HARIRI (Abv Mahommed ul-Qasim ibn `Ali ibn Mahommed al-Hariri, i.e., "the manufacturer or seller of silk") (1054-1122), Arabian writer, was born at Basra. He is said to have occupied a government position, but devoted his life to the study of the niceties of the Arabic language. On this subject he wrote a gram matical poem the Mulhat ul-`Irdb (French trans. by L. Pinto, 1885-89; extracts in S. de Sacy's Anthologie arabe, 1829) ; a work on the faults of the educated called Durrat ul-Ghawwas (ed. H. Thorbecke, Leipzig, 1871), and some smaller treatises (ed. in Arnold's Chrestomathy, pp. But his fame rests chiefly on his fifty maqamas. (See ARABIA : Literature, section "Belles Lettres.") These were written in rhymed prose like those of Hamadhani, and are full of allusions to Arabian history, poetry and tradition, and discussions of difficult points of Arabic gram mar and rhetoric.
The Maqamas have been edited with Arabic commentary by S. de Sacy (Paris, 5822, 2nd ed. 5853) ; with English notes by F. Steingass (5 896) , English trans. by T. Preston (585o) , and another by T. Chenery and F. Steingass (London, 5867 and 5898) . Many editions have been published in the East with commentaries, especially with that of Sharishi (d. 5222).