Impostures. al-Ḥarīrī

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Foreword: In Praise of Pretense

      By Abdelfattah Kilito

      It is thanks to al-Hamadhānī—al-Ḥarīrī’s model—that the character of the eloquent rogue makes his sudden appearance in Arabic literature. The Maqāmāt (“Impostures”) genre features a protagonist who is at once a man of letters and also a shameless beggar and vagabond who engages in roguery without compunction. Imposture is in his blood; it is second nature to him.

      In his preface, al-Ḥarīrī praises the illustrious predecessor in whose footsteps he follows. And yet he is clearly ambivalent: he has his hero Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī say he is better than al-Hamadhānī’s hero Abū l-Fatḥ al-Iskandarī. And for seven centuries readers have accepted this claim, and affirmed al-Ḥarīrī’s superiority. An antagonistic quality permeates the Maqāmāt of al-Ḥarīrī, who effectively stole the glory from al-Hamadhānī, the very founder of the genre who fell into oblivion and who would not be reinstated till late in the nineteenth century. The imitator had eclipsed the originator: al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt proved, if proof were needed, that a copy could surpass the original.

      A successful imitator, however, is not always let off easy. Attempts are made to find flaws in his work, instances of plagiarism are supposedly discovered or unearthed, and sometimes he is even accused of having plundered the work outright. At least, that is what happened to al-Ḥarīrī, who was alleged not to have authored his Maqāmāt—and so the one who had devoted his work to the impostures of Abū Zayd came to be treated as an impostor himself. In fact, a curious rumor spread in Baghdad soon after the Maqāmāt were published. Yāqūt records it in his Dictionary of Learned Men and it has all the makings of a first-rate novel: during an attack on a caravan, some bedouin had seized as part of the booty a pouch belonging to some Maghribis; they had put it up for sale in Basra, al-Ḥarīrī had bought it and gotten his hands on a manuscript that was in it, specifically the manuscript of the Maqāmāt bearing his name . . . .

      The rumor died out after a time, but one argument advanced by the rumormongers remains troubling: their assertion that they did not recognize in the Maqāmāt al-Ḥarīrī claimed were his the style or mode of expression of his previous works. This led them to conclude that the Maqāmāt were written by a traveler, one originally from—and why not!—a western part of the Muslim realms. 1 But must a writer be condemned to the stranglehold of a single style, and never permitted to write differently? Is he to be a hostage to his style, to intractable destiny?

      In any event, it has to be conceded that al-Ḥarīrī’s style in the Maqāmāt, already distinct from al-Hamādhānī’s, differs from that of his earlier writing, as the enviers maintain. Severed from himself, one might say that al-Ḥarīrī is several. In one interview, Borges cites the following declaration by Whitman: “I contradict myself, I contain multitudes.” This statement could apply just as easily to al-Ḥarīrī, but also more aptly to Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī, his protagonist, whose being is nothing but an uninterrupted series of semblances, of refractions. This shimmering is characteristic of Abū Zayd, of his universe, and of the way in which the book is composed.

      Chased out of his native city of Sarūj by the Crusaders, Abū Zayd leads a vagrant’s life, traveling far and wide. During these wanderings, he lives by his wits and relies mainly on the alms he is given in appreciation for his talented oratory and literary performances. People do not provide assistance out of compassion, but because they are essentially impressed by his command of literary materials and by his rhetorical powers. He is a beggar poet (as was Homer, according to one ancient legend). In the Maqāmāt, roguery is an art, a genre, which is to say a comportment, a way of being and thinking, indeed a distinction, a style. A mixture of genres, we should add, as the art of literature went hand in hand with the art of deception. In this world of variegation and varicoloration, literature therefore presents itself as an imposture. Abū Zayd’s first victims are specifically men of letters. Surreptitiously introducing himself into their company, he manages over and over to charm them and to collect their gifts. Initially, they reject him on account of his pitiful appearance and his miserable attire, but the moment he opens his mouth he subdues them, their contempt dissipates, and revulsion turns to admiration.

      Abū Zayd never appears twice in the same guise. He changes appearance at will, showing a new face on every occasion, an actor taking on various roles: now a blind man, now a lame one, a decrepit old man, a jurist, a hemiplegic, a shrewd litigant, a preacher, a seller of charms . . . From one episode to the next, his repertoire changes and inevitably the themes of his disquisitions do too. More often than not, his role-playing is so skillful that at first he isn’t recognized by the narrator al-Ḥārith ibn Hammām, who meets him in each and every setting, following him like a shadow. Abū Zayd is several, he has no choice but to be untrue to himself. In each of his performances he wears a new mask; his identity, provisional and fleeting, is at every instant a borrowing, an impersonation. But who is he in reality? It bears repeating that in some ways he is just a succession of countless semblances. We should not be suprised by the fact that he is compared to the moon, the orb of night that perforce yields to the orb of day. But is there a sun in al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt?

      We should mention the explanation Abū Zayd provides as justification for his various postures. If we are to believe him, the passage of time is to blame, the nights (al-layālī), the days (al-ayyām): in a word, dahr, Time itself, the prime controller of life’s vicissitudes and reversals of fortune. Dahr governs all the events that impact human existence. Sometimes dahr shows its magnanimous side: in some episodes Abū Zayd is treated well by rulers and he struts about like a lord, surrounded by servants and by obvious signs of affluence. But more often, dahr is synonymous with adversity and setback: it can’t be trusted, it is inherently traitorous, fickle, reversing circumstances, making promises it will not keep—like lightning flashes not followed by rain. If dahr is the paragon of imposture, no surprise then that Abū Zayd is made in its image, as al-Sharīshī, one of al-Ḥarīrī’s commentators, has observed: he says that Abū Zayd has the same traits as dahr, is a metaphor for it, an incarnation of it.

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