordidness of the events they describe?

      James Monroe’s pioneering study of al-Ḥarīrī’s predecessor al-Hamadhānī argued that both sets of Impostures are parodic inversions “of the values embodied in the ḥadīth” (the words and actions attributed to the Prophet) and other genres of Arabic writing (The Art, 26). This thesis has been revived, though with important modifications, by Devin J. Stewart, who reads al-Hamadhānī’s Impostures as parodies of “specific genres of Islamic religious discourse, particularly the hadith-lecture or majlis.” But, he adds, al-Ḥarīrī’s Impostures, though they retain the framing device associated with hadith transmission (“So-and-so related to us”), are nevertheless more concerned with “belles lettres per se” (Stewart, “The Maqāma,” 149–50). And indeed, several important studies of the genre emphasize its continuity with other kinds of writing in Arabic. Abdelfattah Kilito, for example, has discussed the Impostures’ development of themes already present in travelogues and in anecdotes about madmen, mimics, and beggars (Kilito, Séances, 19–94). Similarly, Fedwa Malti-Douglas’s study of al-Hamadhānī analyzes his “creative use of preexisting literary roles, techniques, and situations,” including, for example, the dish that never arrives, a staple of the hospitality anecdote (Malti-Douglas, Maqāmāt, 1). And Philip Kennedy’s recent study of (mis)recognition explores the web of intertextuality that links the Impostures to the Qurʾan, Qurʾanic exegesis, folklore, and poetry (Kennedy, Recognition, 246–312).

      In contrast to those who find the Impostures parodic, Katia Zakharia sees Abū Zayd’s language “as a path toward God and truth” and the Impostures as a text to be decoded. The result of her own decoding is a story about the hero’s gradual progression toward mystical bliss (Abū Zayd, citation at 59). Matthew Keegan’s more recent reading also invokes decoding, but of a different kind. For him, al-Ḥarīrī’s text, at least to its original audiences, was not parodic or subversive. Rather, the Impostures had a pedagogic function: to teach the reader the skills necessary to make sense of complex, polyvalent texts, above all the Qurʾan (Keegan, “Commentarial Acts,” 404). On this view, al-Ḥarīrī’s introduction may thus СКАЧАТЬ