Muhammad ̔Awfī and the Persian maqāma

Abstract

The influence of Arabic maqāmas on Hebrew literature has received some attention, but their influence on Persian literature has been less intensively studied. However, maqāmas were eagerly received and imitated in 12th-century Persia. A Persian author, Muhammad Awfī (d. after 628/1230–1) deserves attention when assessing the early Persian maqāma. In his Ǧawāmi̔, he gives the translation of one Harīrian maqāma and relates two or three stories which would easily qualify as maqāmas. They also show that the influence of the maqāma on Persian literature is stronger than is usually suggested. Persians may not always have labelled their texts maqāmas, which, after all, remained a foreign genre for them, but at the same time maqāmas did influence Persian prose literature more deeply than is usually recognized.