Maqámát of Badí' al-Zamán al-Hamadhání

<p>The triple aim of Hamadhání in this work first translated into English in 1915 appears to have been to amuse to interest and to instruct; and this explains why in spite of the inherent difficulty of a work of this kind composed primarily with a view to the rhetorical effect upon the learned and the great there is scarcely a dull chapter in the fifty-one <i>maqámát</i> or discourses. The author essayed throughout these dramatic discourses to illustrate the life and language both of the denizens of the desert and the dwellers in towns and to give examples of the jargon and slang of thieves and robbers as well as the lucubrations of the learned and the conversations of the cultured. </p>