Maqamat Abi Zayd al-Saruji is a scholarly, Arabic-only edition of the celebrated work by al-?ariri, which is also available in English translation from the Library of Arabic Literature as Impostures. Al-?ariri's text consists of fifty stories about the adventures of the itinerant con man and master of persuasion Abu Zayd al-Saruji, as told by the equally itinerant and often gullible narrator al-?arith ibn Hammam. Al-?ariri was a virtuoso writer of the rhymed prose narrative genre known as the maqamah, which would continue as a popular literary form into the twentieth century. An Arabic edition with an Arabic foreword and English scholarly apparatus. |